"Underfoot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marching us through street after street, one of them whistling that pleasing tune, Le lendemain elle etait souriante. Dark passage ways intervened between us and our destination: we threaded them. The cobble stones of the underfoot were not easy to walk on for my companion, shod in high-heels from the Place Vendome.... The urchins amused each other and us by capers on the way. They could have made our speed walking on their hands, and they accomplished at least a third of the journey this way. Of course, I ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... my wit's end as to how I should weigh anchor, for through an accident to the windlass right here I could not budge it. However, I set all sail and filled away, first hauling short by hand. The sloop carried her anchor away, as though it was meant to be always towed in this way underfoot, and with it she towed a ton or more of kelp from a reef in the bay, the wind ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... apparently guided by some primitive instinct to choose the right path, or else able, like a cat, to see the way through the gloom, his beacon a huge rock to the northward. Silently hour after hour, galloping, trotting, walking, according to the ground underfoot, the two pressed grimly forward, with the unerring skill of the border, into the untracked wilderness. Flying clouds obscured the stars, yet through the rifts they caught fleeting glimpses sufficient to hold them to their course. And the encroaching ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... irresolutely to Tasso, who was also uncertain what to do; but the tone was imperative; they were accustomed to obey. Crowds were now jostling them; women were crying; children were pushed hither and thither, their little toys trodden underfoot, more a grievance to them than the quaking earth. With a regretful glance at the donkey, Tessa and Tasso jumped into the carriage, which drove away as fast as the frightened horses could get through the throng. Miles and miles away they went ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... Chinese Wall. The lips of many men, strange save to common sayings, are loosed to murmurings of deepest yearning before the spectacle of a full-rigged ship; and it matters not if, within memory, they have ever felt the tug of filling cloth in the timber underfoot, or crossed even an inland waterway without steam. It was this that the flight of geese gave me—a throb from the ancient and perennial romance ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... all began to ask what had become of the order I had just written, for it could not be found. They surrounded me, saying that I had not written it at all, and I was on the point of being trampled underfoot, when a militiaman found it all crumpled up in his pocket. The threats grew louder, and once more it was because I did not carry the flag high enough, everyone insisting that I was quite tall enough to display it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... stern answered to the steady pull of the line and dragged away from the edge of the sand until she pointed fair into the channel again. Forward, men hove in the cable until the anchor was underfoot; aft, men tailed on to the main halliards and sent the great mainsail aloft with a will. Barry waved the second mate back to the wheel and sent Rolfe forward to finish picking up the anchor. Then he swung around at a shout from the shore. He had ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... to duck, and they passed tinder a low roof where water dripped on them, and the rock underfoot was the bed of a shallow stream. After that the track began to rise, and the grade grew so steep that even Ismail, the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Majesty's colonels or secretary under the Crown. Here are the tombs of the Atkinsons, the Jaffreys, the Sherburnes, the Sheafes, the Marshes, the Mannings, the Gardners, and others of the quality. All around you underfoot are tumbled-in coffins, with here and there a rusty sword atop, and faded escutcheons, and crumbling armorial devices. You are moving in ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... fruits of the human mind very much as the naturalist classifies the objects of his study, rather than to praise or blame them; that there is a measure of the same absurdity in his trampling on a poem, a novel, or an essay that does not please him as in the botanist's grinding a plant underfoot because he does not find it pretty. He does not conceive that it is his business rather to identify the species and then explain how and where the specimen is imperfect and irregular. If he could once acquire ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... clearing, the brief bright afterglow was shining, for the trim grass and shrubs of an upwardsloping lawn were clearly visible. For some minutes the water and the swamp underfoot had given place to firmer ground, and the character of the trees themselves had changed. Evidently, the trail had its ending at that screen of vineleaves draped between two giant gumbo-limbo ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... breakfast. Not being particular as to direction, they followed the first old logging road that they came to. It led them deeper and deeper into the forest that was alive with the sounds and scents of spring. Last year's fallen leaves made a springy carpet underfoot, while robins sang their spring song in ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... clearing space. The ring of savage faces closed in, raining upon him spear-thrusts and bone-barbed arrows. The sun shot up, and they swayed back and forth in the crimson shadows. Twice, with his axe blocked by too deep a blow, they rushed him; but each time he flung them clear. They fell underfoot and he trampled dead and dying, the way slippery with blood. And still the day brightened and the robins sang. Then they drew back from him in awe, and he leaned breathless ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... their compartments. Seats were littered with snake-skins like immense, decayed apple parings; fearsome, crescent-shaped knives; leopard rugs in embryo; and strange headgear in many varieties. Stuffed crocodiles fell down from racks and got underfoot: men walked about with elephant tusks under their arms; dragomans solicited a last tip; a six-foot seven Dinka, black as ink and splendid as a Greek statue, brought flowers from the Palace for some departing ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... places," said the Princess; "flat miles on miles of slim pines melting into grayness, sunlight sifting through their plumy tops, with gray birds wheeling in flocks, or troops of red-headed woodpeckers, and underfoot nothing but needles and gray sand. Far ahead on every side the pines draw together, but where one walks they are wide apart, so that one seems always about to approach a forest and never finds ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... with a ceaseless swell. Dromedaries, smeared all over with tar-like streaks, knocked down the women, who carried their children on their hips. The provisions in the baskets were pouring out; in walking, pieces of salt, parcels of gum, rotten dates, and gourou nuts were crushed underfoot; and sometimes on vermin-covered bosoms there would hang a slender cord supporting a diamond that the Satraps had sought, an almost fabulous stone, sufficient to purchase an empire. Most of them did not even know what they desired. They were impelled by fascination or curiosity; and nomads ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... my Education, which depended on Schools, there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what others learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, did little for me, except discover that he could do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions; and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day to the University. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... her ravishing smile and fascinating ways—but few, save cynics, could reasonably dispute her physical perfections, or question the right she had to tempt and arouse the passions of men, or to trample underfoot? with an air of insolent superiority, the feelings of women less fair and fortunate. Most of her sex envied her,—but Mrs. Rush-Marvelle, who was past the prime of life, and, who, moreover, gained her social successes through ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... depths. "Louis and I went up to see the banana patch," says the diary, "Louis carrying a knife to clear the road. For a little way we followed a fairly open path that had previously been cleared by Louis, but by and by it began to close up and become treacherously boggy underfoot. Several times we were ankle-deep in mud and water, and Louis had to slash down the tall vegetation that obstructed our way. Before long he cried out: 'Behold your banana patch!' And there it was, sure enough—a great number of sturdy, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... you want the walk!" she answered resignedly. "Though you've a queer taste in walks, for the streets are terrible underfoot. But I suppose you're shut up all day at your work. You'll just have to sit down and wait till I've checked the literature and handed in the takings. I doubt yon stout body in plum-coloured velveteen who ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... breath, as he stepped on to the rugged wood in the black darkness, for the moonbeams were shut out now by the rocks, overhead, and then, as he took step for step behind his companion, so close to him that he kept kicking his heels, he felt the difference underfoot for a few paces and the tree trunk yield and give a little in an elastic way. Then all at once the character of the path was changed, and Nic felt the hard rock ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... was Spinello with his horrible and portentous Production that it was commonly reported—so great is alway the force of fancy—that the said figure (of Lucifer trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the Altar-piece of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo) painted by him had appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him in what place he had beheld him ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... his shadow in front of him. It was outlined on a faint, almost indistinct reddish glow, which vaguely empurpled the flooring vault underfoot, and the vault overhead, and gilded to his right and to his left the two viscous walls of the passage. Stupefied, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... things, and God made him ruler over many things. For out of those monasteries sprang—what did not spring? They restored again and again sound law and just government, when the good old Teutonic laws, and the Roman law also, was trampled underfoot amid the lawless strife of ambition and fury. Under their shadow sprang up the towns with their corporate rights, their middle classes, their artizan classes. They were the physicians, the alms-givers, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... valor. For it occurs that an Indian, man or woman, may be walking along the road and hear a horse which is coming behind him, running or going at a quick pace; but this Indian never turns his face. If the horse come in front of him, he will not turn out of the road so that he may not be trampled underfoot, if he who comes on horseback does not turn out with greater consideration. The same thing occurs when they see a very large banca coming down upon them with long sweeps of the oars, while they are in a small banquilla; when ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... set to groping along it, and presently found a gap. There was an old iron gate on broken hinges, which we easily pushed open, and found ourselves on a back path to some house. It was clearly disused, for masses of rotting leaves covered it, and by the feel of it underfoot ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... which, because of the bad in us, he has to carry out in suffering and sorrow, his own and his Son's Evil is a hard thing for God himself to overcome. Yet thoroughly and altogether and triumphantly will he overcome it; and that not by crushing it underfoot—any god of man's idea could do that!—but by conquest of heart over heart, of life in life, of life over death. Nothing shall be too hard for the God that fears not pain, but will deliver and make true and blessed at his ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... stuccoed hangars at the edge of the white field. I looked up quickly, to catch a glimpse of a bright object hurtling through the air above our heads. The bellowing scream ended abruptly in a thunderous crash. I felt a tremor of the ground underfoot. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... learned what had happened, and rode out with all his knights. When he saw this mass of ragged rascals, drunk and savage, but all wearing the red cross, he fell in a rage and attacked them. Those who did not fly were trampled underfoot and sabred down so mercilessly, that, out of the sixty thousand, only three thousand reached Constantinople, among whom ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... time the tillers of the soil cursed the traveller who brought the potato, the substitute for bread, the poor man's daily food.... They shook the precious gift out of his outstretched hands, flung it in the mud, trampled it underfoot. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... out above the pine-wood. They reached and passed the spot where she and Scott had turned back on their first walk together. The snow crunched crisply underfoot. The ascent was becoming more ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... to happen, and the colours in which it is depicted show how closely allied were the Johannine notions to those of the Pharisees. The glories of the New Jerusalem are to be reserved for Jews, while for the Roman tyrants of Judaea is reserved a fearful retribution. They are to be trodden underfoot by the Messiah, like grapes in a wine-press, until the gushing blood shall rise to the height of the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the home of the north wind. The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot,—the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... under the patronage of the famous Alpine Club of London, which has borne even to India the fame of its climbers. With this difference, that the Tarasconese, instead of expatriating themselves on foreign summits, are content with those they have in hand, or rather underfoot, at the gates ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... us trample religion underfoot, that the victory gained over it may place us on an equality with heaven" (book i.). See Diogenes Laertius, "Lives of the Philosophers," bk. x. ch. xxiv. pp. 453,454 (Bohn's edition); Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things," bk. i. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... is impossible to walk in that fateful way in a crowded city thoroughfare. Besides, one passes so many confectioners with their mingled temptation and disgust. Pudge rode on the trolley as far as the city limits. Here there was softer ground underfoot and a hint of melancholy in the fields. A flock of crows going over ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... come from century to century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. The nations around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent servitude. Should some ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... not come unto Me, that ye might have life.' They can never be so madly ungrateful as to slight a Saviour. Mercy never wooed their stubborn, proud hearts as it does ours. They have abused grace, it is true, but they never trampled mercy underfoot. This more than diabolical sin is reserved for thee, careless sinner. Now thou hearest Christ compassionately say in the text, 'Ye will not come unto Me,' and thou remainest unmoved; but the time cometh when Jesus, who meekly entreats, ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... fiery rays of the sun, she put down her sunshade and John took off his hat. The silence and gloom, the great gnarled trees, with their thews and sinews, their arms and thighs and loins, the gentle rustle of the breeze in the branches overhead, the deep accumulation of dead leaves underfoot, the fluttering of wings, the low cooing of pigeons, and all the mystery and wonder of the wood, brought a sense of awe, as on entering a mighty minster in the dusk. But this wore away presently, and Glory began to sing. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... in a bay some two miles from the shore, and let me tell you, if you do not know it, that Arctic ice is no skating-rink. There are great hills, and knolls, and bergs, and valleys spread all over, and even where it's about level, the underfoot is as hard going as a newly-metalled road before the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... equality. Whatever her private opinion may be, she is helpless, and she must treat her conquerors with deference as superiors. But Japan has never been conquered by the foreigner. She is the only nation among all the nations of the Orient that has never been trodden underfoot by the European. She has never been subjugated and never been drugged. And, curious coincidence, she has reached a level with the foremost powers of the world, and holds the rank of a first-class nation. All this without ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop up into the air at the same time, flashing in the sun as though they were glad to have done their work and to get out again. They rolled by the dozens underfoot, and twinkled in the grass, and when one shifted his position in the narrow trench, or stretched his cramped legs, they tinkled musically. It was like wading in ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... autumn a fire had passed that way, and the great trees towered above them, stripped and blackened columns, that seemed to stretch between earth and sky. There was no limb left them, and they rose, majestic in their cylindrical symmetry, in apparently endless battalions, a vista of plutonic desolation. Underfoot there was charcoal, and feathery ashes that whirled aloft, and sprinkling the men with a fine grey powder slowly ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... little store, while they, tugging their basket between them, found and followed the path by the Rushing Water. It was as alluring as ever—berries still clung to the undergrowth, gleaming red against the dark of the fir trees; the dead leaves underfoot crackled softly as though protesting their intrusion; there was a whirring of wings and always the ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... which indeed was typical of many, was a corridor with wings opening off, about 40 feet deep and some 30 yards long, with 4 entrances, on each of which stood double sentries day and night. Garbage and all the putrefying matter which had accumulated underfoot during German occupation and which it did not repay to disturb for fear of a worse thing, rendered vile the atmosphere within. Old German socks and shirts, used and half-used beer bottles, sacks of sprouting and rotting onions, vied with mud to cover the ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... kind of communication was practicable between the ships. It now became necessary, therefore, to provide against the possibility of the ships being forced on shore by the total disruption of the ice between them and the beach, and the pressure of that without, by letting go a bower-anchor underfoot, which was accordingly done as soon as there was a hole in the ice under the bows of each sufficiently large to allow the anchors to pass through. We had now been quite ready for sea for some days; and a regular and anxious look-out ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... she soever, and to maintain that same against him, on horse or afoot, with lance, battle-axe or sword. Thus, see you messire, even a love-lorn lover hath betimes his compensations, and the sward is soft underfoot, and level." Saying which, the knight cocked a delicate eyebrow in questioning fashion, and laid a slender finger to the pommel ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the victory was due to the cavalry and elephants. The cavalry drove that of Italy from the field, and attacked the Roman rear. The elephants broke through the Roman lines in front, furiously trampling the bravest underfoot. Those who penetrated the line of the elephants were cut to pieces by the Carthaginian infantry. Of the whole Roman army, two thousand of the left wing alone escaped; Regulus, with five hundred others, fled, but was pursued and ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... men but the crowd rolled over them like a wave. The captor shouted his identity and tried to display the gold badge of the secret service but the mob was in no state of mind to listen. The police were trampled underfoot and the would-be assassin torn from the hands of the secret service operative. Every man in reach tried to strike a blow. The secret service man was buffeted and thrown aside. Realizing that the affair had been taken out of his hands, he made his way to the ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... became a panic, then a rout. Men threw away their baggage, then their guns, all in a mad rush to put the stream between themselves and the dreaded "gray-backs." Cannon were abandoned, men mounted the horses and fled in wild disorder, trampling underfoot those who came between them and safety, while others limbered up their pieces and went at headlong speed, only to be upset or tangled in an unrecognizable mass on Stone Bridge. The South Carolinians pressed them to the very crossing, capturing prisoners and guns; among the latter was ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and brutal, and the pirate's trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh and overbearing, impatient of correction and prone to trample other men's feelings underfoot. Was this, he asked himself in all honesty, a mate for Rosamund? Could he entrust her happiness to the care of such a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... tragedy, oppressed by the weight of all her senseless jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious hand which had, in curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her. "Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... innumerable pores of earth, To set her all a-shake—even as a chill, When it hath gone into our marrow-bones, Sets us convulsively, despite ourselves, A-shivering and a-shaking. Therefore, men With two-fold terror bustle in alarm Through cities to and fro: they fear the roofs Above the head; and underfoot they dread The caverns, lest the nature of the earth Suddenly rend them open, and she gape, Herself asunder, with tremendous maw, And, all confounded, seek to chock it full With her own ruins. Let men, then, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... with tears and fright. Gray-haired old men shiver with terror and try to hide in any small corner. Lost children and deserted ones, frantic with fear, cling to any passer-by, only to be shoved into the street and often trampled underfoot. And through it all, the mob runs and pitilessly mows down with sword and knife as it goes, and plunders and sacks till ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... doing nothing else but sneezing, in spite of the odd rugs, for in a drawing-room you don't just happen to think where you're standing. But here when you just sit down at your table or by your fire it would be so easy to take care you've got the thing underfoot. I must send you a rug to-morrow—you know I ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... opened to the people. I was curious enough to enter with the rest, and, I must own, I was quite surprised at the magnificence and taste with which the building was decorated. The walls were covered with silk and velvet hangings, ornamented with gold fringe, while rich carpets were spread underfoot. On large tables, in the middle of the nave, were displayed the most valuable specimens of the church plate, gold and silver vases, immense dishes, plates, and goblets, artistically engraved, and ornamented with embossed or open work; while magnificent ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... journeys to the school were all to show it was not some pioneer colony in a new, white, silent world that heard only the playful shouts and songs of the buccaroos. The sun overhead and the hard-crushing snow underfoot filled every one with ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... with wet. The air was full of the prolonged thunder of the surf, and at intervals sea-birds passed overhead with an occasional piping cry. Wreckage was tumbled about here and there; and innumerable cocoanut shards, huge, brown cups of fuzzy bark, lay underfoot and in the crevices of the rocks. They found a jellyfish—a pulpy translucent mass; and once even caught a sight of a seal in the hollow of a breaker, with sleek and shining head, his barbels bristling, and heard his hoarse croaking bark as he ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... was a long time before Kazan and Gray Wolf could draw forth their heads and breathe more freely. Then they found that the finger of sand reaching out into the river had saved them. Everywhere in that triangle between the two rivers the world had turned black, and was hot underfoot. ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... happy, and Billy fought with himself every hour to keep down his own gloom and despair. The sun helped him. It rose earlier each day and remained longer in the sky, and soon the warmth of it began to soften the snow underfoot. The vast fields of ice began to give evidence of the approach of spring, and the air was more and more filled with the thunderous echoes of the "break up." Great floes broke from the shore-runs, and the sea began to open. Down from the north the powerful arctic currents began to move their ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... obscure, and the time seemed that of twilight; in the narrow line of sky visible far overhead between the two rows of house-roofs, I could not discern sun, moon, or stars, or color of any kind. All was grey, impenetrable, and dim. Underfoot, between the paving-stones of the street, grass was springing. Nowhere was the least sign of life: the place seemed utterly deserted. I stood alone in the midst of profound silence and desolation. Silence? No! As I listened, there came to my ears from all sides, dully at first and almost ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... like a mean-spirited imbecile with Sissy's impertinent finger under her wrist, while all outdoors was calling to her; for which she had forborne often and often during the week, only to be more thoroughly bullied on Saturdays. Yet she tore it across and recklessly trampled it underfoot. Then with her hands over her ears, lest she hear the imperturbable and maddeningly excellent Sissy play "In Sweet Dreams" without the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... were two of them, as before. But he could not see well, the woods seemed darker than before; and, besides, they did not pass so near to him. They went on like ghostly, silent shadows, only the scrunch of the cones underfoot told of ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... of unwarded blows; the sharp scream of agony as some poor wretch felt the stroke of the merciless steel; the cries and groans of those who had been smitten down, and, still conscious, were being trampled underfoot by the combatants; the deep muttered curse; the sharp word of command; and the occasional cheer that broke from the lips of our own gallant lads. Suddenly there was a louder hurrah, a quick scurrying rush, a loud shout of command in Spanish for every man ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... slope. A packed snowfield was underfoot, firm enough to hold our weight, with a foot or so of loose, soft snow on its top. The falling flakes whirled around us. The darkness was solid. Our helmeted leather-furred flying suits were soon shapeless with ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... looked more like a splendid English park, long preserved, than the recent haunt of naked savages. There were deer and quail in abundance, here and there an open field of grain. Long beards of pale green moss waved from the white oaks, wild flowers, golden red and pale blue, burst underfoot. There were hedges of sweet briar, acres of lupins, purple and yellow. Altogether the ideal estate of a nobleman; and Rezanov, who had liked nothing in California so well, gave his imagination rein and saw the counterpart of the castle of his ancestors rise in the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... there, and one must go along with everything. The chasm into which the cataract falls is hidden by dense masses of snowy foam and spray, rising in an everlasting creation of cloud up into the sky, and vailing the frantic fury of the caldron below, where the waves churn and tread each other underfoot in the rocky abyss that receives them, in darkness which the sun's rays cannot penetrate nor the strongest wind for a moment disperse; a mystery, of which its thousand voices reveal nothing. It is nonsense writing about it—seeing and hearing are certainly, in this case, the only ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... as black as powdered soot, Spitting hot poison high into the air, Brought terror to the army underfoot, And crept and coiled ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... Russia, and paid the penalty under the governments of Alexander II and III.[365] The sympathy of every unbiased man, to whatever race or religion he may belong, will naturally go out to a race or a nation which is trodden underfoot, as were the ill-starred Jews of Russia ever since the partition of Poland. But equality one would have thought sufficient to meet the grievance. Full equality without reservation. That was the view taken by numerous Jews in Poland and Rumania, several ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... went down all the way talking. I have but little remembrance of the path. I remember the cool, bright freshness of the light, and its brilliant gleam in the distance after it had left the hillside. I have an impression of the calm clear beauty that was underfoot and overhead that afternoon; but I saw it only as I could see it while giving my thought to something else. Sometimes, holding hands, we took runs down the mountain side; then walked demurely again when we got to easier going. We had come to the lower region at last, and were not ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... road." But this was not so. The present was after all the real thing. The dreams could wait. The knowledge that they were there, waiting, made all the ordinary things more beautiful and more interesting. The feel of the soft dust underfoot, the bright, dewy grass and clover by the wayside, the lessening of houses and the growing wideness of field and pasture, all contented and delighted Dickie. He felt to the full all the joy that Mr. Beale felt in "'oofing it," and when as the sun was sinking they overtook ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... Conroy. "That's the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot I must put on my galoshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The next thing he'll buy me will be a ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... observed in time in riding through the thicket. A very dense forest of young Callitris trees next impeded us, and were more formidable than even the vines. The day was passed in forcing our way through these various scrubs, the ground declining by a gentle slope only. We next found firmer soil underfoot, that where the Callitris scrub grew having been sandy, and we saw at length, with a feeling of relief, that only brigalow scrub was before us; we ascended gravelly hills, came upon a dry water-course, and then on ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and sue the company ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but I will be a devoted husband to you. Any man who gets the love of a good woman," continued Yates earnestly, plagiarizing Renmark, "gets more than he deserves; but surely such love as mine is not given merely to be scornfully trampled underfoot." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... she forged ahead Davis slewed her for the channel between the pier-ends of the reef, the breakers sounding and whitening to either hand. Straight through the narrow band of blue she shot to seaward; and the captain's heart exulted as he felt her tremble underfoot, and (looking back over the taffrail) beheld the roofs of Papeete changing position on the shore and the island mountains ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... followed it listlessly. The track led him through a beech wood; the smooth and shapely stems, that stood free of undergrowth, thickly roofed over by firm and glossy autumn foliage, with the rusty fallen floor of last year's leaves underfoot, brought back to him his delight in the sweet and fresh world—so beautiful, whatever the restless human heart desired in ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a mental upheaval of later life, the basis of that theological training has made itself felt to me, as one feels rocks or stumps or solid things underfoot in the sickly swaying of wet sands. I may not always believe all I was taught, but what I was taught has helped me to what I believe. I certainly think of those theological lectures with ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through the pines on ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... their keen edge—for even ice will dull a saw in a day or two. We had also to be pretty careful, for it was over deep black water, and a cake when nearly sawed across is likely to break off suddenly underfoot. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... said Sir Humphrey; and five minutes afterwards a match was applied to the heap of perfectly dry wood underfoot. It caught fire at once and began blazing up, sending forth such a glow of light that the men set up a cheer, drawn from them by the excitement and wonder of the weird scene which ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... when Ma came back to earth and opened her eyes there were the great smiling mountains, the clear, clean waters foaming over the rocks, and underfoot was the cool, green grass, not that hot, hard 'dobe clay she had always known. Trees, too! Beautiful whispering trees, with smooth leaves instead of burrs and spines and stickers. Nor was there the faintest choking smell ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... some strange whim of a panic-maddened crowd but few had discovered this exit, high above the seats in the balcony; for all had rushed below and were struggling in a wild, frantic mass, trampling one another underfoot in a mad struggle to reach the doorways. The flames were sweeping over the platform now, licking out into the very pit of the theater, and people were terrified. Stephen saw in an instant that the upper door, being farthest away from the center of the fire, was the place of greatest safety. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... said the boy, giving the imp the name he had richly earned by repeated flagellations. "Never you mind. I am not ashamed to show my naked hide, you know. But it is against orders in these seas to go overboard, unless with a sail underfoot; so I sha'n't run the risk of being tatooed by the boatswain's mate, like some one I could ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... open woodland glade that is part of the wilderness portion of Lord Fairfax's estate beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, 1748. Trees at right, left, and background. Trailing vines. Low bushes. Underfoot a carpet of rotting leaves. At the left, near foreground, a fire smolders. Near it are spread a bearskin used as a sleeping-blanket, some pine boughs, surveyors' tools, and a tin box. At the right a fallen tree-trunk, mossed, vine-covered. The time is mid-afternoon. The lads who ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... mighty forces. An hour's easy ride would carry him to a region as barren and apparently as irreclaimable as that through which Childe Roland journeyed in quest of the Dark Tower; lying, too, in a temperature so fiery that it coagulated the blood in the veins, and stopped the beating of the heart. Underfoot were fine dust, and whitened bones; the air was prismatic and magical, ever conjuring up phantom pictures, whose characteristic was that they were at the farthest remove from any possible reality. The azure sky descended and became a lake; the pulsations of the atmosphere translated themselves ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... do for you to go on chopping at that rate, for when I fended off he made my whole hand tingle with the force of his blow; so I darts at him and drives the hilt of my cutlass right into his mouth, and he fell, and his own men trod him underfoot, and on we went, hammer and tongs. By this time the boarding of the launch and pinnace to leeward, for they could not get up as soon as we did, created a divarsian, and bothered the Frenchman, who hardly knew which way to turn; however, as there were ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... I rose and went into the gardens to enjoy a dip in a pool, making, with its surrounding jungle of flowers, one of the pleasantest things about the wood-king's forest citadel. The very earth seemed scorched and baking underfoot—and the pool was gone! It had run as dry as a limekiln; nothing remained of the pretty fall which had fed it but a miserable trickle of drops from the cascade above. Down beyond the town shone a gleam of water where the bitter canal steamed and simmered in the first grey of the morning, but ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... sharper and the rumble of guns was uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or as the shells passed shrieking and then bursting with jarring detonations. Underfoot the pavements were inch-deep with fallen glass, and as you walked it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order, some of the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the glass into neat piles. Habit is often so much stronger than fear. So is curiosity. All the boys and many ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... very, very humble. I have put my foolish pride underfoot. I am not broken. I am still very proud and, I fear, self-conceited, in spite of my severe lesson. Enid is beautiful, and I know it, and it helps me write this letter, but I have no right to ask even friendship from you. My proved failure as a playwright ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... looking extremely young and attractively impertinent. She mayn't care a rap for him; she says she doesn't, so I suppose she knows her own mind; still, the contrast between our years is in his favour, and with him under my nose as well as continuously underfoot, I see myself as (I fear) others see me. Yet I may not be able to keep my head if a chance should come. And if I lose it—my head, I mean—that's the time to ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the open the priest crashed back into cover, and I went to the village of Arti-goth for a drink. It was pleasant to be able to see the horizon all round, as well as the ground underfoot. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... dream. And so great are the owl's powers of sight and hearing, and so swift is her "stoop" from the sky to the ground, that the bank-vole has little chance of escape should a single grass-stalk rustle underfoot when she is hovering near his haunt. Far from being shy and retiring in her disposition, the brown owl, directly night steals over the woodlands, is so fearless that probably no animal smaller than the hare can in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Mid-Continent, with its cumbersome counters and partitions done in walnut veneer and its old-fashioned pavement in squares of black and white. I thought too of Johnny McComas's new institution, with so many bright brass handrails and such a spread of tasteful mosaics underfoot. How had they fared? Well, they had fared quite differently. Why should a big, old bank go under, while a new, little bank continues to float. I cannot tell you. I was far away at the time. Perhaps I could not ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... The uproar and the glare made the horses unmanageable, and in a few moments the whole mass, human beings and animals, was mingled in helpless confusion, making flight impossible by their very eagerness to fly, and trampling one another underfoot in bewildered misery. Of those who did succeed in extricating themselves from the square, half made their way to the road which runs along the bank of the river, and found that they had only exchanged one ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... life than their liquor. This passion we share with them, and herein we are like them. Grant that their flight is feigned; yet they will light upon the Scots ere they can come back. This gold shall never rust in the country, to be trodden underfoot of swine or brutes: it will better serve the use of men. Besides, if we plunder the spoil of the army that prevailed over us, we transfer the luck of the conqueror to ourselves. For what surer omen of triumph could be got, than to bear off the booty before the battle, and to capture ere the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... was outlined with the protruding ends of white earthen bottles, so in vogue in the southland a few years ago; a wide, coolly-dark veranda ran the length of the building; through three-feet-thick walls the doorways invited to further coolness. Howard stood aside for them to enter. They found underfoot a bare floor; it had been sprinkled from a watering pot earlier in the afternoon. The room was big and dusky; a few rawhide-bottomed chairs, a long rough table painted moss-green, some shelves with books, furnished the apartment. At one end ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... society. The next few days were busy ones for all, though rather dismal to me, as I was confined almost entirely indoors, owing to the awful state of the streets; for in the colonies, at this season of the year, one may go out prepared for fine weather, with blue sky above, and dry underfoot, and in less than an hour, should a colonial shower come on, be unable to cross some of the streets without a plank being placed from the middle of the road to the pathway, or the alternative of walking in water up ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... was narrow and crooked. There was a thick carpet of dust underfoot, patterned by the prints of the Folk. They rounded a corner and a tall door loomed out of the gloom. Urg pressed the surface, there was a click and the ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... most admirable institutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares—yes I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, but my lord claps spurs to his hunter, and away ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... haste the three men pursued their way. A thaw had set in, chill and cloudy; underfoot the snow was soft and melting, and all through the forest they heard the drip of a thousand trees and the creaking and swinging of boughs in the wind. As the morning wore on and they warmed to their work, the two Norsemen talked ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... limp body. It delayed the whole gang, for they could not go on faster than a jog-trot. The wind, however, was falling off in violence. Its shrill whistling ceased, at length, and they went on, accompanied only by the harsh crunching of the snow underfoot. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... covert was inwoven shade Laurel and Mirtle, and what higher grew Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushie shrub Fenc'd up the verdant wall; each beauteous flour, Iris all hues, Roses, and Gessamin Rear'd high thir flourisht heads between, and wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, 700 Crocus, and Hyacinth with rich inlay Broiderd the ground, more colour'd then with stone Of costliest Emblem: other Creature here Beast, Bird, Insect, or Worm durst enter none; Such was thir awe of man. In shadier ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... incorrectly apply to the great red-haired anthropoid, means "man in debt.") The Bornean jungle is a place of indescribable dismalness and dread, its gloom seldom dissipated by the sun, its awesome silence broken only by the stirrings of the unseen creatures which lurk underfoot and overhead ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... that fretted her like a cloud of midges day and night? How small they seemed in the wide silence of these brooding hills, with the sunlight lying warm on the murmuring ocean below, and the sweet kindly earth underfoot! ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... my first day gone. It is cold here—slushy underfoot, snow dirty, sky dark. How different from a place ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... any. That sort of thing lay outside the lives of those who had to make their living as quickly as possible in beaten tracks; tracks so well-beaten, in fact, that all the flowers had been trodden underfoot and exterminated. ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... put her pony to a long, easy, swinging canter and her followers did likewise. As they got outward into the valley Shefford lost the sense of being overshadowed and crowded by the nearness of the huge walls and crags. The trail appeared level underfoot, but at a distance it was seen to climb. Shefford found where it disappeared over the foot of a slope that formed a graceful rising line up to the cedared flank of the mesa. The valley floor, widening away to the north, remained level and green. Beyond rose the jagged ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... expressed; but whither had flown his former keen spirit? He could no longer summon up the old impetuous dash with which he had meant to fall upon his opponent's arguments one after another, raze them to the ground and trample them underfoot like the entrenchments and fortifications in some ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... wake up," continued the Little Russian, tossing his head and letting his hands drop alongside his body, "and look around, you see it's all filthy and cold. All are tired and angry; human life is all churned up like mud on a busy highway, and trodden underfoot!" ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... short and stout; his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, the genial influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great drops of perspiration into his face. ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... poured death into the crowded ranks. The gates were at once thrown open, and Cortez at the head of his cavalry dashed out, followed by the infantry and the Tlascalan allies. Confused by the slaughter made by the firearms, the Aztecs could offer no resistance to the onslaught. The cavalry trampled them underfoot, and mowed them down with sword and lance. The Spanish foot and Tlascalans following close behind carried on the work of destruction, and it seemed to the Spaniards that the fight was already over, when ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... the bracken of the little copse that was like a tuft of hair on the brow of the great white quarry. It was quite dark, in among the trees. I made the circuit of the copse, whistling softly my three bars of "Lillibulero." Then I plunged into it. The bracken underfoot rustled and rustled. I came to a halt. A little bar of light lay on the horizon in front of me, almost colourless. It was crossed again and again by the small fir-trunks that were little more than wands. A woodpigeon rose with a sudden crash of sound, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... eve ere summer in autumn sank At stardawn standing on a grey sea-bank He felt the wind fitfully shift and heave As toward a stormier eve; And all the wan wide sea shuddered; and earth Shook underfoot as toward some timeless birth, Intolerable and inevitable; and all Heaven, darkling, trembled like a stricken thrall. And far out of the quivering east, and far From past the moonrise and its guiding star, Began a noise of ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... little creature. He would have liked to have crushed him underfoot like a cockroach. But as that was impossible, nothing remained for him to do but to depart, leaving the track of his dirty boots on the shining corridor. His last glimpse of his cousins' home was of two little serving-maids ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... me in this violent manner than to take the keys which my wife and I, standing on either side, continued to offer. The granaries served for the reception of their horses among the grain and meal, which the wretches, with the greatest barbarity, made them trample underfoot. The very bread destined for my little children, like the rest, was contemptuously trodden down ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles |
