"Indistinctly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the door of the cell now—the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more—even to see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... with the nail shortly after. I have often made similar observations. We may certainly conclude that the wasp saw something of the size of a fly, but without distinguishing the details; therefore she saw it indistinctly. Evidently a wasp does not only perceive motion; she also distinguishes the size of objects. When I put dead flies on a table to be carried off by another wasp, she took them, one after another, as well as spiders and other insects of but little different size placed by their ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... waist and dripping with water. The prospect was not inviting, but we nobly marched out with the lantern and an umbrella. As we entered the enclosure where the stable stands, or rather stood, we became aware of two large white objects showing indistinctly through the darkness. A little nearer and our two horses were looking us in the face. They had eaten the sides and ends of their house quite away. They must have thought it odd to be housed in an edible stable.[44] When we entered they received us with every sign of welcome, but ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and sometimes spelt erroneously. Boswell. Lumisden is mentioned in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... within the room. In a panic, Israel fled up the dark stairs, and near the top, in his eagerness, stumbled and fell back to the last step with a rolling din, which, reverberated by the arch overhead, smote through and through the wall, dying away at last indistinctly, like low muffled thunder among the clefts of deep hills. When raising himself instantly, not seriously bruised by his fall, Israel instantly listened, the echoing sounds of his descent were mingled with added shrieks ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... work on the Tower of Babel. The circus band confined itself mostly to one tune; and as it went all day long, and late into the night, we got to know it quite well; at least, the bass notes of it, for the lighter tones came to us indistinctly. You know that blurt, blurt, thump, thump, dissolute sort of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... gale at ENE and a heavy swell from the SW drove the vessel fast to the southward and westward; and on the 11th, the gale having moderated, they stretched in for the land, a large extent of which was indistinctly visible through a light haze that hung about the horizon. At noon the latitude was 41 degrees 13 minutes, and the longitude 148 degrees 58 minutes. With a fresh breeze at NNE they bore away along the shore, which trends to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... her under the impulse of her hand until they stood at the gaping window. The murmur, which he had heard indistinctly a moment before, had grown to a roar of voices. The mob, on its return eastward along the Rue St. Honore, was nearing the house. He stood, his arm supporting her, and they waited, a little within the window. Suddenly he stooped, his face hardly less white than hers: their ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... was not sorry to have it interrupted by a call upon his attention in the appearance of two figures below, looming dim and ghostlike in the fog. Just beneath his window, they paused in their walk, and their voices came up to him first indistinctly, then with more and more clearness. The tones Flint recognized at once as belonging to Tilly Marsden and to Leonard Davitt, the young fisherman whose scarlet shirt was often to be seen on the clamming grounds, and whose rich baritone voice came ringing over ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... son) had lived much abroad, on purpose to avoid his parent; and when at length he returned to England, it was to find him married again to a young wife, who was supposed to suffer cruelly and to loathe her yoke. Because of this marriage (as the dreamer indistinctly understood) it was desirable for father and son to have a meeting; and yet both being proud and both angry, neither would condescend upon a visit. Meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy country by the sea; and there they quarrelled, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this land and the father of the seven sons is variously and indistinctly named. One legend calls him the White Serpent of the Clouds, or the White Cloud Twin, Iztac Mixcoatl.[1] Whoever he was we can hardly mistake the mountain in which or upon which he dwelt. Colhuacan means the bent or curved mountain. It is none other than the Hill of Heaven, curving ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... By the antinomy of their development labor and capital have been continually led back to equality at the same time as to subordination, to solidarity as well as to dependence; one was the agent, the other the stimulator and guardian of the common wealth. This indication has been indistinctly seen by the theorists of the feudal system; Christianity came in time to cement the compact; and it is still the sentiment of this misunderstood and broken, but in itself innocent and legitimate, organization which causes regrets among us and sustains the hope of a party. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... shapeless chunk of agricultural midland between the Great Western and the North Western railways. I was going to "take hold" at last, the Kinghamstead Division was my appointed handle. I was to find my place in the rather indistinctly sketched constructions that were implicit in the minds of all our circle. The precise place I had to fill and the precise functions I had to discharge were not as yet very clear, but all that, we felt sure, would become ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... reached the door a strange feeling seemed to come over me that I was not alone in that room. I fumbled for the electric light switch, but in my nervousness could not find it. There was just enough light in the room to make out objects indistinctly. I thought I heard a low, moaning sound from an old Flemish copper ewer near me. I had heard that it was supposed to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... parts Cream Buff, lined with black and giving a pale olivaceous appearance; lateral line near (16'd) Light Ochraceous-Buff; postauricular patches Cream Buff; subauricular patches and underparts white; tail indistinctly bicolor, dusky above, whitish below. Skull: Size medium for species (see Table 1); braincase and auditory bullae moderately inflated; interorbital region narrow; mastoidal ...
— Geographic Distribution of the Pocket Mouse, Perognathus fasciatus • J. Knox Jones, Jr.
... one of the public places. D'Entragues was a bold and skilful soldier, with a great desire to distinguish himself. He wished to review this regiment, and had commenced business before the dawn. While the light was still uncertain and feeble, and his battalions were under arms, he indistinctly perceived infantry troops forming at the end of the street, in front of him. He knew by the order's given on the previous evening that no other review was to take place except his own. He immediately feared, therefore, some surprise, marched at once ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... whom, as the youngest, and amiable as he was gentle, he was most fondly loved. His father and sister, I believe, were never made acquainted with the true cause of his death. A letter of Henry's relating, though indistinctly, for evident reasons, to the sad occurrence, will be placed before the reader. Harriet, as I have said, the only sister (who married a Dr. Leath, a physician in the army, who resides still at Bayswater) died not very long ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... slopes in fair perspective; its northern shore, from Nettlestone Point to Egypt, bounding the view. On Lucy's right lay the entrance to Southampton Water, with the further shore, about Stone Point and the mouth of the Beaulieu River, indistinctly seen through the quivering golden haze; whilst on the left, across the water, Southsea Castle stood boldly forward upon its low projecting point, a watchful sentinel over the magnificent anchorage of Spithead. Inland from the castle lay the little straggling ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... to as marking the south-east angle of the lake, I again saw; but so indistinctly, though the atmosphere was very clear, that I imagined it to be at least forty miles distant. It is due east of my station on Observatory Hill. I further draw my conclusions from the fact, that all the hills on the country ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not until the last, that he expressed the wish; when he could only put his hand upon it, and very indistinctly say to me "your mother." A moment before, I thought him wandering in his mind, as he had been for many hours—I think he had no consciousness of pain in his short illness—when I saw him turn himself in his bed ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... temperature continued to rise after the blow and now, at -4 deg., it seems quite warm. The sun has only shown very indistinctly all the afternoon, although brighter now. Clouds are still drifting over from the east. The marching is growing terribly monotonous, but one cannot grumble as long as the distance can be kept up. It ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... by this proof of kindness, stammered his thanks indistinctly. He heard the young man speaking to him and telling him how richly he deserved such a present, but he paid no attention to the words; he was endeavoring to bring himself to the degree of audacity requisite to fulfil his master's ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... unheard in the noise of one's own footsteps; and one passed the quarters in which comrades were sleeping, and the stables, whose dimly-lighted windows showed small squares in the night, and one could indistinctly hear the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... cannot belong two modes of being, and hence obscuration and light cannot abide in it together.—Let us then say that Brahman, which is homogeneous being, intelligence, bliss, has its nature obscured by avidya, and hence is seen indistinctly as it were.—But how, we ask, are we to conceive the distinctness or indistinctness of that whose nature is pure light? When an object of light which has parts and distinguishing attributes appears ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... hastily left the table, muttering indistinctly, and Dick followed her. Willie slipped from his chair, crawled under the table, and by stealthily sticking a pin into Uncle Israel's ankle, produced a violent disturbance, during which the pain-killer was badly spilled. When the air finally cleared, there ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... have said of New England must not, however, be applied indistinctly to the whole Union; as we advance towards the West or the South, the instruction of the people diminishes. In the States which are adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico, a certain number of individuals may be found, as in our ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the "Daily Review: in pencil during the break for luncheon; but, as time wore on, the heated atmosphere of the place, which was crammed to suffocation, became intolerable to her. She grew whiter and whiter, began to hear the voices indistinctly, and to feel as if her arms did not belong to her. It would never do to faint in court, and vexed as she was to leave, she took the first opportunity of speaking to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... to be very loving, but I did not appreciate her advances, being altogether unaccustomed to such things. The champagne was brought, and I was persuaded to drink freely of it. The consequence was that I soon became helplessly intoxicated. I can indistinctly remember the dancing lights, the popping of champagne corks—the noise, the confusion, the thrumming of a piano, and the boisterous laughter—and then I fell into a ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... sometimes imposed without formality, and in the heat of the moment, in the face of their enemy. Under these circumstances the curse is usually muttered indistinctly, and seems then to work upon the victim all the more powerfully. The words used are similar to those of the curse written ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the ground, his back bending and straightening spasmodically. Then he looked through the pillars of the trees and net-work of creeper stems, to where in the dim grey shadow the blue-clad body of the Chinaman was still indistinctly visible. He thought of the little dashes in the corner of the plan, and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... QUINQUE-CARINATUS, t. 3. f. 3.—Carapace smooth, rather convex, and with three keels above; the beak, longly produced, ending in a spine, simple on the side and produced into a keel on each side behind; the central caudal lobe rather narrow, indistinctly divided in half, and like the other lobes flexile at the end, the lateral lobes with a central keel ending a slight spine; the hands elongated, compressed, smooth, with a thickened, toothed, inner margin, which is ciliated above; ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... slope; mighty trees also adorn it, giant elms, the nearest of which, when the sun is nigh its meridian, fling a broad shadow upon the face of the pool; through yon vista you catch a glimpse of the ancient brick of an old English hall. It has a stately look, that old building, indistinctly seen, as it is, among those umbrageous trees; you might almost suppose it an earl's home; and such it was, or rather upon its site stood an earl's home, in days of old, for there some old Kemp, some Sigurd, or Thorkild, roaming ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... boy's voice calling newspapers is heard faintly in the distance; then the hoarse tones of a man shouting indistinctly; then a chorus of men and boys comes nearer and nearer calling of some calamity. Dartrey hurries out through the outer door. Gilruth stands ashamed. He does not want to leave his friend in bad blood. He would like to put things ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... A few steps took him to the doorway. The chamber before him was darker than the corridor, so that he could just indistinctly make out the objects in the room. He saw a sleeping dais near the center, with a darker blotch of something lying on the marble floor beside it. He moved a step farther into the doorway and the scabbard of his sword scraped against the stone frame. To his ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the voyage is very indistinctly described. From the lat. of 27 deg.S. where Cabral is said to have fallen in with the eastern coast of Africa, to Sofala, in lat. 19 deg.S. the coast stretches out nearly five degrees to the east, to Capes Corientes and St Sebastian, with many rivers, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... peace, but squeezed the glass in his hand so powerfully that it broke with a snap and sent the liquor spurting into his eyes. One would have said that with the wine fire was poured into his soul; so did his face flame, so did his eye blaze. He struggled to speak; the first word he ground indistinctly in his mouth, until it flew forth ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... of yucca trees presents a grotesque appearance. If indistinctly viewed in the hazy distance they are easily mistaken for the plumed topknots of a band of prowling Apaches, particularly if the imagination is active with the fear of ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... the word, there was none. Meantime the "lubras" (native women) seated on the ground in one mass, kept up a monotonous chant, varying their cadences with the beat of tom-toms. The night was dark, and the figures were indistinctly seen. Soon the vast crowd becoming impatient, burst through the barriers, and scattered the burning brands. A great scene of confusion ensued, and the performance came abruptly to an end. One of the blacks remarked, not without ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... the part of those who impose them. Systems, which IN FACT, although not in words, claim infallibility, by requiring implicit and absolute submission, must have had a direct tendency to hoodwink and blind the people; nor can we be surprised, that when their eyes were first opened, they saw indistinctly; or, to use a scripture phrase, 'men as trees walking.' They utterly failed in preparing the mind to receive divine truth, or in furnishing an antidote to extravagant speculations ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... necessity to ordinary practical men, and not only a luxury of the emotional and leisured classes. In the dim light and the baffling glare of the clerestory windows he could discern the opposite worshippers indistinctly only, but he saw that Sue was among them. He had not long discovered the exact seat that she occupied when the chanting of the 119th Psalm in which the choir was engaged reached its second part, In quo corriget, the organ ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... transference of property from the dead to the living. Dion Cassius, { Lib. 55. See also Burman. de Vectigalibus Pop. Rom. cap. xi. and Bouchaud de l'impot du vingtieme sur les successions.} the author who writes concerning it the least indistinctly, says, that it was imposed upon all successions, legacies and donations, in case of death, except upon those to the nearest relations, and to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... hallucinations, when wide awake. In this way, at least, we can most nearly attain to understanding their experiences. To a relatively small proportion of people, in wakeful existence, experiences occur with distinctness, which to a large proportion of persons occur but indistinctly, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the most fitful spirits as the preparations advanced toward their completion. He paced the piazzas for hours together, with hurried, excited steps, pausing often and muttering indistinctly ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... gradually withdrawn, like a transparent veil of light from the landscape. Over the pure cloudless sky was the glow of the last light. In the distance and beyond the Zab, Keshaf, another venerable ruin, rose indistinctly into the evening mist. Still more distant, and still more indistinct, was a solitary hill overlooking the ancient city of Arbela. The Kurdish mountains, whose snowy summits cherished the dying sunbeams, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the neighborhood picture theater a young girl, sixteen or seventeen years of age, emerged from the door. In the strong light of the lobby he saw her face plainly—a rather pretty face—and he remembered, indistinctly, of having met her, seen her somewhere before. He saw that she recognized him with a startled expression and unconsciously he slowed his steps. The girl hurried to his side and put her hand ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... women dashing along in a wagon, and with a child, rattling pretty speedily down hill;—people looking at us from the open doors and windows;—the children staring from the wayside;—the mowers stopping, for a moment, the sway of their scythes;—the matron of a family, indistinctly seen at some distance within the house, her head and shoulders appearing through the window, drawing her handkerchief over her bosom, which had been uncovered to give the baby its breakfast,—the said baby, or its immediate predecessor, sitting at the door, turning round to creep away on all fours;—a ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... uncommon artist must be in the throes of a bewildering nightmare in order to be blind to all this, and like a ghost, diffidently and in a quavering voice, he goes on repeating beautiful words which he declares descend to him from higher spheres, but whose sound he can hear only very indistinctly. The artist who happens to be moulded according to the modern pattern, however, regards the dreamy gropings and hesitating speech of his nobler colleague with contempt, and leads forth the whole brawling mob of assembled passions on a leash in order to let them loose ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... somewhere far off flamed a number of lamps, as if in the air and unsupported. Looking more attentively, he saw standing closely together between the entrance and the lamps a forest of columns, the tops of which were lost in darkness. At a distance, perhaps two hundred yards from him, he saw indistinctly the gigantic legs of a sitting goddess with her hands resting on her knees, from which the lamplight ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... indignation. "Is it of stealing that bank-note of Galloway's that you presume to accuse my brother?" he asked, speaking indistinctly ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... posterity, it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch—it must sweep a parabola—which, therefore, rises high above the heads of those next to him, and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly, like bees swarming in the upper air before they settle on the spot fit ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... a stranger came, he trounced him first, and cemented the friendship afterward. He liked hard knocks, give and take. He liked the school because there was the long football season in the autumn, with the joy of battling, with every sinew of the body alert and the humming of cheers indistinctly heard, as he rammed through the yielding line. Then the spring meant long hours of romping over the smooth diamond, cutting down impossible hits, guarding first base like a bull-dog, pulling down the high ones, smothering the wild throws that came ripping along the ground, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... three hundred yards when suddenly the dogs appeared on the side of the cliff near the summit. Just in front of them was a bounding gray form. The mist closed in and we lost both dogs and animals but ten minutes later a blessed gust of wind drifted the fog away and the goral was indistinctly visible with its back to a rock ledge facing the dogs. The big red leader of the pack now and then dashed in for a nip at the animal's throat but was kept at bay by its vicious lunges and ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Molly, however, did it, though she only said the words "Lady Holle, Lady Holle!" aloud and distinctly; the rest she muttered so indistinctly that Anthony felt convinced she had not really said anything; and yet she looked as bold and saucy as possible—as saucy as when she sometimes came round him with other little girls in the garden, and all wanted to kiss him because he did not like to be kissed and tried to keep them off; and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... interesting fact that she, being unable to speak, when asleep used the finger alphabet. This she did sometimes in a very confused manner, the irregularity of her finger-signs corresponding with that defective articulation which persons give utterance to, when they murmur and mutter indistinctly their dream-impressions. It was, be it observed, when she was disturbed in her sleep that she ran over her finger alphabet confusedly, like one who, playing on a stringed instrument, has not the attention sufficiently ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... linen sheets protected the balcony and the boxes. The orchestra was covered with a huge dust-cloth, which, being turned back at the edges, left room for a few human figures, indistinctly seen in the gloom: actors, scene-shifters, costumiers, friends of the manager, mothers and lovers and actresses. Here and there shone a pair of eyes from the black recesses ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... Tartar Wall, towards the Ch'ien Men Gate, yellow dots could be indistinctly seen. These were the Americans, in their slouch hats and khaki suits, lying on the ground and facing the enemy's fire in the other direction. Held in check by the Germans and Americans in two feeble posts of a few men each, the Chinese commanders cannot get their men along the Tartar Wall, and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Billiard watched them as they marched their hapless prisoner back to town, and the leader's words kept ringing in his ears, "Be a man and face the music!" Suddenly a new thought flashed through his brain. Why had he not followed them? It wasn't too late yet. He could still see their forms indistinctly moving across the desert, and by following their lead, would sooner or later reach Silver Bow himself. Stepping out from the clump of Spanish bayonets which had formed his retreat, he set out on a dog-trot in the direction the men had taken, and ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... If you're thirsty, hit the sink." Glass still maintained his hold, mumbling indistinctly: "Water's the worst thing in the world. Wait! I'll ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... The chevalier could but indistinctly see the face of the man, half hidden in his bed of fresh leaves. Not far from the hut was a covered fire where, cooking slowly, after the fashion of buccaneers, was a year-old boar. The stove or gridiron was formed by four forks ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the vistas of dark stems the beautiful green plain and glassy lake could be seen stretching into an undefined distance. The blue hills, apparently springing from the bosom of the lake, lined the horizon, and the shadowy forms of the Kandian mountains mingled indistinctly with the distant clouds. From this spot, with a good telescope, I could watch the greater part of the plain, which was at this time enlivened by the numerous herds of wild buffaloes scattered over the surface. A large bull was standing alone about half a mile from the tent, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Their numbers are said to be large, ranging from 12,000 to 30,000, but it is impossible for me to get correct information either as to their strength or position. Our citizens beyond this are all on their side. Our movements seem to be rapidly communicated to them, while theirs come to us slowly and indistinctly. I have two regiments here, with others coming up. I think we shall shut up this road to the Central Railroad which they strongly threaten. Our supplies come up slowly. We have plenty of beef and can get ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... following too far, by the time they were five leagues from Toulon, they were recalled, about three quarters of an hour past three, by their signal-post from the hill, and all stood in again. At six, the rear-admiral saw our fleet to leeward, and joined them at half-past nine. They had heard, indistinctly, the firing: and the Leviathan was, in consequence, detached toward Toulon; but had not proceeded far, before our ships were perceived on their return. This trivial affair was magnified, by the French admiral, Latouche ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... are, which, though not the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some examples might be indifferently put to either signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do not form, but register the language; who do not teach men how they should think, but relate how they have hitherto ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the horses took on new energy, and plunged desperately through the frozen snow which one moment supported their weight and the next splintered in broken ice-cakes beneath them. Slowly the mole grew until in the gathering shadows it took on indistinctly the shape of a building, and just as the rising moon crested the ridge of the Pembina hills the travellers swung up at the door. Arthurs had carried the key of the padlock in his hand for the last mile; ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... but out. It was cold and dark in there; but before I closed the door behind me the dim light from the hall showed me Dona Rita standing on the very same spot where I had left her, statuesque in her night-dress. Even after I shut the door she loomed up enormous, indistinctly rigid and inanimate. I picked up the candelabra, groped for a candle all over the carpet, found one, and lighted it. All that time Dona Rita didn't stir. When I turned towards her she seemed to be slowly awakening from a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... river. The heat was extreme; he opened the window, and, enveloping himself in his great silk robe, placed a heavy candlestick upon the table and desired to be left alone. His window looked out upon the plain, which the moon, in her first quarter, indistinctly lighted; the sky was charged with thick clouds, and all things disposed the mind to melancholy. Although Bassompierre had nothing of the dreamer in his character, the tone which the conversation had taken at dinner returned to his memory, and he reconsidered his life, the sad changes ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... near by, out of sheer surprise. "We haven't kept pigs together," continued James Wait in a deep undertone. "Here's your tobacco." Then, after a pause, he inquired:—"What ship?"—"Golden State," muttered Donkin indistinctly, biting the tobacco. The nigger whistled low.—"Ran?" he said curtly. Donkin nodded: one of his cheeks bulged out. "In course I ran," he mumbled. "They booted the life hout of one Dago chap on the passage 'ere, then started on me. I cleared hout 'ere.—" "Left your dunnage ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... objects that meet the eye, are all calculated to awaken a train of sad and serious contemplation. The ripple of the water against the boat, as its keel cleaves through the stream—the darkling current hurrying by—the indistinctly-seen craft, of all forms and all sizes, hovering around, and making their way in ghost-like silence, or warning each other of their approach by cries, that, heard from afar, have something doleful in their note—the solemn shadows ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... freedom,—freedom of speech,—freedom of action. He had tacitly submitted to a certain ministry because he had been assured that the said ministry was popular,—but latterly, rumours of discontent and grievance had reached him,—albeit indistinctly and incoherently,—and he began to be doubtful as to whether it might not be the Press which supported the existing state of policy, rather than the People. The Press! He began to consider of what material this great power in his country was composed. Originally, the Press in all countries, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... always thought, that where the line of demarcation between the powers of the General and State governments was doubtfully or indistinctly drawn, it would be prudent and praiseworthy in both parties, never to approach it but under the most urgent necessity. Is the necessity now urgent, to declare that no non-resident of his district shall be eligible as a member of Congress? ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... eye had seen I leave the reader to guess. She suppressed the scream that rose to her lips, but the effort cost her dear. Soon the left hand of the hermit began to swim indistinctly before her gloating eyes; and with a deep sigh her head drooped, and she ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Jane caught indistinctly the muffled tone of these few syllables. She made them mean a dozen different things and finally nothing at all, but she was glad of the opportunity ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... and prayed, and I devoutly respected her devotions. The moon had begun to shine in upon one side of each of the three windows, and make a misty clearness in the room, by which I saw her indistinctly. When she re-arose she made the sign ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would do that, too, if you kill somebody," he began in a new tone,—the tone which Lorraine had heard indistinctly in the bunk-house when Swan was talking to the doctor. "Do you think I'm a damn fool, just because I'm a Swede? You are smart—you think out every little thing. But you make a big mistake if you don't think some one else may be using his brain, too. This handkerchief ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... itself from the group, and, as it approached, developed indistinctly the features of a brawny farmer, with a short, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... blowing through the building. The whole vast shining floor was covered with peasants, pressed, packed together. Peasants, men and women—he did not see a single member of the middle-class. In front of him under the altar there was a blaze of light, and figures moved in the blaze uncertainly, indistinctly. Now and then a sudden quiver passed across the throng, as wind blows through the corn. Here and there men and women knelt, but for the most part they stood steadfast, motionless, staring in front of them. He looked at them and discovered ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... In another corner, a number of boxes are arranged so as to extemporize a bed, now unoccupied, but from which the two little factory-workers have but lately arisen. A jug of herb tea is on the table. The fire is very low, and the light from it is only sufficient to render all indistinctly visible. In a chair opposite is a young woman with such a mournful, careworn face, that a glance inspires you with sorrow; and from a bundle of clothes on her knee issues the fretful wail of a restless child. The monotonous tick of an old clock ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... Cagliostro. All was in vain; not a trace of him could be discovered. I was not alone, Adela." Here Glyndon paused a moment, as if embarrassed; for in his recital, I need scarcely say that he had only indistinctly alluded to Fillide, whom the reader may surmise to be his companion. "I was not alone, but the associate of my wanderings was not one in whom my soul could confide,—faithful and affectionate, but without education, without ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not speak; she only knew that her head was throbbing, that she heard but indistinctly the words of the man who kept close to her as they went on up the steep trail. At the rock where she had been too quick for him, Sperry abruptly stepped in front ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... room near her, and she could hear their voices indistinctly. She did not try to hear what they said, she was too tired to think. She snuggled closer in the soft pillows and sighed contentedly, but before long a voice near her separated itself from the rest, and ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... Mr Willet indistinctly remembered to have heard the rioters calling to them to throw the key of the room in which they were, out of window, for their keeping. He therefore ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... friends—others, Anthony Dalaber among them, were placed on their trial, and being terrified at their position, recanted, and were sentenced to do penance. Ferrars was brought to Oxford for the occasion, and we discern indistinctly (for the mere fact is all which survives) a great fire at Carfax; a crowd of spectators, and a procession of students marching up High Street with fagots on their shoulders, the solemn beadles leading them ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Friedrich for five-and-twenty years past, and for above a dozen years busily engaged in editing the OEuvres de Frederic,—has, besides that Lebensgeschichte just cited, three or four smaller Books, of indistinctly different titles, on the same subject. A meritoriously exact man; acquainted with the outer details of Friedrich's Biography (had he any way of arranging, organizing or setting them forth) as few men ever were or will ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... the knob another half turn and laid his hand lightly on the lever which controlled the movements of the tractor. Bennie, flattened against the window, gazed below. The great dust ring showed indistinctly through a blue haze no longer directly beneath them, but a quarter of a mile to the north. Evidently they were ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... orders. This is enough of itself to render Cornish talk not very easy to be understood by ordinary strangers; but the difficulty of comprehending it is still further increased by the manner in which the people speak. They pronounce rapidly and indistinctly, often running separate syllables into one another through a sentence, until the whole sounds like one long fragmentary word. To the student in philology a series of conversations with the Cornish poor would, I imagine, afford ample matter for observation of the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... irreversibility applied to the conception of space—that is, that we could move through space only from north to south, and not in the opposite direction. Then a thing in space, as a house, would not exist for us until we approached it. When we were approaching it, it would first appear indistinctly, and more and more distinctly the nearer we approached it, just as an event in time does not exist until we reach the point of its beginning, but may appear in anticipation, in time perspective, when we approach it, the more distinctly, the ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... once, a century or two ago. Do you know, it strikes me as rather odd that I have forgotten what love is like. It strikes me as rather pathetic." He gave a sort of uncouth grimace and stuck the black cigar once more into his mouth. "Egad!" said he, mumbling indistinctly over the cigar, "how foolish love seems when you look back at it ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... beyond the ridge of rising ground towards which his gun had been directed. The head only of this man could have been visible from the side of the bank on which Brian was standing; and even the head could be seen very indistinctly. As Brian fired, it seemed to him, curiously enough, as if another report rang in his ears beside that of his own gun. Was any one else shooting in the wood? Or had his senses played him false in the horror of the moment, and caused him to mistake an echo for another shot? He had not ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... evidently expected, for she was shown at once into the private office of the senior partner. The clerk who ushered her in pronounced her name indistinctly, and the elderly man who rose from his chair at her entrance looked ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... moment I thought it was to enable the beast to seize me, but the next instant I knew what it meant, for I could faintly hear voices, which I rightly judged to have scared the reptile away. Then something touched me as I heard indistinctly the voices close by, and with what little strength I had left I clutched at whatever it was; and you know ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the north of Scotland by the English usurpers. The more general accounts of it were that many Highlanders, yet far more Islanders, were qualified with this second sight; and men, women, and children, indistinctly, were subject to it, and children where parents were not. Sometimes people came to age who had it not when young, nor could any tell by what means produced. It is a trouble to most of them who are subject to it, and they would be rid of it at any rate ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... whom security was given, took to flight, etc. For "zamin" with the acc. see Ibn Jubair ed. by Wright, 77, 2. I may say on this occasion, that my impression of the Montague MS. is, that it is a blundering copy of a valuable though perhaps indistinctly written original.—ST.] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... boys were at first nearly smothered by the descent of snow, but when the first surprise was over they recognized their prisoner. I am ashamed to say that their feeling was that of unbounded delight, and they burst into a roar of laughter. The sound, indistinctly heard, terrified the old lady beyond measure, and she struggled frantically to escape, nearly poking out Pomp's eye with the ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... course from a point rather from the southward of east to the north-north-west. Crossing to the opposite side we ascended another sand hill by a gradual rise, and again descended to another plain, at the farther extremity of which we could indistinctly see a dark line of trees. Arriving at these after a ride of six miles, we were stopped by another creek. Its banks were too steep for the cart, and we consequently turned northward and traced it downwards for four miles before we found a convenient spot at which to halt. The ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... person was seen but indistinctly, as she stood within the small entry, holding the door with one hand; but Mabel saw that she was dark and dressed as she had seen that class of persons ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... in all matters between man and his God. He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude. "Solus cum solo:"—I recollect but indistinctly the effect produced upon me by this volume, but it must have been considerable. At all events I had got a key to a difficulty; in these sermons (or rather heads of sermons, as they seem to be, taken down by a hearer) there is much of what would be called legendary illustration; but the substance ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... strays away some day with a little bundle of clothes, and a coin or two, or is fetched away by some far-sighted pedlar in such human wares, who buys them as bird-fanciers buy the finches from the nets; and then, years and years afterwards, the town or hamlet hears indistinctly of some great prima donna, or of some lark-throated tenor, that the big world is making happy as kings, and rich as kings' treasurers, and the people carding the flax or shelling the chestnuts say to one another, "That was little black Lia, or that was our ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the fine bay of Port Famine. It was now the beginning of winter, and I never saw a more cheerless prospect; the dusky woods, piebald with snow, could be only seen indistinctly through a drizzling hazy atmosphere. We were, however, lucky in getting two fine days. On one of these, Mount Sarmiento, a distant mountain 6800 feet high, presented a very noble spectacle. I was frequently surprised, in the scenery of Tierra del ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... brighter than day," he says. He stood, blind cord in hand, and stared out of the window at a nightmare transformation of the familiar road before him. The black figure of the doctor with its whirling whip danced out against the flame. The horse kicked indistinctly, half hidden by the blaze, with a rat at its throat. In the obscurity against the churchyard wall, the eyes of a second monster shone wickedly. Another—a mere dreadful blackness with red-lit eyes and flesh-coloured hands—clutched unsteadily on the wall coping to which it had ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... but the indistinctness must be in your powers of vision. Nothing can be more plainly traceda proper agger or vallum, with its corresponding ditch or fossa. Indistinctly! why, Heaven help you, the lassie, my niece, as light-headed a goose as womankind affords, saw the traces of the ditch at once. Indistinct!why, the great station at Ardoch, or that at Burnswark in Annandale, may be clearer, doubtless, because they are stative forts, whereas ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to me like, "I am fond of you, in spite of all." She said it very lowly and indistinctly; maybe I did not hear aright. She may not have said just those words; but she cast herself impetuously against my breast, clasped both her arms about my neck for a little while, stretched even up a bit on her toes to get a good hold, and stood so for perhaps ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun |
