"Inky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... course I might think fit to adopt about the one preceding it. No one who has not been an attorney's clerk at three dollars a week, copying declarations and answers from nine A.M. to six P.M., in a dusty, inky, uncarpeted room, with windows unwashed since the last lease expired, can form a correct notion of the exhilaration of my mind when I took my seat in the railroad-car. The great Van Bnmmel himself never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Henderson's inky retreat, there came the sound of a dry chuckle. Pop Henderson had been chuckling in just that way for three weeks, now. It was getting on the nerves ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... must not pass without us. There was now no more thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course, agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon the trestle until for some rods we had been running with the inky water only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I calculated the proportion of the peril which was passed. A moment more, and the solid approach would be under our ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... and there they run! The black-a-moor enjoys the fun. They have been made as black as crows, Quite black all over, eyes and nose, And legs, and arms, and heads, and toes, And trowsers, pinafores, and toys,— The silly little inky boys! Because they set up such a roar, And ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... we found ourselves in a sort of junction village, its two main roads alive with long lines of moving batteries and lorries and transport waggons. Inky blackness everywhere, for the Hun bombed the place nightly, and "No lights" was a standing order. Odd shouts and curses from drivers in difficulties with their steeds; the continuous cry of "Keep to the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... same, and when I looked beneath, His breast was black—all, all was black, except his grinning teeth, His sooty crew were like in hue, as black as Afric slaves! Oh, horror! e'en the ship was black that ploughed the inky waves! "Alas!" I cried, "for love of truth and blessed mercy's sake, Where am I? in what dreadful ship? upon what dreadful lake? What shape is that, so very grim, and black as any coal? It is Mahound, the Evil One, and ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... I have envied anybody more than I did the other day the directors and clerks of the Zecca. There they sit at inky deal desks, counting out rolls of money, and curiously weighing the irregular and battered coinage of which Venice boasts; and just over their heads, occupying the place which in a London countinghouse would be ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... to step this way, miss," said the man, slipping off his stool. At the same time he put a long inky penholder, which he had been holding in his wrinkled right ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... The hot inky odors of a newspaper plant took me by the throat during my progress in the whiny ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... counterpart of Field's Joseph's coat of many colors. As often as necessary this went to the laundry. One day when it had just returned from one of these periodical visits, I was startled, but not surprised, to find that Field had appropriated my spotless linen duster to his own inky uses and left his own impossible creation hanging on my hook in its stead. Field's version of what then occurred is beautifully, if not truthfully, portrayed in the accompanying "Proper Sonet" and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... strolled back slowly through the inky summer dark, finding the house hot and close when they came in. Margaret went upstairs, hearing her mother's apologetic, "Oh, Dad, why didn't I give you back your club?" as she passed the dining-room door. She knew ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... from it all, into the blackness. Her lantern glimmered,—went out. Mary Bell's cramped fingers let it fall. Her heart pounded with fear of the inky dark. ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... up and down it, conning its features patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And then if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the long, black hallway that connected the area with the street on the north, was a good-sized room which had once been used by a job printer—as proven by the rubbish in it: strips of wood, quantities of old type, torn paper, and ragged, inky cloths. The room had a pair of large windows looking out upon the brick pavement; but as these windows were smeared and dust-sprinkled, the place offered privacy. And Barber, leading the way down from his own flat, did not halt until he stood in ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... the wilderness. The belated moon wheels slowly above the eastern ridge, where for a few minutes past a mighty pine and hundreds of pointed spruce tops have been standing out in inky blackness against the gray and brightening background. The silver light steals swiftly down the evergreen tops, sending long black shadows creeping before it, and falls glistening and shimmering across the sleeping waters of ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... her coat. The night, though windy and dark, was warm. Stars shone out from unexpected places, pencil-like streaks of inky-black clouds stretched menacingly across the sky. The wind came down from the moors above with a dull boom which seemed echoed by the waves beating against the giant rocks. The beads of the bare trees among which they passed were bent ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a confused array of algebraic formula. (I detest algebra.) Then came several lines that seemed to have been made by the crawlings of tipsy flies with inky legs, followed by half a dozen or so that looked like the ravings of a lunatic done into Welsh, while the remainder consisted of Roman numerals and ordinary figures mixed ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... written in a fair hand, that did not seem as that of any inky-fingered lay brother, but as I read the few words that were written I knew whose it was, for none but ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... is seen only at intervals; here in a full heavy sheet of green transparent water, falling straight and unbroken; there dashing along a narrow channel, with a violence that makes one dizzy to see and hear. In one place an unfathomed pool shows a mirror of inky blackness, and as still as night; in another the tortured twisted cataract tumbles headlong in a dozen different torrents, half hid by the cloud of spray they send high into the air. Despite this uproar, the slenderest, loveliest shrubs, peep forth from among these ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... without one witness to the grace of God! Wide regions untraversed by the feet of His messengers! Hubert had thought New Laodicea a place of desperate need; and so it was in the matter of vital, fruit-bearing piety. But as he thought of the inky darkness in which China's millions dwelt this seemed ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... with slightly rolling action into the valleys, and out of the wool-white waves sudden sharp dark forms upthrust like strange masters of the deep. Towers took shape and islands upheaved, crowned with dark fortresses. To the west a vast and inky-black Gibraltar magically appeared. Soon the sea was but a prodigious river flowing within the high walls of an ancient glacier, a ghost of the icy stream that once ground its slow way between these ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... above! the restless dead Peer out, with exudation dread— That hangs in robes of clammy white, Like clouds upon the inky night; Their very ghosts are in this place, I see them pass before my face; With frowning brows they whirl around Within this consecrated mound! Away—away, vile caitiff race, And give the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... man, Where thou dost stand—an hour ago, And round his feet three rivers ran, Of equal depth, and equal flow— A golden stream—and one like blood, And one like sapphire seemed to be; But where they joined their triple flood It tumbled in an inky sea. The spirit sent his dazzling gaze Down through that ocean's gloomy night; Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,— The glad deep sparkled wide and bright— White as the sun, far, far more fair Than its ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... remarkable mutations in the colouring of the thickly strewn eggs, and admiring the fortitude or indifference with which the fledglings endured the sizzling heat, I found myself subject to an optical illusion, for when I looked up and abroad the brightly gleaming sea had been changed to inky purple, the hills of the mainland to black. Though absolutely cloudless, the sky seemed oppressed with slaty gloom, and the leaves of the trees near at hand assumed a leaden green. For a few seconds I was convinced that some almost unearthly ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... into the moonlight of that deep inland country. The trees were dark with leaves and brooded close above them; old water-fences and milldams cast inky shadows on the still, shallow ponds clasped in wooded hills. No region could have offered a more striking contrast to the empty plains. Moya felt shut in with old histories. The very ground was but moulding sand in which generations ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... game and began to turn in, Stratton reluctantly followed their example. As long as there was any light he felt perfectly able to take care of himself. It was the darkness he feared—that inky, suffocating darkness which masks everything like a pall. He dreaded, too, the increased chances bed would bring of yielding for a single fatal instant to treacherous sleep; but he couldn't well sit up all night, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... learnt by grim experience. When first he moved it, it drove him headlong into inky darkness. His gills crumpled in the rough embrace of the mud, and his eyes and sucker were choked with slime. It was only a desperate, convulsive, aimless wriggle that freed him. The next time he cleared his immediate surroundings, and shot ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... radiate from a common point, as from or near the stem, when the stem is present; or from the point of attachment of the pileus when the stem is absent. The plants vary widely in form and consistency, some being very soft and soon decaying, others turning into an inky fluid, others being tough and leathery, and some more or less woody or corky. The spores when seen in mass possess certain colors, white, rosy, brown or purple brown, black or ochraceous. While ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... so awful that we did not speak again for some moments. The great inky mass was extending toward the eastward, and approaching the fire burning on the mountain-top, and the moon rising above and to the left of it; and from beneath its black shadow came a heavy, muffled sound that every moment ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... graceful female figure, clothed in deep black, seated by the window, with her elbow resting upon the sill and her chin supported on her hand. Her eyes were cast down until her eyelashes lay like inky lines upon her snow-white cheek. Her face, of classic regularity and marble whiteness, bore a ghastly contrast to the long eyelashes, arched eyebrows and silken ringlets black as midnight. She might have been a statue or a picture, so ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Silence. Inky nothingness—but the air was weighted with many things, and among them one which brought the short hairs on the Hawk's neck prickling erect. A smell! It was not to be mistaken—a faint, but rank and fetid and altogether identifying ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore
... which drowned all others. From the inky sky descended a jagged line of light, and in the same second the crash of the thunder broke. Never have I seen such a storm. Down in the Tidewater we had thunderstorms in plenty during the summer-time, but they ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... or mouth—and then again her horse would stumble and almost throw her over his head, as he sank, knee deep, into some unexpected hole. All of this, with the thousand and one noises that broke the still worse silence of the inky night soon began to work upon her nerves and make her fearful. The road was full of dangers aside from stumbling horses and broken necks, for many were the stories of murder and robbery committed along the route they were traveling. It is true they had two stout men, and all were armed, yet ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... fervid pictures of a poet's fancy could transcend the glories revealed in the depths of the Canyon; inky shadows, pale gildings of lofty spires, golden splendors of sun beating full on facades of red and yellow, obscurations of distant peaks by veils of transient shower, glimpses of white towers half drowned in purple ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... distinguished the forms of the nearby trees were lost—the rich, lustrous green of their foliage brushed out with the dull black of the night; while the twinkling lights of the distant towns and hamlets, in the valley below, shone as sparkling jewels on the inky, velvet robe that, fold on fold, lay over ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... negroes on the place, I was given a youth of perhaps eighteen to be my body-servant. He was to black my boots, keep my clothes dusted, hold my stirrup, take care of my horse, and do anything else I wanted him to do. This negro I dubbed Inky, in deference to ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... been a crashing of spent timber, and now the sun had burst through a rift in the west, and flooded a segment of the horizon with a strange, luminous field of lesson. About this zone of clarity were heaped masses of gold- rimmed and rose-edged clouds, still inky at their centers. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the point to judge what they had to do, and the appearance of the sea was truly terrible; the waves were all broken, and a surge of devouring fire seemed to rage and roar round the point, and oppose an impassable barrier between them and the inky pool beyond, where safety lay under the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... in volumes over the mountain tops; their summits still bright and snowy, but the lower parts of an inky blackness. The rain began to patter down in broad and scattered drops; the wind freshened, and curled up the waves; at length, it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... "devil fish." The squid is caught by jigging up and down a lead weight filled with wire spikes and painted bright red. It seizes the weight with its tentacles. When raised into the boat it releases its hold and squirts a small stream of black inky fluid. In the water, when attacked, this inky fluid discolors the water and screens ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... glory of the starry heavens, and the beauty of their reflections in the calm sea beneath. It was hard sometimes not to believe that many of the stars had fallen, and were sinking slowly down into the dark, inky black of the ocean, where I could see dots of light travelling here and there, now looking mere pinheads, now flashing out into soft effulgent globes, whose brightness reached a certain point, and ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... returned. She followed the Ranger's glance over the edge of the Ridge into the Valley where the smoke-stacks of the distant Smelter City belched inky clouds against ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the poop deck of the carack and watched the lights perish one by one in the little town that straggled up the hillside before him. The moon came up and bathed it in a white hard light, throwing sharp inky shadows of rustling date palm and spearlike minaret, and flinging shafts of silver athwart ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of the youth's hand was one who lay with yellow breast and shoulders bare to the cold drafts. One arm hung over the side of the cot, and the fingers lay full length upon the wet cement floor of the room. Beneath the inky brows could be seen the eyes of the man exposed by the partly opened lids. To the youth it seemed that he and this corpse-like being were exchanging a prolonged stare, and that the other threatened with his eyes. He drew back, watching his neighbor from the shadows of his blanket edge. The ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... lighted all the lamps?" she inquired, and when Lettice replied in amazement that there were as many lamps as usual, she shrugged her shoulders, and muttered something about "inky darkness." If Mr Bertrand had not appeared at that moment it would be difficult to say what would have happened, but he came rushing in like a breeze of fresh, wintry air, seizing each of the girls in turn, and folding them ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... nakedness in more than ever ghostly guise. It was then that Finn rose, painfully and slowly, to his feet, and moved, like an old, old man, across the floor of his cage to the bars, the bars that were of an inky blackness in that silvery light. For almost an hour this great hound, this tortured prince of a kingly race, stood sadly there, staring out at the moonlight between the bars of his prison; and for almost an hour, big clear drops kept forming in his black eyes and trickling ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... eye had been in the Graveyard of Genius at that instant it would have sworn that it perceived in the inky blackness of the tilting rock a passage, and in the shadows of that passage a huge, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... of the door was the first little event that disturbed her. Zo peeped in. Her face was red, her hair was tousled, her fingers presented inky signs of a ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... it is; I know not seems. 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected havior of the visage, Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, That can denote me truly: these, indeed, seem, For they ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... between the earth and the sun, and it is then that it does not reflect the sun's light and it is then that we have nights of inky blackness. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the night—not the black, inky, meaningless void which has always stood for evil; not the darkness, the mere absence of light, the prophet had in mind when he said, "And there shall be no night there"—not that. The prophet thought the night was objectionable, but we ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... five minutes after Sahwah left it was dark as midnight in the Punch Bowl, dark with an inky blackness that clutched at Oh-Pshaw as with hands while the hideous gurgling filled her ears and turned her blood to water. She was going to faint, she knew it; the strength went out of her limbs; icy drops gathered ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... went to spend an hour on the river quay beyond the Boccanera mansion. He was very fond of meditating on that deserted spot in spite of the warnings of Victorine, who asserted that it was not safe. And, indeed, on such inky nights as that one, no cutthroat place ever presented a more tragic aspect. Not a soul, not a passer-by; a dense gloom, a void in front and on either hand. At a corner of the mansion, now steeped in darkness, there was a gas lamp which stood in a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... himself at the deal table that Sheila had set with the coffee-cups and a big loaf of French bread, and began slowly consuming a bowl of inky fluid, strong of chicory, into which from time to time he dipped a portion of the loaf. Sheila imitated his processes with less daintiness and precision, since she was shaken with excitement ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... Small inky-looking clouds foretell rain; a light scud, driving across heavy clouds, wind and rain; but ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... pike-points (hammered out of railing); all logic reduced to this one primitive thesis, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!—Peltier, dolefully aware of it, ducks low; escapes unscathed to England; to urge there the inky war anew; to have Trial by Jury, in due season, and deliverance by young Whig eloquence, world-celebrated ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... down from the inky blackness of cliff that overhung the road, and peered over the valley of Maunahoehoe. ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... Milsom opened the window, and sat looking out into the inky darkness of the night, and listening to the voices of the three ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... had a thankless task before her. Master Will required a great deal of preparation. His curls were gummed and tangled; his fingers were inky, and suspiciously pitchy. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... again he was close upon her. She was stooped over something and her back and arms showed tension. At sound of his approach she flung up quickly the mass of inky black hair that had hidden her bent face. As she rose it became apparent that she was tall and slender, and that the clear complexion, just now at least, ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... he took one from the President's case. He looked at the cigar and remembered all he had read of Benjamin Harrison's black cigars. This one was black—inky black—and big. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... Dominie," yelled Inky Mike, laying hold of the rail by an end and hauling it around. "He don't ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to do anything more that night, and we sat on the Verplanck porch, overlooking the beautiful harbor. It was a black, inky night, with no moon, one of those nights when the myriad lights on the boats were mere points in the darkness. As we looked out over the water, considering the case which as yet we had hardly started on, Kennedy seemed engrossed in the study ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the ship, causing her to "wallow" so awkwardly that the water tumbled in over her rail in all directions, now forward, now aft, and anon in the waist, and on either side with the utmost impartiality. The water was everywhere of an inky blackness, save along the ship's bends and where she dipped it in over her rail. This disturbed water looked, at a short distance, as though it had been diluted with milk; but, examined closely, it was found to glow with a faint fire, like ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... shaking the Vial disperse it nimbly through the two other liquors, you shall (if you perform your part well, and have employ'd oyl of Vitriol Cleer and Strong enough) see the Darkness of the liquor presently begin to be discuss'd, and grow pretty Cleer and Transparent, losing its Inky Blackness, which you may again restore to it by the affusion of a small quantity of a very strong Solution of Salt of Tartar. And though neither of these Atramentous liquors will seem other than very Pale Ink, if you write with a clean Pen ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... uffish spectral gleaming of that wild resounding clang Came hooting o'er the margin of the dusky moors that hang Like palls of inky darkness where the hoarse, weird raven calls, And the bhang-drunk Hindoo staggers on and on ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the blot already mentioned settles over and obliterates Christian. In two more cuts we behold them drawing nearer to the other shore; and then, between two radiant angels, one of whom points upward, we see them mounting in new weeds, their former lendings left behind them on the inky river. More angels meet them; Heaven is displayed, and if no better, certainly no worse, than it has been shown by others- -a place, at least, infinitely populous and glorious with light—a place that haunts solemnly the hearts of children. And then this symbolic ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mile away the creeping line of advance could be gauged by the tone of firing. Higher, higher, in one mad high-pitched shriek, ten thousand shots in one minute from twenty or more enemy machine-guns sang and hummed in the inky pall. The high key lowered; the mind pictured the khaki line retreating, reforming—forward again. Then up again the shrill staccato; line drawing nearer. Higher, faster, louder the Satanic scream of lead. Higher, still higher! ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... a bandit, and the beautiful girl reclining on the cushions a bandit's daughter? He dozed, and on coming to his waking senses again, discovered that the darkness had slightly lifted. He could see the distant horizon, defined by inky woods, outlined on a lighter sky. A few stars, scattered here and there in this tableau, whilst emphasizing the vastness of the space overhead—a vastness that was positively annihilating—at the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... at which he had embarked. In the neighbourhood of the opening the columns stood up clear and gray against the dark background. A little further off their outlines were dim and misty; and wherever else he looked an inky darkness met his eye, save one or two faint bands of misty light, which marked the position ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... spruce groves and widespread bog and beaver meadows to mind. On this amber stream I discovered an interesting fall. It is only a few feet high, but remarkably fine in the curve of its brow and blending shades of color, while the mossy, bushy pool into which it plunges is inky black, but wonderfully brightened by foam bells larger than common that drift in clusters on the smooth water around the rim, each of them carrying a picture of the overlooking trees leaning together at the tips like the teeth of moss ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... to be poets, in despite of Pallas. Now, wherein we want desert were a thank-worthy labour to express: but if I knew, I should have mended myself. But I, as I never desired the title, so have neglected the means to come by it. Only overmastered by some thoughts, I yielded an inky tribute unto them. Marry, they that delight in poesy itself should seek to know what they do, and how they do; and especially, look themselves in an unflattering glass of reason, if they be inclinable ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... side of the space stood the kitchen, on the other the woodshed, and in a ramshackle penthouse against the hall at the back, the paper was trimmed and damped down. Here, too, the forms, or, in ordinary language, the masses of set-up type, were washed. Inky streams issuing thence blended with the ooze from the kitchen sink, and found their way into the kennel in the street outside; till peasants coming into the town of a market day believed that the Devil was taking a ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... Cross, pouring out a cupful of the inky-looking fluid that had been stewing on the hob for the last hour and a-half. "Ah, my dear, all flesh is grass, as we do know. She was a dried-up-looking poor body, your sister-in-law; I al'ays did say so, ye mid remember. An' how ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... a display of commendable ingenuity on the part of the German airman. Nature has provided some of its creatures, such as the octopus, for instance, with the ways and means of baffling its pursuers. It emits dense clouds of inky fluid when disturbed, and is able to effect its escape under ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... boat got way on her, and we slid away from the light of the native fire out into the inky blackness of night. Beyond a muttered curse at the crew, and keeping up that horrible grinding of the teeth common enough to men of violent passions when under great excitement, Hickson said nothing ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... accentuated by the gentle ripple of the water current against the barge's blunt nose, which pointed upstream. Standing motionless as a statue, the massive figure of Captain Blumenfels appeared in deeper blackness against the inky hills on the other side of the Rhine. Long sweeps lay parallel to the bulwarks of the barge, and stalwart men were at their posts, waiting the word of command to handle these exaggerated oars, in defiance of wind and ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... returned to the deck. Night had fallen on the shore, but the water still held a pale light; in the east the sky was filled with an increasing, cold radiance. It was the moon, rising swiftly above the flat land. The moonlight grew in intensity, casting inky shadows of the spars and cordage across the deck, making the light in the cabin a reddish blur by contrast. The icy flood swept over the land, bringing out with a new emphasis the close, glossy foliage and broken facade—it appeared unreal, portentous. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... lorries and limbers as well as troops. I stayed that night with the engineers, as the weather looked threatening. The sky grew black and rain began to fall. When one stood in the open and looked all round at the inky darkness everywhere, with the rain pelting down, and knew that our men had to carry on as usual, one realized the bitterness of the cup which they had to drink to the very dregs. Rain and darkness all round them, hardly a moment's respite from some irksome task, the ache in the heart for ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... ringing concussion and a rhythmic series of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces, the central edifices of the big ironworks of which Horrocks was the manager. They stood heavy and threatening, full of an incessant ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... beats anything we have to grumble about in England. At night the temperature went down to 65 deg., and the brilliant summer weather broke up suddenly in a fierce thunderstorm. For a time every object roundabout would be blotted out by inky blackness, and for the next two or three minutes the lowering angry clouds would pulsate with dazzling light that leaped upward like life-blood from the throbbing heart of the storm. Each thundering peal was followed by a momentary lull, and then ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the pitchy night the fire died down and the woodpile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the billows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... Madam? Nay, it is: I know not Seemes:[7] 'Tis not alone my Inky Cloake (good Mother) [Sidenote: cloake coold mother [8]] Nor Customary suites of solemne Blacke, Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath, No, nor the fruitfull Riuer in the Eye, Nor the deiected hauiour of the Visage, ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... some steps. The men went stumbling through the dark, turning first to the right, and then to the left. They groped their way into a room and dropped him upon a bed. Even now they struck no light, but through a small window near the ceiling moonbeams entered and relieved somewhat the inky blackness. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... was done in the most modern of styles, like a window show for her hair dressing parlor, and her foreign face, with its natural olive tones, was very much fixed up with many touches of peach and carmine, as well as darker hints under the eyes; and her lashes—well, perhaps Dolorez had been crying inky tears; that was the effect one gathered from a glance at ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... rolling up so thick and black that to Paul it seemed like a great sable curtain dropping its folds over them. It enveloped the forest, then the clearing, then the hut, and those within it. The inky sky was without a star. The puffs of rain rattled dismally on the roof of the old cabin. But all this somberness of nature brought comfort and lightness of heart to the besieged. Paul's spirits rose with the blackness of the night and ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... been more derided (or more justly so) than the god of my admiration, Balzac? Or if I required a bolder inspiration, what had I to do but turn my head to where the gold dome of the Invalides glittered against inky squalls, and recall the tale of him sleeping there: from the day when a young artillery-sub could be giggled at and nicknamed Puss-in-Boots by frisky misses; on to the days of so many crowns and so many victories, and so many hundred mouths of cannon, and so many thousand ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... great champion called Chernuble. He was huge and ugly and his strength was such that he could lift with ease a burden which four mules could scarcely carry. His face was inky black, his lips thick and hideous, and his coarse long hair reached the ground. It was said that in the land from whence he came, the sun never shone, the rain never fell, and the very stones were black as coal. He too, swearing that ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... day, and the rising wind sang in the rigging of the ships. The weather horizon, dark and brilliant, in ominous alternations showed a sky of piled-up cloud interspersed with inky patches where squalls were bursting. To leeward, the broad lagoon, stretching for a dozen miles to the tree-topped rim of reef, smoked with the haze of an impending gale. Ashore, the palms bent like grass in the succeeding gusts, and the ocean beaches reverberated with a furious surf. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to Graham's mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries and lifts that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. The men worked in silence under the supervision of two of the Labour Police; their feet made a hollow ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... more fiercely, and the wind was blowing harder still, making the slender poplars along the railway line bow and bend before the squalls and assume the most fantastic shapes, but vaguely shown against the night. The night was inky black. The keenest eye could make out nothing at all distinctly, even at the distance of a few yards: the darkness was so dense ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with inky fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The printed slip having been filled with the visitor's name and present business, and conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with an invitation to the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat the stoutish man himself, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... steps of the clubhouse, gravely disquieted. Below him the road wound, a dimly conjectured, wavering gray ribbon; on the other side of it the steep slope took off to a gulf of inky shadow, where the great valley lay, hushed under the solemn stars, silent, black, and shimmering with a myriad pulsating electric lights which glowed like swarms of fireflies caught in an invisible net. That was Watauga. The strings of ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... in fact, had fallen within the hour; but still the sky was dense with a sullen rack, and still the sidewalks were inky wet. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mrs. Harding did look, and the rueful expression of Rachel, set off by the inky stains, was so irresistibly comical, that, after a hard struggle, she too gave way, and ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... within.— Minstrel, away! the work of fate Is bearing on; its issue wait, Where the rude Trossachs' dread defile Opens on Katrine's lake and isle.— 500 Gray Benvenue I soon repassed, Loch Katrine lay beneath me cast. The sun is set, the clouds are met, The lowering scowl of heaven An inky hue of livid blue 505 To the deep lake has given; Strange gusts of wind from mountain-glen Swept o'er the lake, then sunk again. I heeded not the eddying surge, Mine eye but saw the Trossachs' gorge, 510 Mine ear but heard the sullen sound, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... station open and a few melancholy passengers, brought to town by the accommodation train, step to the curb, glance about in search of a street-car, and then duck back into the station. Spike shoved his clutch in and crawled forward along the curb, leaving the inky shadows of the far end of the station, and emerging finally into the effulgence of the arc at the corner of ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... they took her out in a wizened boat to sail over the garrulous bay. They dragged their silent auntie" [a howl] "with them, promising her a talkative day. All went well at first, but suddenly a gruesome storm arose, and beat upon their inky boat, which began to leak. The musical crew were all much frightened, and tried to bail out the ugly water, but it rose too fast, and soon the monkeyish boat began to sink. After it had sunk through the water about a mile, it struck plump on a rock, and ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... steps, the upper panel was closed by some one in the bedroom, and the stairway became inky dark. Ten steps further, I stumbled and almost fell over a soft obstruction on the stairs. I stooped and examined it. Fearing that the duchess might fall when she reached it, I took it up. It was a lady's head-dress and veil. A few steps farther I picked up a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... fleet-footed ahead, the man following with long strides. There was evidently a way and Tito knew it. His black head bobbed along in front, now a dark sphere glossed by the sunlight, now an inky silhouette against the white shine of water. There were creeks to jump and pools to wade—the duck shooters' planks only spanned the deep places—and the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... declared it to be the greatest downpour he had ever witnessed in that section of the country. The water leaped over the rocks in tiny waterfalls, and soon Larkspur Creek became a raging torrent. The sky was inky black, and they could not see a dozen ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... a flying glance through the just open door Hilary saw her holding bread-and-butter with inky fingers, her lips a little parted, expecting the next bite, and her eyes fixed curiously on Mr. Stone, whose transparent hand held a teacup, and whose eyes were immovably ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... making his way slowly and cautiously down the rope. It was a good stout one and he had no real misgivings. Yet the situation was unusual enough to have a piquant flavor. In the first place the darkness was more than inky in character, the kind of blackness in comparison with which the blackest night seems luminous. Then there was the peculiar quality of the air, so different from anything above ground, that the words chill, and dampness, had no special relation to it. In ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... appeared in the openings, each one casting a patch of inky shadow upon the snow. Then the travellers passed a larger group of dwellings, all silent and unlighted; and beyond, they saw a great house, with many outbuildings and inclosed courtyards, from which the hounds bayed furiously, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... the road to Roselands, neither horse nor mare was spared. Rand travelled at speed beneath an inky sky. At the turn to Greenwood he looked once toward the distant house, half hidden by mighty oaks. It was no more than once. He had a vision of a riderless horse, tearing away from a stream, through the woods, and he thought, "How soon?" He drew a difficult breath, and he put for a moment his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... courtesy because he had given it to her. As she sat, drawing long breaths that meant the ebbing of emotion, he let his eyes feed on her face. She was paler than he had seen her. There were shadows under her eyes, and the lashes on her cheek looked incredibly long: a curved inky splash. Her hood had fallen back, but she kept the blue cloak about her to her chin, as if it made a seclusion, a protection even against him. But it was only an instant before she withdrew her hands from the blaze and turned to him, with a little smile. She began to ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... felt that I was falling. Next, a great weight seemed to press me down like some horrid nightmare. I endeavored to groan, to cry out and struggle from under it, but it held me fast. After this I seemed to be falling backward through a blackness—an inky blackness. It came close to me, and pressed close upon my lips and my eyes. It smothered me; I ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... passed through the ranks, from the "Robber" leading the forlorn-hope, with the Intelligence officer and the leader of the Tigers beside him, to little Meadows and his troop of the 20th Dragoons in rear. Then, preceded by a brief ten minutes of inky darkness, the storm broke. It does not rain in South Africa—water is voided from above in solid sheets. A wall of beating rain pours down, obliterating the landscape by day, intensifying the darkness by night. The column came ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... had slept but little during the long night, and even when, from sheer exhaustion, they had dropped off into a troubled doze, weird, distorted fancies came to torment them into wakefulness, to stare, wide-eyed and fearful, into the inky blackness ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... search was soon after disclosed to view—a great lumbering form of inky blackness, which looked as if it had never known the touch of a paint-brush for fifty years. It was lying beside just such another, and the way on board was down a narrow lane of water between the two, about a yard and a half wide at one end, and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... of the bail, which may be allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to interfere; and, as wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the colors are laid on with a grossness which I am convinced must often defeat its own purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that his enemies may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that device than the blackening representations of these angry advertisers must inevitably serve to cloak and screen ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... flash of lightning cut from one black hill in the clouds and buried itself behind another. As if piercing the fathomless blanket and renting holes in its inky cover, a downpour of rain broke through, and even before reaching the earth it could now be seen descending in a heavy mist ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... came over her sparkling, happy face, like an inky cloud across a noon sky, and he felt a shiver ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... persisted. The day was hot, and one of those thunder-gusts which often succeed the fierce heats of an American midsummer was rising against the sky. Brule pointed to the inky clouds as tokens of the anger of his God. The storm broke, and, as the celestial artillery boomed over their darkening forests, the Iroquois were stricken with a superstitious terror. They all fled from the spot, leaving ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... cursed and swore and blasphemed; using words of whose existence Teacher had never heard or known and at whose meaning she could but faintly guess. Eva began to whimper; Nathan lifted shocked eyes to Teacher; Patrick kicked away the barricading chair and, still armed with the inky brush, sprang into the arena, and it was not until five minutes later that gentle peace settled down ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... littered with proof, scratch paper, scissors, mucilage, pencils, inkwells, and a case of "pie." He was engaged in sorting this. His collar and cravat hung upon a nail on the wall above the table. He was in his shirt sleeves. His hair was rumpled, his fingers inky. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... cleaned it and put it back on the shelf and took another and went to bed. You see what a lot of trouble we had over the pudding. Every evening till Christmas, which had now become only the day after to-morrow, we sneaked down in the inky midnight and boiled that pudding for as long ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... the nose, above the cheeks, he showed that nervous contraction which no ordinary convulsion can imitate, which no illness gives, but which says to the physician, "Go your ways!" and is, as it were, a standard which Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... tumbling in advance, bringing a current of air that causes the ponderous wind-mill at the railway tank to "about face" sharply, and sets its giant arms to whirling vigorously around. Behind comes the compact, inky veil that spreads itself over the whole blue canopy above, seemingly banishing all hope of the future; and athwart its Cimmerian surface shoot zigzag streaks of lightning, accompanied by heavy, muttering thunder that rolls and reverberates over the boundless plains seemingly conscious of the spaciousness ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... boats, containing nearly three hundred officers and men, not counting myself. After we had got, as I supposed, about a couple of miles from the ship, and I knew that I could not be sent back, I ventured to crawl out and look over the gunnel. The inky sea around us was dotted with boats, all the party keeping pretty close together. The night was so dark that I could see little more than their outlines, as they crept rapidly along, like many-footed monsters, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... plate is well washed, then flowed once with the alum solution and again washed. The tone by this process easily turns to an inky blue not very agreeable. The action should be stopped a little before ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... Staff would have been enchanted with the situation. They were quite alone, if not unobserved; and there was magic in the night, mystery and romance in the moonlight, the inky shadows, the sense of swift movement through space illimitable. Alison stood with back to the rail so near him that his elbow almost touched the artificial orchid that adorned her corsage. He was acutely sensitive of her presence, of the faint ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... but, ah, the night is for subtle overmastering rapture, for pregnant gloom, for thoughts that lie too deep for tears! If a wind springs up when the last ray of the sun shoots over the shoulder of the earth, then the ship roars through an inky sea, and the mysterious blending of terror and ecstasy cannot be restrained. Hoarsely the breeze shrieks in the cordage, savagely the water roars as it darts away astern like a broad fierce white flame. The vessel seems to spring forward and shake ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... north-west and was many degrees colder. The mist was furling on the hills like sails, the rain had ceased, and out at sea the eye covered a mile or two of wild water. The moor was drenching wet, and the peat bogs were brimming with inky pools, so that soon the travellers were soaked to the knees. Dickson had no fear of pursuit, for he calculated that Dobson and his friends, even if they had got out, would be busy looking for the truants in the vicinity of the House and would presently be engaged with the old Tower. But ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... a guide, we overshot the path, and having ridden about three miles through the gorge, always ascending, we suddenly burst upon the magnificent view of the northern side. At this moment a few heavy drops of rain fell from inky clouds which had been gathering among the mountains, and I thought it advisable to forego the excursion to St. Hilarion, and to push on towards Kyrenia, three miles distant, though apparently ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... thickly across the roaring torrent. The circles grew smaller. Tommy knew that he was being sucked nearer and nearer to the edge of some terrific whirlpool in that inky blackness. Now he could no longer hear Dodd's shouts, and the shell was tipping so that he could feel the water rushing along the edge of it. But for the exercise of centrifugal force he would have been flung from his perilous seat, for he was leaning ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... sky anxiously, very disgusted with himself. He knew they had no chance of getting home dry, but at least they must be out of the timber before the storm broke. It was coming very near now—the thunder was more frequent, and jagged lightning tore rents in the inky curtain that covered the sky. He took Monarch by the head, and sent him tearing along the track, passing the boys—Wally riding hard on Nan, and Cecil sitting back on Betty with a pale face. Before him Bobs ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Shawenigan, the half-dozen or so "Chaudiere," the Montmorenci or La Vache, but none of these can equal the St. Ignace in point of dignified, unspoilt approach and picturesque surroundings. For a mile above the cataract the river runs, an inky ribbon, between banks of amazing solitariness; no clearing is there, no sign of human habitation, hardly any vestige of animal life. The trees stand thick along the edges, are thick towards the high rocky table-land that lies on either side; it is, in short, a river flowing through a forest. And ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... three days the wind went worrying on, and a line of surf leapt on the sea-wall always to the same height. The hills all around were inky black and weary. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... before we reached San Bartolome. As we drew near the village, we saw a magnificent double rainbow, brilliantly displayed upon the eastern sky against a cloud of almost inky blackness. Looking westward, as we entered the village, we saw the sun setting in a sea of gold, between Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl. Watching this magnificent sunset, we sat down before the old church, and almost instantly a crowd gathered ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... and found the stranger full before her in the doorway, gazing at her with an enormous pair of sloe-black eyes, under heavy inky brows, set in a hard, red-complexioned face. She burst into a loud, hoydenish laugh as Loveday tried to stammer something about ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... plane. But this trail she dared not follow, there was not enough darkness on it. She crept along the base, the sense of danger coming to her with the increasing obscurity, until suddenly she stood before a cleft of almost inky hue. Here she remembered was the ascent to the estufa, here she had to perform the work, and here overpowered by emotion and excitement she dropped behind an angular ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... night in June, and the pavements were dry under foot and the streets were filled with well-dressed people, going home from the play, and with groups of men in black and white, making their way to supper at the clubs. Hansoms of inky-black, with shining lamps inside and out, dashed noiselessly past on mysterious errands, chasing close on each other's heels on a mad race, each to its separate goal. From the cross streets rose the noises of early night, the rumble of the 'buses, the ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... would send for the certificates, but his agent would not find them. The abduction? He would carry it through as he had promised. It was five thousand crowns in addition to his hundred thousand. He was rich! He shook his hand toward the inky sky, toward the palace, toward all that signified the past..... A ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... sailor suit, sat with his back to Nell. He kicked the rungs of the chair very often with his sturdy legs. His inky fingers took fond clutches of his curls, his lips murmured the rhyme of the "Ancient Mariner" in a monotonous sing-song. Nell pushed open the lattice window and looked out. There was a waggonette drawn by a rather bony old horse standing by the side entrance; behind the waggonette was a pony-cart, ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... house with festoons and bows of black in the best possible taste. She tied up the knocker with black crape, and put a large bow over the corner of the steel engraving of Garibaldi, and swathed the bust of Mr. Gladstone, that had belonged to the deceased, with inky swathings. She turned the two vases that had views of Tivoli and the Bay of Naples round, so that these rather brilliant landscapes were hidden and only the plain blue enamel showed, and she anticipated the long-contemplated purchase of a tablecloth for ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... threaded her way along, scarcely using her paddles now except to fend off the boats which, lying peaceably at their moorings, seemed to crowd around with intent to impede her, a schooner's masts and spars loomed up before her high against the inky night. Then she understood. The vessel—her name, the One-and-All, in white letters on her forward bulwarks, glimmered into sight as Myra passed—lay warped alongside the wall, with her foreyard braced aslant to avoid chafing the roof of Mr. Benny's office, and her mainmast ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her like a silver stream, except where it was interrupted and bridged over by jagged black shadows. The chapel itself was black, the clustering trees around it were black also; the porch seemed to cover an inky well of shadow; the windows were rayless and dead, and in the chancel one still left open showed a yawning vault of obscurity within. Nevertheless, she opened the door softly, glided into the dark ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Inky pinky, my black hen Lays eggs for gentlemen; Whiles ane, whiles twa, Whiles a bonnie black ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... from each of them half of its trunk and branches, and, weaving together the two halves that remained, would make of them either a single pillar of shade, defined by the surrounding light, or a single luminous phantom whose artificial, quivering contour was encompassed in a network of inky shadows. When a ray of sunshine gilded the highest branches, they seemed, soaked and still dripping with a sparkling moisture, to have emerged alone from the liquid, emerald-green atmosphere in which the whole grove was plunged as though beneath the sea. For ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... that terrace in Utopia, I see a little figure, a little bright-eyed, bearded man, inky black, frizzy haired, and clad in a white tunic and black hose, and with a mantle of lemon yellow wrapped about his shoulders. He walks, as most Utopians walk, as though he had reason to be proud ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... four o'clock of the morning of the 27th, explosions of indescribable grandeur continually took place, as if the mountains were in a continuous roar of terrestrial agony—the sky being at one moment of inky blackness, the next in a blaze of light, while hot, choking, and sulphurous ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... off in driving rain for an all-night march of 15 miles. The brigade transport was in front, and checks were naturally frequent as we retraced our steps through Bruay and Marles, thence on to Burbure, where our guide misled us through a narrow inky lane, in which most of the Brigade lost touch. Just as the dawn was breaking and our troubles seemed nearly over our guide again mistook the way, and we found ourselves bogged in a cart track at the top of a down. The rain and hail descended in a sudden ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... greyhound, a gift from Terry, had been sent to Scotland under the care of Mr. Magrath. Terry had called the dog Marmion, but Scott rechristened him Hamlet, in honor of his "inky coat."] ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... to the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... hymn-book from his pocket and opened it and found his place with the same air of smug efficiency. Robert had no book. He longed for one. He knew that the clergyman was watching him again. His companion nudged him, and by a stab of a stumpy, inky forefinger indicated the verse which he himself was singing in an aggressive treble. But Robert only stared helplessly. At another time he might have recognized "God—love—dove—" and other words of one syllable, and he liked the ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... he poked around with the pen Jessie had given him, but though he could feel the soldier at the bottom of the inkwell, he could not make the pen stick in him. Once the pen slipped and the ink splashed out on the desk. Sunny Boy wiped it up with his hands. They were inky anyway, and a little ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... who stood waiting, looking out of the window at the gunboat which was now churning in toward the wharf, billows of inky smoke pouring from ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... She was utterly content; for the moment all life narrowed down to the immediate surroundings, and she wished childishly that they could ride so for ever through eternity. The night was brilliant. The stars blazed against the inky blackness of the sky, and the light of the full moon was startlingly clear and white. The discordant yelling of a pack of hunting jackals came from a little distance, breaking the perfect stillness. The men were riding ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... as I am that yer and me is standin' here," rejoined the bewildered captain. "I've sailed the seven seas in my day, and man and boy seen many queer things; but if this don't beat cock fightin', I'm an inky Senegambian!" ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... the Gray Dragon brought pressure upon the American ambassador, a man of the highest repute, of sterling and patriotic qualities? The answer seemed to be, that the coils of the Gray Dragon extended everywhere, like an inky fluid which had leaked into every crevice and crack of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... was Jest and Youthful Jollity before. And the blacker things get the earlier we rise. It seems to me that no sooner have I fitted myself compactly into my doll's-size bed and closed my eyes than I hear her mournful summons to another day. Oh, the inky gloom of these murky mornings! I know that the young woman who said so lyrically, "If you're waking, call me early, call me early, Mother dear!" is popularly supposed to have died without issue, but that is a misconception. I shrink from putting ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest, wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and, chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together, passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... thousand and covered the table and floor; and the milk, of which a large quantity was taken daily, "turned" in a very curious manner. After being deposited, in its usual place, in the pantry, it began to darken; first of all it became light blue, then deepened into an almost inky blackness, exhibiting curious zigzag lines; and, lastly, the whole mass began to putrefy and to emit a stench so overpowering that every one in the house retched, and the whole place had to be disinfected. This occurred day after day. Nothing would ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... not least, on that portentous morn, 480 The sixteenth story, where himself was born, His patrimonial garret, fell to ground, And pale Edina shuddered at the sound: Strewed were the streets around with milk-white reams, Flowed all the Canongate with inky streams; This of his candour seemed the sable dew, That of his valour showed the bloodless hue; And all with justice deemed the two combined The mingled emblems of his mighty mind. But Caledonia's goddess hovered o'er 490 The field, and saved him from the wrath of Moore; From either pistol ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... speaker, turned to take a second look at him. There was very little light; for the night had grown darker as it wore on, and the few stars that had glimmered faintly had hid their diminished heads behind the piles of inky clouds. Still, there was a sort of faint phosphorescent light whitening the gloom, and by it Sir Norman's keen bright eyes discovered that he wore a long dark cloak and slouched hat. He discovered something ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... altogether, but the inky sea exhibited a singular and alarming appearance, leaping into low waves which had no run in any direction, and which presented more the appearance of what we see on the surface of a simmering caldron than anything else to which ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... through the smallest chinks, and flow up to him like a cloud of dust intent on burying him. However, increasing apathy crept upon him as he lay there with shrunken arms and pallid features; his weakness augmented as the earth grew more ailing. At times, when the clouds were inky black, when the bending trees cracked, and the grass lay limp beneath the downpour like the hair of a drowned woman, he all but ceased to breathe, and seemed to be passing away, shattered by the hurricane. But at the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... as it is to a large and populous city, the traditions of the past come so strongly upon the mind, that one would rather look for the apparition of a whole band of these inky-haired adder-anointed priests of Montezuma, than expect to meet with the benevolent-looking archbishop, who, in purple robes, occasionally walks under the shade of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the train of his thought. Another and a worse one crowded close upon it. He glanced up through the trees into the inky cavern of the skies, and a single large drop of water spattered ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... there awhile longer, until the slopes lay softly revealed to her, their hollows filled with inky shadows. She drew a long breath then, and looked around her at the familiar details of the Bar Nothing dwelling-place, softened a little by the moonlight, but harsh with her memories of unhappy days spent there. She rose and went into the house and to her room, and ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... rose the ridge that culminated where rose the gallows, and stood inky black against the silvery light of ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould |
