"Whirring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... until it was almost torture to remain in the engine room. Nor was it much cooler elsewhere. In vain did the professor set a score of big electric fans to whirring. He even placed cakes of ice, from the small ice machine that was carried, in front of the revolving blades, to cool off the air. But the ice was melted almost as soon as it was ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... midnight, ever and anon, the tired and sleepy citizens are startled from their dreams by whoops, hurrahs, snatches of songs, and outbursts of rude laughter ringing through the frosty air and mingling with the clattering of horses' feet and the whirring rumble of swift-revolving wheels, as some party of roystering blades, excited by deep potations, drive shouting homewards from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... starboard quarter. They had reached the dessert, and two at least of the party were congratulating themselves on the happy termination of the meal, when, just as the Duke was speaking, there was a heavy lurch, and a tremendous sea broke over their heads. Then came a fearful whirring sound that shook through every plate and timber and bulkhead, like the sudden running down of mammoth clock-work, lasting some twenty seconds; then everything was quiet again save the sea, and the yacht rolled heavily ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... recess. He was aware instantly that there was some secret spring; he pressed with some force on the spot, and he felt the board give way; he pushed it back towards him, and it slid suddenly with a whirring noise, and left a cavity below exposed to his sight. He peered in, and drew forth a paper; he opened it at first carelessly, for he was still trying to listen to Fanny. His eye ran rapidly over a few preliminary lines till it ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ravel line sweel, From the fast-whirring reel, With a music that gladdens the ear; And the thrill of delight, In that glorious fight, To the heart of the angler ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... intending to camp out all night, and were now gathered in many groups, singing hymns and praying. The drunken wails from the procession stopped for a moment, and there was nothing heard but the whirring wheels and the mournful notes of the singers. Then "Father Storm!" rose like the cry of a cormorant from a thousand throats at once. When the laughter that greeted the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty wings would pass ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... low, whirring whistle of the wind. Not like the moan of an approaching tornado is this wind, but like the high-pitched note of an engine running smoothly at high speed. Characteristic and peculiar, boys, is that heralding wind, with a throbbing ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... flash of silver darts from the waves close by the boat. Usually a salmon takes the fly rather slowly, carrying it under water before he seizes it in his mouth. But this one is in no mood for deliberation. He has hooked himself with a rush, and the line goes whirring madly from the reel as he races down the pool. Keep the point of the rod low; he must have his own way now. Up with the anchor quickly, and send the canoe after him, bowman and sternman paddling with swift strokes. He has reached the deepest water; he stops to think what has happened ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... moment there was a violent whirring amongst the clocks; doors flew open in all directions, and cuckoos of every size and description darted out, shook themselves violently, and the air was filled with such a deafening noise that the Goat-mother threw ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... in the hot afternoon sunshine, that the whirring noise of the insects seemed quite loud. Beautiful blue-billed gapers, all claret and black and white, flitted about, catching glossy metallic-looking beetles; little green chatterers, with their crested heads, flew from spray to spray; ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... Between them lay a long brown table, stained and corroded by strong acids, and littered with giant carboys, Faure's accumulators, voltaic piles, coils of wire, and great blocks of non-conducting porcelain. In the midst of all this lumber there stood a singular whizzing, whirring machine, upon which the eyes ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sleep and slept awhile; then awoke to the worst solitude a vexed soul knows—those terrible "small hours" of the morning. Then, every mere insect of evil omen that daylight has kept in bounds grows to the size of an elephant, and what was the whirring of his wings becomes discordant thunder. Then palliatives lose their market-value, and every clever self-deception that stands between us and acknowledged ill bursts, bubblewise, and leaves the soul naked ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... opposite the flowers, the attention of all was attracted to the movements of a far different sort of bird. It was that one we have been speaking of. It was seated upon a tree, not far from the honeysuckles; but every now and then it would spring from its perch, dash forward, and after whirring about for some moments among the humming-birds fly back ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... produced by shaking a stiff piece of cloth." On the west coast of Africa the little black-weavers (Ploceus?) congregate in a small party on the bushes round a small open space, and sing and glide through the air with quivering wings, "which make a rapid whirring sound like a child's rattle." One bird after another thus performs for hours together, but only during the courting-season. At this season, and at no other time, the males of certain night-jars (Caprimulgus) make a strange ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... it lying upon me and pinning me down? Would there be another upheaval in a moment; more steely-blue stars and another flight, and then—the end? If so, I wished it would come quickly and not leave me in suspense, and, oh! if only the horrible whirring noise at my ear would only stop for a minute. My head ached as though it would burst. I opened my eyes, but could see nothing but the stalks of yellow grass in which ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... gray automobile squawked curt warning behind him and then swept past and on its way, kicking dust upon him from its whirring wheels. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... of the island. Presently he burst through some brushwood into a swampy bottom surrounded by low trees, and instantly a dozen large birds of the osprey kind rose flapping into the air like windmills rising. He was quite startled by the whirring and flapping, and not a little amazed at the appearance of the place. Here was a very charnel-house; so thick lay the shells, skeletons and loose bones of fish. Here too he found three terrapin killed ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... headquarters camp frequently received shots from the point of Lookout Mountain also, but fortunately no casualties resulted from this plunging fire, though, I am free to confess, at first our nerves were often upset by the whirring of twenty-pounder shells dropped inconsiderately into our camp at untimely hours ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... same thing and many other things for the past five minutes. Until the departure of the last guest she had kept an icy command of herself and shown an unruffled front to the world. She had even contrived to smile. But now, with the final automobile whirring homewards, she had thrown off the mask. The very furniture of Lord Marshmoreton's study seemed to shrink, seared by the flame of her wrath. As for Lord Marshmoreton himself, he looked ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... was a whirring and a whizzing, and hundreds of locusts flew over his head; they were followed by thousands, the swiftest of the mighty host. They thickened and thickened, till the air looked solid, and even that glaring sun was blackened by the rushing mass. Birds of ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality was shown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otomi Indians gave a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip on my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer, faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round, Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... There was a deep stillness in the house. Outside the tempest raged wildly. It seemed to Joan as if hours passed in that interval of heart-trembling; she was almost shocked when the old clock gave its long whirring warning and then struck only one. Her first look was to the fire. It wanted replenishing. Her next was at Denas. The girl was fast asleep. Her hands were across the open Bible, her face was dropped upon them. Joan touched ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... pearls, which still might be seen after the fog at early dawn. There was no sound except sometimes that of an invisible bird, singing in the upper air, or when a partridge, roused by approaching steps, started from the hollow, and rapidly whirring away directly before them was again startled into ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... a valley where rock ptarmigan rose on whirring wings from the ledges and muskegs. Ker—ker—ker was the cry they made. He threw stones at them, but could not hit them. He placed his pack on the ground and stalked them as a cat stalks a sparrow. The sharp rocks cut through his pants' legs till his knees left a trail of blood; ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... on the floor like the water from the rubber rollers when a washer-woman wrings out the saturated clothes. Squeezed dry of its luminous lava, the white-hot sponge is drawn with tongs to the waiting rollers—whirling anvils that beat it into the shape they will. Everywhere are hurrying men, whirring flywheels, moving levers of steam engines and the drum-like roar of the rolling machines, while here and there the fruits of this toil are seen as three or four fiery serpents shoot forth from different trains of rollers, and are carried away, wrought iron fit for bridging ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... billows of yellow wheat, the walls on walls of black-green corn, the stretches of emerald alfalfa set with its gems of amethyst bloom; orchard and meadow, grove and grassy upland, where cattle pasture; populous cities and churches and stately college halls; the whirring factory wheels, the dust of the mines, the black oil derrick and the huge reservoirs of natural gas, with the slender steel pathways of the great trains of traffic binding these together; and above all, the sheltered happy homes, where ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... behind, suburban Philadelphia passed, and the train entered the crowded heart of the city. They passed close to dark houses grimy with the accumulated smoke of many passing locomotives. Great factories loomed before the train, factories where girls looked up for a moment at the whirring cars and turned again to the grinding life of loom or machine. The sight disheartened Phoebe. Was life in the city like that for some girls? How dreadful to be shut up in a factory while outdoors the whole panorama of the seasons moved on! She would miss the fields and woods but she would make ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... cried, and, stooping, gathered up a dying thing, whose watchfulness was all over. The glass was broken; the case was open; it lay in his hand a mangled creature. Mary heard the rush of its departing life, as the wheels went whirring, and the ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... equal to a true understanding of these; for in a tropical jungle the birds and the frogs, the beasts and the insects are sending out their messages so swiftly one upon the other, that the senses fail of their mission and only chaos and a great confusion are carried to the brain. The whirring of invisible wings and the movement of the wind in the low branches become one and the same: it is an epic, told in some strange tongue, an epic filled to overflowing with tragedy, with poetry and mystery. The cloth of this drama is woven from many-colored ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... scream of hawk or eagle, the bitter cackling laugh of blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry—solitary notes, and unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring down the long waterway until the sound sank and was overtaken again by the river's ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... affect to be wing-broken and wounded, and yet have just strength to tumble along, until she has drawn you, fatigued, a safe distance from her threatened children and the young hopes of her heart; and then will she mount, whirring with glad strength, and away through the maze of trees you have not seen before, like a close-shot bullet, fly to her ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... reply, then looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes after ten. He laid his hand upon the throttle and pulled. There was a gasp of steam, a whirring and slipping of the drive wheels, and the engine plunged forward. Jawn fingered the lever with a lover's caress. He knew old "eleven," every foot of her, every tube, bolt, and strap. As they cleared the yards, he threw her wider and wider open until she was lunging ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... of bamboo and draperies and pampas grass—I know," nodded Bob. "Well, either she's asleep or she thinks it's fun to keep us on the mat. I'll try her again." He pressed the bell, and the sound of its whirring ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... succession. The male as well as the female is in white and is distinguishable by being somewhat smaller in size. On the newspaper the few males who have not found partners are executing wild dances, their wings whirring the while at a mad pace. When from time to time they cease dancing they haunt the holes in the paper through which the newly born moths emerge. When a female appears a male instantly rushes towards her, or rather ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... cane-fields came to us at night-time as we watched the shimmer of the fireflies. We sat so silently that the only thing to tell us that the wild duck sought his mate amidst the grass, was the swaying of the reed stems, or the rising of the teal with whirring wings. ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds. Indeed, I saw more of the latter here than I ever before saw in any one locality. Their squeaking and whirring were almost incessant. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... it was now quite dark; only the glow on the hearth cast a few feeble rays. The black cat purred. She took him in her lap and stroked him until sparks snapped in his fur. He purred louder and louder, like a spinning wheel—the wheel was whirring in her ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Christian, healthy sleep after it, why the "sma' hours" it will be. If you will do it, it is "none of her funerals," as the small boy remarked. Only she particularly requests you not to insult her by offering her your sympathy. Wait till you know what forty-eight mortal, wide-awake, staring, whirring, unutterable ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the flame in a long line down the length of the wall, licking upwards as it ran; and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of forms upon the top melted away into the air on the other side, and were gone with a great rush and whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the haunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken in the middle of the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... rolling stream Of red and yellow busses, till the town Turned to a golden suburb of the clouds. And, round that mighty bubble of St. Paul's, Over the up-turned faces of the street, An air-ship slowly sailed, with whirring fans, A voyager in the new-found realms of gold, A shadowy silken chrysalis whence should break What radiant ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... you shut off the current?" demanded the youth, as he prepared to pull his parent from the whirring machine. Then he hesitated, for he feared he, too, would be glued fast by the terrible current, and so be unable to help ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... of bells and whistles drowned our voices, and, amid the whirring of switch-bells, the hissing of steam, and the cries of 'Paris! All out!' our train ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass and flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back. Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... answering roar from all the Rebel boats. The air is full of indescribable noises. The water boils and bubbles around us. It is tossed up in columns and jets. There are sudden flashes overhead, explosions, and sulphurous clouds, and whirring of ragged pieces of iron. The uproar increases. The cannonade reverberates from the high bluff behind the city to the dark-green forest upon the Arkansas shore, and ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the waiting Jews in the courtyard. Perhaps it was work that gave them importance in their own eyes, and took away that dreadful degrading subserviency—degrading to us as much as to themselves. The whirring noise of the sewing-machines, the click of shears, the bent backs of the workers, and the big capable hands, formed by the accustomed work! The trade of every man could have been known by his hands! My ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... satisfied that my telegram would put some insomnia in Ninety-sixth Street when the great work closed for the night at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the protector of the household returned to rest those tired wheels that had been whirring fast in his head since 2 P. M., short-belted to the Smith dynamo ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... through the crowded street With whirring noise and throbbing beat, Exhaling odours ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... direction of the stables, came a roar of men's voices, a sound of bursting and crashing through the under-wood, a thundering of heavy feet, followed by a whirring of frightened birds into the air. Brooks leaned forward breathing hard, and tightening his newly moistened grip on ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... a door closed with a cushioned soft definiteness. The inside of the rocket suddenly seemed extraordinarily still. The silence was oppressive. It was dead. Then there came the whirring of very many electric ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... most difficult game to stalk. Dale shot two of them. The others began to run like ostriches, thudding over the ground, spreading their wings, and with that running start launched their heavy bodies into whirring flight. They flew low, at about the height of a man from the grass, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... hours resolve, and one by one are sped. The garden lieth empty. Overhead A nightjar rustles by, wing touching wing, And passes, uttering His hoarse and whirring note. The daylight birds long since are fled, Nor has the moon yet touched the brown ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Dr. Harford, and he started the machine to whirring. Everybody bent forward so as to miss nothing. But there was no need, for the familiar tones of Mrs. Caswell had been well recorded by the Edison invention and floated out in full and plain confirmation of the charges Dr. ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... they saw the fragile creation of cloth and bamboo and metal, which had seemed as secure as an albatross riding on the lap of a steady wind, dip far over, careen back in the other direction, and then the whirring noise that had grown with its flight ceased. It was no longer a thing of winged life, defying the law of gravity, but a thing dead, falling under the burden of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... under a leaning cliff over on the left the mulberry grove had planted itself, proclaiming the spring which the party were seeking. And thither the guide conducted them, careless of whistling partridges and lesser birds of brighter hues roused whirring ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... until a violent commotion and a whirring noise among the weights and ropes below him had quite subsided that this terrified Hay-maker became himself again. Nor was he startled without reason; for these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Drear and lonely our retreat, Speak a word and break the silence, Dearest little Mother, sweet! Has the moaning of the tempest Closed thine eyelids wearily? Has the spinning wheel's soft whirring Hummed a ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... and circle slowly over us, as if to ascertain whether we are dead or not. A small piece of the kopje jerked at them by the most energetic member of our party, usually assures them of the negative, and with a few flaps of their wings they go whirring on. Ugh! I forgot to mention for the edification of any of our lady friends that at night rats emerge from beneath the various rocks and sportively run over one's recumbent form. So, for guarding kopjes, no Amazons ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Bear tossed some partridge feathers to the wind as the hunters drew near her tree. A flock of partridges went whirring into the woods with a great noise, and ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts—first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting snowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling the blue heaven. But Burghersdorp cared nothing. "There is nothing for them," said a farmer, with cosy satisfaction; "the frost ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... was cutting the big meadow. He passed again and again amid whirring blades and sweet odours of grass, encompassing with narrowing circles the sacred centre of the field. Tom ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... Francesca and Salemina following by the footpath and meeting us on the shore. It is all so enchantingly fresh and green on one of these rare bright days: the trig lass bleaching her 'claes' on the grass by the burn near the little stone bridge; the wild partridges whirring about in pairs; the farm-boy seated on the clean straw in the bottom of his cart, and cracking his whip in mere wanton joy at the sunshine; the pretty cottages; and the gardens with rows of currant and gooseberry bushes hanging thick with fruit that suggests jam and tart in every ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... whirring up and down Stoney Island Avenue when Sommers left the cottage, but he did not think to stop one. Instead, he walked on heedlessly, mechanically, toward the city. Frequently he stumbled and with difficulty saved himself from falling over the dislocated planks of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of the cricket, and drawing the feeler from his pocket, thrust it into the fire. And immediately there was a whirring noise in the air, and a great flight of crickets alighted beside him, and amongst them the cricket whose life ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... while they were speaking, back came Mr. and Mrs. Robin, whirring through the green shadows of the apple tree; and thereupon all the five little red mouths flew open, and the birds put ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... must make the land!" But it took a stupendous effort. His strokes became unequal, some of them feeble and ineffective; his muscles ached with the strain; now and then a strange whirring and dizziness in his head caused him to wonder dimly whether he were above or below water. He could no longer swim with closed lips, but constantly threw his head back with the gasp that marks ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... dream-state, experienced in quite a new way the magic of her Night-Mood. He found it more difficult than ever to realize as separate entities the little things that moved about through the upper surface of her darkness. Wings of silver, powerfully whirring, swept his soul onwards to ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... conceit. All subjects that bring up home associations are pictorially told in what, as to the rule, is the best of engraving. The old water-wheel is there, making music in the village glen; the limpid stream winding near the farmhouse; the spinning-wheel, "merrily, noisily, cheerily whirring;" the baby of the home saying her evening prayer, and John asleep beneath the summer boughs. Everything that clusters about the fireside, breathes in farewells, sings in marriage and throbs in love, finds ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... I sank under the weight of my prolonged nervous excitement. The hollow whirring in my head made itself felt anew. I stared straight ahead, kept my eyes fixed, and gazed at the chemist's under the sign of the elephant. Hunger was waging a fierce battle in me at this moment, and I was suffering greatly. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... of a dark brown colour, marked with a white patch on the wings, were seen, and some specimens shot. They made a whirring sound in flight, like the partridge, and appeared to haunt the rocks; a habit which all subsequent ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... as time rolls by, comes that final week; period of mania, of abandon; and in the mere sorcerous passage of a pair of whirring wings, Dr. Jekyll, the exemplary, is no more. In his place, wearing his shoes, audaciously signing his name even to checks, is that other being, Hyde: one absolutely the reverse of the reputable Jekyll; repudiating ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... busily working, and girls and boys of all sizes, and one heard the sound of sharp knives ripping the fish, and the whirring of grindstones, and the flopping of offal in the water. These people were clad in ancient oilskins, stiff and evil with blood and slime, but they lifted gruesome hands to their forelocks as Miss Jelliffe went by and she did her best to ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... was hot, hot as the breaths of a thousand belching furnaces. A white, burning glare had spread itself from horizon to horizon, and the earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From every corner of this parched wilderness came an ominous whirring, like the last wheezing gasp of an alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing orchestration was nothing more or less than millions of grasshoppers rasping legs and wings together in hoarse appreciation of the heat and glare; ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... on into the next room, where Jean became so fascinated by the whirring wheels and the men whose steady hands guided them that it was with difficulty she could be persuaded to leave and ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... of artillery reverberating through the surrounding hills; the constant ping; pinging and singing of rifle bullets; the rattling discharge of platoon firing; the whirring of heavy shot and shell through the air above the ranks and the bursting every now and then of some huge bomb in their midst, knocking down the men like ninepins and sending up a pyramid of dust and stones, mingled with particles of their arms and clothing, as well as fragments of the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly, Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air! No guardian sylph, in golden panoply, Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear. Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings, Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore. Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful laram flings! —I wake in horror, and ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... smote deep with Sacnoth, and Thok tumbled into the abyss, screaming, and his limbs made a whirring in the darkness as he fell, and he fell till his scream sounded no louder than a whistle and then could be heard no more. Once or twice Leothric saw a star blink for an instant and reappear again, and ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... certainly spoke with a human tongue, but in no sort of human accent. It seemed to end in a tin trumpet and to be joined by wires to a smaller box on the floor—so far, at least, as he could judge by touch. And the voice, very hard and whirring, came out of the trumpet. Kim rubbed his nose and grew furious, thinking, as ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... Ambrose's owl, a jackdaw, a squirrel, and a wonderfully large family of white mice. Besides those captives there were bats which lived free but retired lives high up in the rafters, flapping and whirring about when dusk came on. Pigeons also flew in and out, and pecked at the various morsels of food left about on the ground, so that the barn was a thickly-peopled place, with plenty of noise and flutter, and much coming and going through ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... the motor roused her from her musings. There was a ripping, grinding noise and she could see the outline of the car move, sink back, and then lurch forward again. There was another whirring and grinding and then Claybrook's triumphant shout. She rose to her feet and walked over to him. They had succeeded. The car was standing, all four wheels on the hard, level surface, the engine ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... of the motor, whirring skilfully among the lanes, was heard at six, and shortly after Madame von Marwitz's return Mrs. Talcott knocked ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... A shady freshness, chafers whirring, A little piping of leaf-hid birds; A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring, A cloud to the eastward snowy ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... back the little catch that held the pump from working. There was a whirring sound as the wheels spun around, and then the little rubber hose on the pump of the engine ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... A whirring noise behind them brought the two to a halt. They turned to discover a pre-war Chevy choking its way along the road. The aliens edged their way to a gulley along the side of the road. They were confident of a friendly ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg
... caution, I noticed, in that end of the hut which stood over the stream, a gap, or window hole. The sound issued through this like the whirring of a dozen looms. "He must be an astonishing fellow," thought I, "that can snore in this fashion. I'll have a peep before I wake him." I waded down till I stood under the sill, put both hands upon it, and pulling myself up quiet ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... hurtel'd e'er so high, With e'en a giant's sinewy strength, In Time's untraced eternity Goes but a pigmy length; Nay, whirring from the tortured string, With all its pomp of hurried flight, 'T is by the skylark's little wing Outmeasured ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... son; but as he was afraid of descending among them, he made a noose with a long piece of rattan, lowered it gently, and slipping it over one of them, drew her up into the tree. She cried out, and they all disappeared with a whirring noise. The girl he caught was very young, and she cried sadly because she had no clothes on; so he rolled her in a chawat (long sash), and immediately heard the gongs at his own house, which he had ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... way set the wheel a-flying, Set it whirring, set it flying. Work the treadle with a will. While an even thread you're plying, Never let your wheel ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... holes in the wall, as in cities, but grand, big, airy beds, adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house. The other end was my father's workshop, filled with five or six "stocking-frames," whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries. The "closet" was a very small apartment betwixt the other two, having room only ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... divining the league of mutual defence between them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain. James had his son to support him! Why should he not send ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... singular coincidence, the words were hardly out of his mouth when we heard the familiar warning, the whirring, never-to-be-forgotten sound of the beast known to the Indians as "death ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... see so many nations assembled and represented on one spot of British ground. In short, it is one great theatre, with thousands of performers, each playing his own part. England is there, with her mighty engines toiling and whirring, indefatigable in her enterprises to shorten labour. India spreads her glitter and paint. France, refined and fastidious, is there every day, giving the last touch to her picturesque group; and the other countries, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... "Borram, borram, borram!" he said, and instantly the rush was a beautiful white horse. Every one of his men did the same. Each one took one of the rushes and sat astride of it and said, "Borram, borram, borram!" and every one of the rushes grew into a horse. There was a little whirring sound, like that of a swarm of bees, and they ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... through the open window comes the fragrance of the wild-brier and the mock-orange. The birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit across the window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine; while the murmur of the bee, the cooing of doves from the eaves, and the whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to meet ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... sat down outside the door of her room to wait. It was a long hour they passed there. Rankin sat silent, holding on his knee little Ariadne, who amused herself quietly with his watch and the leather strap that held it. He took the back off, and let her see the little wheel whirring back and forth. His eyes never left the child's serious, rosy face. Once or twice he laid his large, work-roughened hand gently on her ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the great morass lay in white and sinister tangle under the wild spring moon, when the dark and dreadful swamps were rife with horrible croaks and snaps, the whirring of the wings of waterfowl or the noise of a disturbed puff adder, Philip stretched himself upon the seat of the music-machine and slept through the twilight and the early evening. When the camp ahead, glimmering brightly through the live oaks, was silent, Philip ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... and one shot rang out after another quickly. There was a mad whirring and fluttering from the ruffed grouse. Two dropped like lead, while two others flew around in a circle, badly wounded. Then the boys discharged their guns again, and wounded two more birds. As the game came down they rushed in and wrung the ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... from the time when he first caught sight of it that the aeroplane came perpendicularly above his head, the whirring ceased, and the machine descended with graceful swoop upon the well-cropt turf within fifty yards of the spot where the two golfers stood. As soon as it alighted, Mr. McMurtrie handed his sticks to the caddie, and, as one released from a spell, hurried to meet the man who had just stepped ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... westlin winds and slaught'ring guns Bring Autumn's pleasant weather; The moorcock springs on whirring wings Amang the blooming heather: Now waving grain, wide o'er the plain, Delights the weary farmer; And the moon shines bright, when I rove at night, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... human splendor scintillated, small as he was, sat in the pose and apparel that the world knows through pictures, and which pigment can never well render any more than it can catch the power of a sunset or an American autumn. The marble-shops were very pleasant places. A whirring sound lulled the senses into dreamy receptiveness, as the stone wheel heavily turned with soft swiftness, giving the impression that here hard matter was controlled to a nicety by airy forces; and a fragrance floated from the wet marble lather, while the polishing of our newly picked up mementos ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... was still; the spring of the river was loud upon it, owls hooted and chuckled, now and then a fox in the thickets barked. There are many sounds in the open country at night; sounds of whirring pinions, of stealthy feet, of shrill, lone cries, of breaking twigs, of breaking ferns, of little rivulets unheard by day, of timid creatures taking courage in the dark. But to these sounds she was used; she could give a name to every one of them. She heard now what was unfamiliar ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... climbing the wall of the canyon, for he had slain too many of the reptiles in his distant home not to understand their nature. Whirlwind, like all of his kind, had a mortal dread of every species of serpents, and he showed his timidity the moment the locust-like whirring sounded from the bush at the side of the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... hear the great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring, And every blow of the great convulsive drums, Strikes ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... so an ominous whirring sound came from the apparatus in front of the house and a sudden ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... those whistling heralds of death, how he waited for the approach of those whirring missiles to whom the transportation of a man to another world in a moment is nothing! They knew him well already ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... sings; The whistling ploughman stalks afield; and, hark! Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings; Through rustling corn the hare astonish'd springs; Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; Deep mourns the turtle in sequester'd bower, And shrill lark carols ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... It made a whirring sound in the confined space of the tiny control room. Outside, the night ...
— Turnover Point • Alfred Coppel
... though he seldom asked a question or ventured upon a remark. Indeed, some of the hands thought "Darcy's boy wasn't over-bright." Yet here he laid the foundation of the problem that was to vex and puzzle his soul in after-years. Here was the great, whirring machinery, belts, bands, spindles, looms, and oftentimes a stupid and stolid enough workman at one end, grinding out luxury and elegance for David Lawrence, Esq.; that his family might tread on Wilton and Axminster, dine from silver and crystal, dress in silks ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... reached the truck there was a whirring in the air and hot pain ripped into his back, throwing him to the ground. He looked around as Krannon dragged him through the door, and saw the metal shaft of a crossbow bolt sticking out of ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... the wood frame had set ripples moving. We watched it twinkle for a little while, and the jailer raised the candle from the water, and dropped down a stone from some he kept there for that purpose. This stone struck the wall half-way down, and went from side to side, crashing and whirring till it met the water with a booming plunge; and there rose a groan and moan from the eddies, like those dreadful sounds of the surge that I heard on lonely nights in the sea-caverns underneath our hiding-place in Purbeck. The jailer looked at me then for the first time, and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... she get? What did she do with her evenings and her Sundays? Was she bored? Was she miserable or exultant? Had she acquaintances, external interests; or did she immerse herself completely, inclusively, in the huge, smoking, whirring, foul, perilous hell which she had described? The contemplation of the horror of the hell gave him—and her, too, he thought—a curious feeling which was not unpleasurable. It had savour. He would not, however, inquire from her concerning details. He preferred, on reflection, to keep the details ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... in the grass. He had slept so long that now he could not sleep, and when his tears would come no more, he sat up and watched the night through till the dawn grayed the blue-black sky. The noises of the noiseless woods made themselves heard: the cry of a night hawk, the hooting of an owl, the whirring note of the whip-poor-will; the long, plunging down-rush of a dead branch breaking the boughs below it; even the snapping of twigs as if under the pressure of stealthy feet. These sounds, the most delicate of the sounds he heard, shook him most with fear and hope, and then with despair. ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... a sportsman, I had no notion what was up. "What's the time of day, Sir HENRY?" I ventured to whisper. Sir HENRY never looked at me, but took out his massive gold Winchester repeater and consulted it in a low voice. "Four thirty," I heard him say, "they are about due." Suddenly there was a whirring noise in the distance. "Duck, duck!" shouted Sir HENRY, now thoroughly aroused. I immediately did so, ducked right down in fact, for I did not know what might be coming, and I am a very timid man. At that moment I heard a joint report from Sir HENRY and COODENT. It gave on the whole a very ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... the brothers came, flapping and whirring like wild ducks, and all night they were Princes, but in the morning off they flew again, and were wild ducks ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... hums past, a brilliant butterfly flashes across the path, or a humming-bird hangs in the air over a flower like, as St. Pierre says, an emerald set in coral, but "how weak it is to say that that exquisite little being, whirring and fluttering in the air, has a head of ruby, a throat of emerald, and wings of sapphire, as if any triumph of the jeweller's art could ever vie with that sparkling epitome of life ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the grind of a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine. As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side, and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a small car. She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving as he turned the gas on full, felt ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... air is alive with the whirring of motors. The machines are coming back and all converging to one point. They vol-plane to the earth and gracefully settle down within a short distance of each other at the rendezvous. The pilots collect and each ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... the corner there, ran on to the garage, jumped out and followed me in. Bill, selling some used tires to a customer in the office, nodded and let us go past to where my machine stood. We heard voices back in the repair shop and a hum of swift whirring shafts and pulleys. Worth kept with me. It embarrassed me—made me nervous. It was as though he had some notion of my purpose there. Hughes, at his lathe, caught sight of us ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... into our saddles the humming-birds were whirring round the tree-tops; the Qu'est-ce qu'il dits inquiring the subject of our talk. The black vultures sat about looking on in silence, hoping that something to their advantage might be dropped or left behind— possibly that one of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... dry beneath her, in one place Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and stirring. But never the motion has a human face Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... life; the midges dancing over the water in the still sunshine, and the trout jumping for them—oh, it's the bonny, bonny place. You would think so too. You would like it, tramping knee-deep in the heather, to see the moorcock rise whirring at your feet; you would like to set sail with the fisher folk after the silver herring. It would make you feel good to see the calm faces of the shepherds, the peace in the eyes of the women. Ay, that was the best of it all, the Rest of it, the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... stirring sort of place," he added, as he watched motors, bicycles, and gharries whirring past ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... a little way off the road, and a broad beam of light from an open window proved of assistance as he crossed the broken and uneven ground. While he groped for the bell handle inside the dark porch he could hear, close at hand, a purring and whirring sound of wheels that he recognized as the unmistakable noise made by a carpenter's lathe. As soon as he rang the bell the lathe stopped working, and next moment the Baptist pastor came ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... birds depend for food upon seeds and bugs or worms they scratch out of the ground. Up in the Sierra sugar-pines and fir-woods lives the largest of these "scratchers," the brown grouse. He is a shy creature, rising out of his feeding-ground with a great whirring of wings and out of sight before the hunter can fire at him. His peculiar cry, or "drumming," as it is called, sounds through the woods like tapping hard on a hollow log. His equally shy neighbor is the mountain-quail, while through the farming lands and all along the ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... scorcher who tears past beautiful bits of landscape, his eyes fixed on the dusty path spurned by his whirring wheel, or like the goggled maniac who steers an automobile, I now find that I have played hundreds of times over this course without once ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... throats and splashed with scarlet on their wings, greeted them at the foot of the mountain among the reeds which grew along the stream they were following. Deer broke from the willow copse and bounded away, while grouse rose on whirring wings from under the horses' hoofs as they emerged upon the plain where the wild cry of the curlew rang clear and sharp on the morning. They were free and breathed deep of the spirit of freedom; listened to the old primeval song of nature's myriad voices; gazed long upon the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams, Peace, God of Peace! peace, peace in all our homes, And peace in ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... on for some minutes, obviously talking himself down and trying to prevent me from thinking. But the grim moment came at last, and it was like the empty gap of time when you are waiting for the whirring of the clock that is to tell the end of the old year and the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... our whirring screw. They ran out of the houses—they gathered in from the fields, swift-running light figures, crowds of them. We stared and stared until it was almost too late to catch the levers, sweep off and rise again; and then we held our peace ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... penetration" can fathom the life, for instance, of yonder mysterious, almost voiceless, Humming-Bird, smallest of feathery things, and loneliest, whirring among birds, insect-like, and among insects, bird-like, his path untraceable, his home unseen? An image of airy motion, yet it sometimes seems as if there were nothing joyous in him. He seems like some exiled pigmy prince, banished, but still regal, and doomed to wings. Did gems turn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... ratchet that held it, the old oaken bucket began its unimpeded descent. Slowly at first, gaining momentum with each revolution of the windlass, down it fell, bumping against the sides of the well, chain clanging and windlass whirring. It struck the bottom with a splash that re-echoed, followed by a woman's scream so piercing that the old ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... business with that firm, and with his father before him. A-1 house! S-ay, I should worry that he ain't a Sunday-school boy. Show me the one that is. Your old man in his young days wasn't such a low flier, neither, if anybody should ask you." He made a whirring noise in his throat at that, pinching her cold cheek. She was walking rapidly now toward the house. "Well, since our daughter goes out riding in a six-thousand-dollar car, to show that we're sports, lets her father and mother take themselves out for a ride in ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... rustling shade of the maples. "I'm sure I shall soon get well here. Mrs. Barry was so kind to me—I shall never forget her kindness—but the house is so close to the factory, and there was such a whirring of wheels all the time, it seemed to get into my head and make me wild with nervousness. I'm so weak that sounds like that worry me. But it is so still and green and peaceful here. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... we were hard at work sending shots at the Spanish gunboat, which was in lively action a short distance away, we became aware of a peculiar whirring noise—a sound like the angry humming of a swarm of hornets. It would rise and fall in volume, then break off short with a sharp crash. Suddenly, while glancing through the port, I saw something strike the surface, sending up a great spurt of water. It was followed by a dull, muffled report which ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday |
