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More "Swoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... full-front, close-up view of the "thing what set." He saw a wicked nose with a feeler about twice as high as he was. He saw great, terrible, outspread wings and a long slim body. It looked poised, ready to come at him and snatch him with one frightful swoop, as he had seen prairie hawks snatch ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... blackness,—the pale glint of the moonbeams only illumining it faintly as a cloud may be edged with a suggestion of light. It was not motionless,—it stirred now and then as though about to lift itself to some supernatural stature and bend above me or swoop down upon me like an embodied storm,—and as I still gazed upon it fearingly, every nerve strained to an almost unsupportable tension, I could have sworn that two eyes, large and luminous, were fixed with a searching, pitiless intensity on mine. It is impossible to describe what I felt,—a ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... With the swoop of the whirlwind they approached until they came within gun-shot distance, when they as suddenly stopped. Each trader had fastened his horse or mule with a rope and an iron pin two feet long driven firmly into the ground. They knew that if they were captured a cruel death awaited them. They ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... bolt fell. A well-known mining weekly, which I here poetically veil under the title of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk," was first to swoop down upon the tuneful and unsuspecting quarry. At this century-end of fastidious and complaisant criticism, it may be interesting to recall the direct style of the Californian "sixties." "The hogwash and 'purp'-stuff ladled out from the slop-bucket ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... forward over it after terrific preliminary bombardments, might have been pardoned for relieving their feelings more emphatically than by shrugging their shoulders and saying, "C'est la guerre." England, inviolate for so many centuries that the swoop of war on her homesteads had long ceased to be more credible than a return of the Flood, could hardly be expected to keep her temper sweet when she knew at last what it was to hide in cellars and underground railway stations, or lie quaking in bed, whilst bombs crashed, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Craig, it ees right I should go. Besides, I am well acquaint wiz ze commandant. Zen let us consider ze business as settle. I sall away to ze Kasbah, and zen in due time look for ze swoop of ze French zouaves. Begar! if Emile Constans may have a hand in ze capture of zat deevil, ze reward will allow him to visit ze adorable Paris again. I am off. I sall let nothing stop ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... the Teenth National belongs to a whist club in the suburbs and is the superintendent of a Sunday-school in the city; and that Dan has put Daisy up to visiting her mother to ward off a threatened swoop down from the old lady; and that the Czar hasn't done a blame thing except to become the ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... and threatened to stop the progress of the transcontinental railway across the prairie, it was the Mounted Police that stepped in to see that the road was not blocked. Eastern contractors and workmen, who had not been used to seeing war-paint, were somewhat alarmed when a band of Indians would swoop down with the air of people who owned the earth, and in all such cases the Police were quickly called by wire or otherwise. Superintendent Shurtcliffe tells of a rather odd case in which an Indian chief with ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... remain with them. Life in Bucket Lane, for every one from the youngest infant to the oldest idiot, was War. War against Order and Civilised Force. War also against that great unseen Hand that might at any moment swoop down upon any one of them and bestow fire, death and imprisonment upon its victims. To the ladies and gentlemen from the Mission the citizens of Bucket Lane presented an amused and cynical tolerance. If those poor, meek, frightened creatures ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... with amazed indignation. One at a time was the usual forfeit, but to lose five "at one fell swoop" seemed excessive, and would make a considerable difference to her weekly record. She blazed against the injustice. No girl in the form had ever had ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... North which afterwards for generations were the standing dread of Abram's descendants. Like the storm pillars in their own deserts, are these wild marauders with the wild names that never appear again in the history. Down on the rich valleys and peaceful pasture lands they swoop for booty, not for conquest. Like some sea-bird, they snatch their prey and away. They carry with them among the long train of captives Abram's ungenerous brother-in-law, Lot. Then the friend of God, the father of the faithful, musters his men, like an Arab sheikh as he was, and swiftly ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... this supposition is registered in the difference between the two words to be and to be perceived—words which are by no means synonymous but designate two very different relations of things in thought. Such idealism at one fell swoop, through a collapse of assertive intellect and a withdrawal of reason into self-consciousness, has the puzzling character of any clever pun, that suspends the fancy between two incompatible but irresistible meanings. The art of such sophistry is to choose for an axiom some ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... food that fell. Not a bird came down as long as she remained in the yard, but as soon as she had tripped back to the house and the door closed upon her brown curls, I could see a drove of hungry snowbirds swoop from the trees, and in a minute every crumb would be picked up. I am sure they must have loved dear little Polly, for many a choice bit did ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... irritation between France and Germany had increased to the point where open rupture was feared. For years Germany had been waiting for a propitious moment to swoop down on France and overwhelm her. The French intrigues in Morocco, which were leading visibly to a French Protectorate over that country, aroused German resentment, for the Germans coveted Morocco themselves. The Kaiser went so far as to invite Roosevelt ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... in a strange way, and with one fell downward swoop, in a few seconds the monster ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... fifty paces. A jerk and a strain,—a bellow and a convulsive leap,—his lasso is fast around the horns of a bull in the galloping herd. The horseman flashes a murderous knife from his belt, winds himself up to the plunging beast, severs at one swoop the tendon of its hind leg, and buries the point of his weapon in the victim's spinal marrow. It falls dead. The man, my friend, is a Gaucho; and we are standing on the Pampas ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the vessel on any fitting coast; and a step on shore at once transformed the boatmen into a war-band. From the first the daring of the English race broke out in the secrecy and suddenness of the pirates' swoop, in the fierceness of their onset, in the careless glee with which they seized either sword or oar. "Foes are they," sang a Roman poet of the time, "fierce beyond other foes and cunning as they are fierce; the sea is their school of war and the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... trunk. The cries of the wild animals which prowl about at night seeking their food were heard, and the cat feared one of them might find her and kill her. A mother tiger perhaps would snatch her, and take her to her hungry cubs, hidden away in the deep forest, or a bird of prey might swoop down on her and grip her in his terrible claws. Again and again she entreated the mouse to be quick, promising that, if only he would set her at liberty, she would never, never, never forget it or do any harm to ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... fleeing alone, sometimes in groups. Then those who, a little while before, trembled at their approach, grew bold; they came on, first timidly, but, meeting no resistance, became insolent. Then they would swoop down and carry off three or four laggards at a time, as I have seen crows in winter swoop upon a fallen horse, which they did not dare approach while he could yet remain on ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the meeting in the street below, which I was just in time to witness. Berry's swoop was so sudden that his prey appeared to realize that the game was up, and made no attempt to fly. It was almost piteous. An apprehension of certain embarrassment to come extinguished the instant impulse to shriek with laughter which was written ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... I've turned a very neat trick," he said, smacking his lips in satisfaction. "It's almost like a Greek tragedy—Hilmer, his wife, and yours in one fell swoop, and at your hand. There is an artistic unity about this affair that has been lacking in ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... either. I heard that savage, "chacking" noise which brown owls make when they are perched. This great gleaming owl, five times greater than any earthly owl, was making that chacking noise, as though it would soon spread its wings, to swoop on some such wretched mouse as myself. I could see its eyes roll. I thought I saw the feathers stiffen on its breast. Then, as the sweat rolled down my face, both the horrible things vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. They were ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... brought little release for the watchers. The fiends would retire, pretending to have abandoned the field, only to swoop down again when least expected. There were periods of calm when it seemed as though a new and bewildered personality were emerging, amazed to find in life a kindly thing, gazing at the world as one new-born. And again, Mrs. McQuillen or Ella Finley might be seen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dingy color can scarcely be distinguished from its dark and rocky sides. Eagles, with their dusky plumage, incessantly hover over the cliffs and boats, as if to rob the nets of their prey, or make a sudden swoop at the birds which follow in the wake ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself. Green though he was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him—had rounded up for him—had made him his opportunity; so he took it, right under their ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... she knew one who would at least be hampered by no scruples arising from conscious unfitness. Agnes might well have thought it better he should marry the cottar's than the farmer's daughter! Anyhow she was resolved to keep an eye on the young woman so long as Cosmo was within her swoop. He was chivalrous and credulous, and who could tell what Elsie might not dare! Her refusal to be his wife did not deprive her of antecedent rights. And there she was, gathering behind ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... longing for combat, and, before its victory was won, had the attitude of mind of the conqueror. This generation was proud of its strength, its thews, its mighty chest, its vigorous senses so thirsting for delight, its wings like the wings of a bird of prey hovering over the plains, waiting to swoop down and try its talons. The prowess of the race, the mad flights over the Alps and the sea, the new crusades, not much less mystic, not much less interested than those of Philip Augustus and Villehardouin, had turned ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... water tub was empty, and took a bucket to go to the river for water. As she bent over to fill the vessel a roaring noise like thunder filled the air, and one of the birds darted down and seized her in its talons. The villagers saw the bird swoop down, and they wailed aloud in sorrow and terror as they watched her being carried through the air to the ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... where you now stand. Come away from the wall. The current will sometimes run down a wall, and—a man being a better conductor than a wall—it would leave the wall and run into him. Swoop! That must have fallen very nigh. That must ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Florimel's. Her moonlight hair, nearly as long as that of the fabled Godiva, was flung wildly about her in heavy masses. Her eyes were wild also; she looked like a holy Maenad. With a glide like the swoop of an avenging angel, she pounced upon Florimel, caught her by the wrist and pulled her towards the door. Florimel was startled, but made no resistance. She half led, half dragged her up a stair that rose from a corner of the hall gallery to ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees, together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared with those ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... circles, come forth these birds of prey, till the whole air seems alive with them; darting hither and thither, and uttering wild, shrill screams, as they rise higher and higher in the upper air, till some are almost lost to sight. Sometimes one of them will descend with a sudden swoop to the lower regions of the air, just above the highest treetops, with a hollow, booming sound, as if some one were blowing in ...
— In The Forest • Catharine Parr Traill
... remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The nighthawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons—for I sometimes made a day of it—like a mote in the eye, or in heaven's eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Queretaro and made it his head-quarters. Juarez had meanwhile advanced to Zacatecas and fixed his residence there with his government about him. But the president and cabinet came very near being taken captive at one fell swoop, for Miramon suddenly advanced and captured Zacatecas by surprise, Juarez and his government ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... leave to pass through the Russian camp in order to repair to General York. If your excellency should grant his request, and allow him to reach York's headquarters, the hopes of Prussian patriots would be annihilated at one fell swoop. But if York remains at the head of his troops, so enthusiastically attached to him—if the whole nation and the whole corps may from this fact derive the hope that York acted in compliance with the secret instructions of his king, then we may hope for a speedy change in our affairs. The fate ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... difference between the two parties, but will hate the Conservatives with most bitterness, because standing more immediately in their way. A combat would be inevitable, with the chance that the American Eagle would descend upon the combatants and swoop them away. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... he watched her hand travelling across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the gentle scratching of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... steamers, impelled by unseen powers within them. Alas! that power was not the force of innocent steam, but the arms of Christian rowers chained to the oar. Sure as the pounce of a hawk upon a partridge was the swoop of the corsairs upon the French vessel. A signal to surrender followed, but the captain boldly refused, and armed his crew, bidding them stand to their guns. But the fight was too unequal, the brave little ship was disabled, the pirates boarded her, and, after a sharp ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time keeping up an incessant fire, while those of the British were silent for want of ammunition. Under these circumstances Sir Hugh Gough ordered the almost exhausted cavalry to threaten both flanks of the enemy at once, while the whole infantry prepared to advance. With the swoop of a whirlwind the gallant 3rd Dragoons and other cavalry regiments rushed on their foes. The Sikhs saw them coming, while the British bayonets gleamed in front. Their courage gave way; abandoning their guns, they fled ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... sabe Miss Dainty from his clutches. I seen him lean down, I seen him look in her pale face, an' I hear her low, stranglin' moan o' fear, an' I pray, 'Lord he'p us!' den I rise to my feet an' start to'ard de baid, dough shakin' lak a leaf; but jest den de brack vilyun swoop down lak a hawk on a li'l chick, an' grab her up in his arms an' run to de do', me a-follerin' an' screamin' at de top o' my voice. Out de do' we dash, de good Lord givin' strength to my laigs, so dat in de hall I catch holt o' dat black gownd, an' hang on a-screechin' ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... wind, as the horses got into their stride. Long streaks of dust whipped up in different places; the silver-white grass bent to the ground; round bunches of sage went rolling before us. The puffs grew longer, steadier, harder. Then a shrieking blast howled on our trail, seeming to swoop down on us with a yellow, blinding pall. I shut my eyes and covered my face with a handkerchief. The sand blew so thick that it filled my gloves, pebbles struck me hard enough to ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... fashion; I too will wear a mask of smiles! But behind that mask I will watch!—Oh, how I will watch! Not at my fancy-ball alone will I play a part, but before it, and perhaps, after it! None shall ever know how I watch, what I see, until I descend with the fell swoop of the eagle. And henceforth let me remember that I am a daughter of the house of Berners, who never failed a friend or spared a foe. And oh, let the spirit of my fathers support me, for I must ENDURE until I can AVENGE!" she said, as she got up with a grim calmness and paced up and ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... carrion, throwing dim, gliding shadows as they wheel and circle, or flashing sunshine from brown wings by quick, sudden swoops, hovering and swooping throughout the sunshine, or rising to melt into blue depths of the heavens, where other arching, floating specks tell of myriads there, ready to swoop, and fall and gather and feast wherever their lowest ranks ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... careful irrigation avails to grow nothing less hardy than millet, peas and buckwheat. In crossing to the valley, or rather trench, of the upper Indus, we have the choice of two passes, one 13,060 and the other 13,500 feet above tide. Having selected the least of these two evils, we swoop nearly six thousand feet down upon the village of Astor and a new language, the Dard. The temptation to stop and study either is small. If we are insatiate of climbing or find the heat at Astor—only 7853 feet above ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... without stopping long enough to feel the thrust of the reality, it would be delightful. But the charm disappears, the dream is brought to earth, the vision becomes tinsel when you draw up in front of a big caravansary and a platoon of uniformed porters, bell-boys, and pages swoop down upon everything you have, including your pocket-book; then the Olympian clerk looks at you doubtfully, puzzled for the first time in his life, does not know whether you are a mill-hand from Pittsburgh who ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... civilization in the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery chargers up, allowing me to forge ahead; they ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the moon, the nip in the air, the little wind that came so gently, yet with such sinister stealth, all portended one thing,—that the great northern winter was lurking just beyond the mountains, ready to swoop forth. Of course there would be likely time in plenty for a dash into Clearwater; yet the little breath of fall was almost gone. Far away, rising and falling faint as a cobweb in the air, a coyote sang to the rising moon,—a strange, ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... be worse and worse, and as Shirley glanced over at the yacht,—still hovering on the weather quarter of the Dunkery, ready at any time to swoop down and hail her if there should be occasion,—he trembled for the fate of his friends. To be sure these two pirate vessels—for sure the Dunkery Beacon now belonged to that class—were nothing but merchantmen. There was no cannon on this steamer, ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round opening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to him had at first seized ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... silent, and white comes across the hedge almost in our eyes, and settles in that oak without a sound. It is a barn-owl. After him a wood-pigeon, the whistling swoop of whose wings you can hear half a mile. The owl is just going to bed. The pigeon is only just astir. He is going to have the first turn at Farmer Macmillan's green corn, which is now getting nicely sweet and milky. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... went sharp before— A guard, though scarce against surprise; And rearmost rode an answering troop, But flankers none to right or left. No bugle peals, no pennon flies: Silent they sweep, and fail would swoop On ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... boat! Out, out we dance! Fierce blasts swoop upon my sail! What a terrible expanse— Tumbling hill and heaving dale! Stayless, helpless, lost I float, Captive to the lawless free! But a prison is my boat! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... sadly lacking in our public men, either then or later. By what I cannot help thinking was a most fortuitous circumstance for the League, at a moment when its existence was not known outside three or four parishes, Mr Gerald Balfour determined to swoop down upon it and to crush it with the whole might of the Crown forces. Two Resident Magistrates and the Assistant Inspector-General of Constabulary, with a small army corps of special police, were sent to Westport. Result—the inevitable conflict between the police and people ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... whole heart confidence, for he had been forced to veil from her his hopes of winning a fortune by one fell swoop upon ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... "No, I'd swoop along over the forests up here until I picked out all the camps of the Indians and Tories. I'd pick out the Butlers and Braxton Wyatt and Coleman, and see what mischief they were planning. Then I'd fly away to the East and look down at all the armies, ours in buff and blue, and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... like to do things for men. Poor men! We swoop on you when you're defenseless and fuss over you and insist on reforming you. But it's so pitifully deep in us. You'll be the one thing in which I haven't failed. Do something definite! Even if it's just selling cottons. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... spoke that odd spark of ferocity dilated in his eyes, and seizing the largest of his modeling tools, he obliterated at one swoop the whole exquisite face. Poor Gertrude turned ashy white, and a convulsion passed over ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... throbbed through the still air. The pale-blue shadows on the western side of the road grew longer. The sun, declining through its shallow arch, dropped behind the tree-tops. Darkness followed swiftly, as if it had been a bird of prey waiting for this sign to swoop ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... that his words were completely drowned, and he received a sudden shock when the brilliant beam of a searchlight flashed up from the ground, and, after a circling swoop, found them and held them in its fierce eye. Every stay and rivet was as clearly visible to him as though it had been noonday, and it was a ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... irreverential contempt for all things human and divine. Would that—(and the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)—would that your entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we might crush you all at a single swoop! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... touch, the brown eyes unclosed, and a roguish smile broke over the white face, as Peace looked up at the frightened figures above her and giggled hysterically, "I've often wondered what it would feel like to fly. Do you s'pose it makes the birds sick and dizzy every time they make a swoop?" ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the soft buzz of a high-powered car, and presently two lights appeared at the further end. They came towards her swiftly, almost silently. It was like the swoop of an immense bird. And then in the strong glare shed forth by the hall-lamps she saw the huge body of an ambulance-car, and a Red Cross flared symbolic ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... was mistaken, for here in his "fair field" appeared the most formidable rival he could possibly have had—a rival who seemed likely to eclipse himself and Oleander and Sardonyx at one fell swoop. ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... for "Fire, more Fire!" And fire was reared, Stintless and high, a stormy streaming beard, That waved in flame beyond the promontory Rock-ridged, that watches the Saronian sea, Kindling the night: then one short swoop to catch The Spider's Crag, our city's tower of watch; Whence hither to the Atreidae's roof it came, A light true-fathered of Idaean flame. Torch-bearer after torch-bearer, behold The tale thereof in stations manifold, ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... fellows where you can all have a chance at them," said Mr. Choate with a smile. "It would be interesting to have a motion-picture record of the thoughts which flash through the mind of the average inland fisherman the first time he feels the tiger-like swoop of a five-foot barrancuda, the fierce yank of a hundred-pound amber-jack, or the sullen surge of a big grouper on his line; for even when armed with the heaviest rod, and a line as big around as a silver dollar, he is pretty sure to wish, at least subconsciously, that his tackle ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... upon it from the gallery, resembled a nice new billiard ball, but as he warmed up and became more thoroughly stirred, his intellectual dome changed to a delicate pink. Then, when he rose to the full height of his eloquent flight, and prepared to swoop down upon his adversaries and carry them into camp, it is said that his smooth intellectual rink was as red as the flush of rosy dawn on ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... made his influence felt when he arrived on the scene at Bannu. Up in the hills to the westward lived the Umarzai Waziris, among the worst of the outlaws. The knowledge that a fresh ruler had been appointed over them troubled them not a whit, and they proceeded to swoop down on the villages in the plain for the purpose of taking toll as aforetime. Nicholson acted promptly. Placing himself at the head of 1500 mounted police, he carried war into the enemy's country, penetrating the hill-fastnesses into which no one else had yet dared to venture. To the surprise ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... contraband, which would save much legal trouble, since under the law or the edicts wealth might not be shipped abroad by heretics. The plan of Ramiro and his friends was to facilitate the escape of the treasure to the open sea, where they proposed to swoop down upon it and convey it to more ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... where it is completely exposed. The bearers instantly retire, the door is closed and locked. These towers are open at the top, on the cornice of which hundreds of vultures are always waiting in full view of every one, and as soon as the body is left they swoop down to their awful meal, eagerly tearing and devouring the flesh, absolutely picking it clean from the bones, which fall into a space below in an indiscriminate mass, to be decomposed by time and the elements. The hideous detail of the scene is not visible ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... the sun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But the principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which is suddenly sun-polarized. Fire is the sudden sun-assertion, the release towards the one pole only. It is the sudden revelation of the cosmic One Polarity, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... earthly moment is a vivid reassertion of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a light plunged into ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... eminent Twynintuft. Like every spirit that was ever called for, this ex-elocutionist happened to be within a few seconds' flight of the circle, and had nothing in the world to do but to swoop down and tip as long as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... though not necessarily a "sacred," symbol by prehistoric races, may easily be imagined, if we consider that the eagle is a bird of tremendous power; and that it soars to unreachable heights; and that it unquestionably was at some time seen to swoop down and carry off the serpent, possibly even ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Fink. For past years he had been saving money, and as Messrs. Gowanlock and Van Duzer allowed interest at a liberal rate upon all deposits left in their hands by their workmen, all his surplus earnings remained untouched. The consequence was that the accumulations of years were swamped at one fell swoop, and he found himself reduced to poverty. And as though misfortune was not satisfied with visiting him thus heavily, the very day of the failure he was stricken down by typhoid fever: not the typhoid fever known in Canada—which is bad enough—but ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... it sailed, growing more and more distinct as it drew nearer. It circled, turning first to the right and then to the left, rising and descending, as if responding willingly to the touch of its unseen pilot, until with a majestic swoop it hovered like a great bird exactly over the cradle, and came to ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... deep, doubled shimmer of the panes, they saw the little man in shabby tweeds, the two women, and the seven other men. This, Madame explained, was Dr. Donald McClane's Field Ambulance Corps. You could see it had thought it was the only one. As they entered they met the swoop of two beautiful, indignant eyes, a slow turning and abrupt stiffening of shoulders; the movement of the group was palpable, a tremor of ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... Camp was having a fresh sensation. An organized band of gamblers, robbers, and "road-agents" had made a swoop upon its property, of various kinds, and had succeeded in making off with it. The very night after the ride just mentioned, the best horses in Sam Rice's team were stolen, making it necessary to substitute what Sam called ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... the nag, loosen her bridle bit, and follow into the meeting-house—a lofty building unplastered at the roof, whose open eaves and shingles give place in summer to nests of wasps, and in the winter to audacious birds, some of which swoop screaming to the pulpit, and beat the window panes in futile flight. Two uncarpeted aisles lead respectively to the men's side and the women's side—for, far be it from us, primitive Methodists, to improve upon the discipline of Wesley—and midway of each ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Jefferson. No, it wuz when our republic begun to copy the sampler of old nations' luxury, aristocracy and enormous wealth for the few and poverty and starvation for the many. Copyin' the old feudal barons and thieves who used to swoop down on weaker communities and steal all their possessions, only they gained by force what is gained now by corrupt legislation. Anybody would think," sez Arvilly, "that as many times as that sampler has been soaked in blood, and riddled by bullets, our country wouldn't want to foller ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... is a question of how we rate the brotherhood, what per cent we will take. My neighbor at table in my London boarding-house meant that, though he put it in a way all his own. He was a benevolent enough crank, but no friend of preaching. Being a crank, he condemned preachers with one fell swoop:— ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily, not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, at ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... the very least; every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted literature ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... moments before a horse jumps it slows, sidles, gathers itself together, goes up like a monster wave, and pitches down on the further side. Hedges and sky swoop in a semicircle. Then as if your own body ran into the horse's body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a mass of muscles, yet you have command too, upright stillness, eyes ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... you not to expect plain sailing?" she continued with a knowing look; "and Ada Irvine is a perfect hurricane. She will swoop down on you at every opportunity, and bluster and blow; but let her alone ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... with its round of petty thought was his great world, and a trial of hawks an event to be talked of for a week; but all France is the household of the King, and beyond the borders the eagles of Europe are poised to harry us. But while he lives they are afraid to swoop. While he lives, yes, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... instances, his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to sleep in, suspicion ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nature. What must her feelings have been when she heard that Prince Muishkin, the last of his and her line, had arrived in beggar's guise, a wretched idiot, a recipient of charity—all of which details the general gave out for greater effect! He was anxious to steal her interest at the first swoop, so as to distract her thoughts ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... priest's eyes were bent. He gripped the gunwale as the current lifted and swept the canoe down at a pace past control; as it sped straight for the point of the smooth water, and so, seeming to be warned by the roar it met, balanced itself fore-and-aft for one swift instant and plunged with a swoop ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the Island that most of the battles take place between organized labour and the apostles of free labour. Let there be any industrial trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoop dozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees—gaily ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... try it," answered Alice, "unless you want two or three farmers to swoop down on you, armed with scythes, and demanding to know what ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... over his bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Beckwith, "pre-eminent in predatory warfare. Small parties, consisting of from five to twenty or more, were the usual number comprising their war parties. These would push out hundreds of miles from their villages, and swoop down upon a feeble settlement, or an isolated pioneer cabin, and burn the property, kill the cattle, steal the horses, capture the women and children and be off again before the alarm could be given." They were always strongly on the British ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... was found in his lair. They could have killed him at once, or at least shot at him, but that would have ended the hunt too quickly. The huntsmen launched the whole pack at the animal, which, seeing this troop of pygmies swoop down upon him, started off at a slow trot. He crossed the road, Roland giving the view-halloo, and headed in the direction of the Chartreuse of Seillon, the three riders following the path which led through the woods. The boar led them a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... irrevocably into politics, breathed fire and fury against the French, spoke of his near visit to Paris on a diplomatic errand, and, growing more confidential, hinted of a great scheme, an insurrection in Normandy, Admiral Tromp to swoop down on Quilleboeuf, a Platonic republic to be reared on the ruins of the French monarchy. Had Spinoza seen the shadow of a shameful death hovering over the spirited veteran, had he foreknown that the poor old gentleman—tool of two desperate roues ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... for a ride, lieutenant,"—the colonel had given me that rank,—"and every yard will take us further from the Spaniards. I hear that La Hera is getting ready to swoop." ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... in the face. Were our cherished plans to be frustrated by a marauding cow, who little realised that she was imperilling her own means of existence? Were we to turn away three, five, nine thirsty customers at one fell swoop? Never! None of these people ever saw me before, nor would ever see me again. What was to prevent my serving them with tea? I had on a pink cotton gown,—that was well enough; I hastily buttoned on a clean painting apron, and seizing ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... away at once with so many qualities with one fell swoop, that one can hardly tell what is left. It puts amiability out of the question, and unselfishness and cheerfulness, and—and tact, and everything which makes us care for a person or not. When they are gone, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... beasts. There were four of them altogether, and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them into some ravine, where I thought I might possibly bring them into a state of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red tiles. He snatched at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump letter in ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... pair of scissors as they hang poised above the sea. Presently booby—like some honest housewife who has been a-marketing—comes flapping noisily home, her maw laden with fish for the chicks. Down comes the black watcher from above with a swoop like an eagle. Booby puts all she knows into her flight, but vainly; escape is impossible, so with a despairing shriek she drops her load. Before it has touched the water the graceful thief has intercepted ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... The German aviators will not as a class stand up to those of the Allies. They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann—he was put down by an English boy a month or so ago—had a sort of hawk's swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he missed in this hysterical lunge, he went on down.... This does not strike the Allied ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... and slaughtering the decoyed public without showing so much as the tip of a gun or nose that could be identified. But to my method there was a disadvantage that made men, who happened to have more hypocrisy and less nerve than I, shrink from it. When one of my tips miscarried, down upon me would swoop the bad losers in a body to give me a turbulent quarter of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... and Mercedes were lost in the desert. He wrote two letters which I brought. Don't mistake me, boy, it was some fun with Mercedes just now. I teased her, wouldn't give her the letter. You ought to have seen her eyes. If ever you see a black-and-white desert hawk swoop down upon a quail, then you'll know how Mercedes pounced upon her letter... Well, Casita is one hell of a place these days. I tried to get your baggage, and I think I made a mistake. We're going to see travel toward Forlorn River. The federal ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... subscription that follows this trick has been completed, the Jadoo-wallah sweeps the branches, earth, and all away in one fell destructive swoop which does not allow his audience to ascertain whether or no the tree had ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... Dragons cargo. This consisted of rich clothing, silks and other stuffs, wine, vestments, and altar hangings from churches, arms and armour, hides and skins. The prices obtained were far below the real value of the articles, for money was scarce, and none could say when the Danes might again swoop down and clear out the contents of the warehouses. Nevertheless the sum obtained was a large one for those days, and this did not include the value of the gold and silver goblets, salvers, vases, and utensils used in the celebration of ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... from his Salon d'Exposition, which is hung about with a couple of hundred pictures presented by his admiring painter guests from time to time. The viands are bountiful and splendidly garnished and the consommations au premier choix. Then there are the occupants of "les petits menages" to swoop down on your table for crumbs,—pigeons only,—and in cages a score or more of canary-birds, and, as a sort of contrast, dogs and cats and fowls ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... vultures may swoop upon a dying lamb, Fettes and Macfarlane were to be let loose upon a grave in that green and quiet resting-place. The wife of a farmer, a woman who had lived for sixty years, and been known for nothing but good butter and a godly conversation, ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I had sent off the manuscript influenza came down upon me with a swoop. I went to bed and am there still, with no chance of quitting it in a hurry. My wife is in the same case; item one of the maids. The house is a hospital, and by great good fortune ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... construction. Not only had an army of workmen to be fed, but a body of troops to guard them; for Abu Hamed, at the other end of the line, for which they were making, was occupied by a large body of Dervishes; who might, at any moment, swoop down ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... Crerar proposes one more revolution, whether by one fell swoop or by a slow process of getting us used to here a little and there a little more—we do not know yet. What we do know is that he proposes to govern this country by a huge economic group that used to go to Ottawa ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... no hope?" I moaned, "so strong, so fair! Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn yet golden in ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... battles around Rheims it became necessary to blow up a bridge which was about to be crossed by advancing French troops coming to relieve a beleaguered fort. The only way to destroy the bridge was for an airman to swoop down and drop an ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... crossed her face, as when the icy winds of winter furrow the waves and clouds swoop down to wed the foaming main. Her whole nature trembled like the shaken hull of a tempest-haunted ship. The spirit of Hecate was on her, and the voice of the terrible goddess rang ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... monstrous and deformed creature of the waters, suddenly emerging from their vexed and dreary depths. This was the far-famed Crag, which had borrowed from tradition its evil and ominous name. And now, the stream, bending round with a broad and sudden swoop, showed at a little distance, ghostly and indistinct through the darkness, the mighty Waterfall, whose roar had been his guide. Only in one streak a-down the giant cataract, the stars were reflected; and this long train of broken light glittered preternaturally ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at common work enough, Dan and me, in the Blair Mhor when the night clouds were banking behind the Blackhill to swoop down on the fast flying winter afternoon. Indeed, it was a matter of a braxy ewe, and the poor beast lay at the hedge-side and the blood clotting at her throat, for Dan had bled her, and the briars o' many a ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... boomed ten he saw her again. Through the mist he saw her making her uncertain way along the walk across the street, stopping every now and then to glance hesitatingly at the lighted windows, pause, and move on again. Suddenly, from the shadow of the area way, Wilson saw an officer swoop down upon her like a hawk. The woman started back with a little cry as the officer placed his hand upon her arm. Wilson saw this through the mist like a shadow picture and then he crossed the road. As he approached them ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... birds of prey, till the whole air seems alive with them; darting hither and thither, and uttering wild shrill screams, as they rise higher and higher in the upper air, till some are almost lost to sight. Sometimes one of them will descend with a sudden swoop, to the lower regions of the air, just above the highest tree-tops, with a hollow booming sound, as if some one were blowing in an ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... slow-witted, has concluded that he is no match for the airmen of the Allies. He found from bitter experience that nothing afforded the Anglo-French military aviators such keen delight as to lie in wait for a "rover," and then to swoop into the air ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... their captain, creep stealthily to the hatchways, cautiously taking their positions so that no miscalculations might frustrate their designs. And so, invading below decks, with weapons poised and every fibre on the alert, the concerted attack upon the sleeping victims would be given. With one fell swoop, and with the savagery born of their nefarious undertaking, the crew would be ruthlessly butchered, some few, perhaps, escaping in the general skirmish and fleeing up the gangway, only to be struck down by the villain on guard. For the present we ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... lay dead. The quarrel was personal, it was said, but the dial-hand of the times was left pointing with sinister prophecy at tragedy yet to come. And in the dark of the first moon of that century the shadowy hillsmen were getting ready to swoop down. And it was the dawn of the twentieth century of the Christian era that Burnham watched, the dawn of the one hundred and twenty-fifth year of the nation's life—of the one hundred and seventh year of statehood for Kentucky. And thinking of the onward ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... twinkling of an eye, in a trice; in one's tracks; right away; toute a l'heure [Fr.]; at one jump, in the same breath, per saltum [Lat.], uno saltu [Lat.]; at once, all at once; plump, slap; at one fell swoop; at the same instant &c n.; immediately &c (early) 132; extempore, on the moment, on the spot, on the spur of the moment; no sooner said than done; just then; slap-dash &c (haste) 684. Phr. touch and go; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... S. Victor[382] gives many other and different kinds of motion. For, following the analogy of the birds of the air, he says of these latter that "some at one time ascend on high, at another swoop down to earth, and they do this again and again; others turn now to the right, now to the left, and this repeatedly; others go in advance, others fall behind; some sail round and round in circles, now narrower and now wider; ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... The clamor of their war-cries filled the air, and they tossed their pennoned spears over their heads in menace and defiance. From the English line it was a noble sight, the gallant, pawing, curveting horses, the many-colored twinkling riders, the swoop and wave and toss of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lucien, laying his hand upon Basil's arm—"hold, brother! it is the red-tailed hawk. See, he is going to swoop down. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... and give deep thought to the relative positions, lives, and endings of these two noble men, Issa and Christ, we could scarcely doubt that they are one. Without trying, as does the author, to break down with one fell swoop, the entire structure of the Bible, we cannot but admit the ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... ill fortune! Five thousand dollars gone at one fell swoop—but hah! the money's nothing, when I think of my being cheated out of the enjoyment of such celestial charms as those possessed by that splendid enchantress!—At the very critical moment—when she lay panting and unresisting in my arms—with all her glorious beauties spread out ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... had collected his Bowlderos, and was giving his instructions as to the manner in which they were to follow, and keep near his person, in the expected hand-to-hand encounter, when the heavy rushing of the air, and the swoop of the mass from above, announced what had occurred. Turning to the men, he calmly ordered them to aid in getting rid of the incumbrances, and was in the very act of directing Wycherly to join in the same duty, when the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... air. Garcilasso was thrown back in his saddle—his horse made a wide career before he could recover, gather up the reins, and return to the conflict. They now encountered each other with swords. The Moor circled round his opponent, as a hawk circles when about to make a swoop; his steed obeyed his rider with matchless quickness; at every attack of the infidel, it seemed as if the Christian knight must sink beneath his flashing scimiter. But if Garcilasso was inferior ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... together an' swoop down with them on the murderin' convicts. He found out from signs, that I couldn't make nothin' of, that his tribe had divided into two parties, one going towards a hunting-ground called Big Cypress, an' the other to another place where deer an' bear are thick. As ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... various kinds were soaring in the air, some quite steadily and others darting angrily from side to side. One went up with a swoop, to come down with a bang on the rocks, thus knocking itself into a ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... curved wood used by the Australian aborigines of 21/2 ft. long; a deadly weapon, so constructed that, though thrown forward, it takes a whirling course upwards till it stops, when it returns with a swoop and falls in the rear of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that the proof that will is a definite physical energy settles the case once and for all. Determinism is routed; Free Will wins the day; and here again, as usual, theory follows fact, instead of dictating what those facts should be! At "one fell swoop" we are enabled to solve and to settle for ever one of the most bitterly disputed points in the whole history of ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... short of the roofs the taut wings flash a reverse, there is a lightning swoop, a startling hollow wind-sound, and the rushing bird is beating skyward again, hawking deliberately as before, and uttering again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... frightens them out of their wits. Whenever a war is about to take place in the country in which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey. This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark, deep, designing specimens of fallen humanity. For a number of years ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the vicinity of safety that not one of us realized our chauffeur had forgotten to light up. All I remember is that we seemed suddenly to swoop down on a crowd, the peremptory "Halt!" rang out sharp and clear, and we came to a sudden standstill. The car was besieged by officials of every kind, and we all felt the genuine hostility in the air. A man in plain clothes was chief spokesman. ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... blows right and left at an imaginary foe, then soared, and did it all over again two or three times, just to show how far he was from being tired, and how much better he could have done it had it been necessary. Then with a final swoop and a volley of "clickers" he dashed into the bush to receive the congratulations of the one for whom it all was meant and the only spectator for whose opinion he cared in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... principles in our universe, the sun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But the principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which is suddenly sun-polarized. Fire is the sudden sun-assertion, the release towards the one pole only. It is the sudden revelation of the cosmic One Polarity, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... a chance to redd up this, either," poor John Upham whispered in his ear, and gathered up with a furtive swoop some ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... We come! We come! In swoop for fierce flesh, like a bird of prey, In scent of the blood of the brave to-day, By the splendor of God! We come! We come! Sword in hand, for the Love of God! Since blood is holy and royal wine, Advance! Drink health to the Norman line, Sword in hand, ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... time than it takes to describe the deed, the defenceless company of Boer farmers were slaughtered in cold blood—slaughtered before they could lift even a fist in self-defence! This horrible act of treachery served to do away at one fell swoop with the whole Boer party. Their bones, piled in a heap without the kraal, alone remained to tell to their kindred the tale of their undoing. The Zulus then proceeded in their tens of thousands to attack the nearest encampment, and cut down ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of the vicious attack. He followed out his prearranged programme with machine-like movements, sending his first bomb with such cleverness that it struck close to the stern, for Jack had made his hawk-like swoop so as to pass completely along the entire length of the deck—this in order to give his working pal a better chance to ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... hope?" I moaned, "so strong, so fair! Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn yet golden ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the one question which Bosambo had neither the desire nor the ability to answer. He might swoop down upon a warlike people, surprising them to their abashment, rendering their armed forces impotent, but exactly what would happen afterwards he had ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... shivered at the thought. She knew too much about the way the trick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous nowadays: more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time came; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She knew them, oh, how she knew them—though with Streff, thank heaven, she had never been called upon to exercise them! His love was there for ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... such a swoop Will raise an obstacle to their retreat And refuge in the fastness of the isle; And show this victory-gorged adventurer That striking with a river in his rear Is not the safest tactic to be played Against an Austrian ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... mail home one day when I saw a great eagle, with wings spread, flying low and circling around as though ready to swoop upon its prey. It was noon on a late fall day with no sight or sound of life except that mammoth eagle craftily soaring. I turned off the trail to follow its flight. It was the kind of day when one must ride off the beaten trail, when the sun is warm, the air cool and sparkling; even Lakota ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... had been successful. "The falcon, after many airy circlings, had made its swoop at last," and its polished talons had done their work not unsuccessfully. The stricken quarry might flutter for a while, but the end would ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... she had drifted no man knew. The sun had not been visible for a week, nor the stars, and the captain had been unable to take observations in order to determine his position. At any moment a cruiser might swoop down and hale the crew away to Siberia. The fate of other poaching seal-hunters was too well known to the men of the Mary Thomas, and there was ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the helmet of Achilles, its plume waving in the morning air. Speechless and helpless the three friends stood, and would have given the last penny in their savings banks if a hawk or some other large bird would swoop down upon it and send ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Charles. The evening came on slowly. Cries of sea-birds rang weird upon the water. Puffins and cormorants circled round our heads in the gray of twilight. Charles suggested that they might even swoop down upon us and bite us. They did not, however, but their flapping wings added none the less a painful touch of eeriness to our hunger and solitude. Charles was horribly depressed. For myself, I will confess I felt so much relieved ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... his words, would not be driven off, and came back in greater numbers than before. This put the little man in a great passion, and, snatching up in his anger a bag of cloth, he brought it down with a merciless swoop upon them. When he raised it again he counted as many as seven lying dead before him with outstretched legs. "What a fellow you are!" said he to himself, astonished at his own bravery. "The whole town must hear of ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... I stoop and swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure flooring, O: And my wide wings drip As I slip, slip, slip Down through ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... invasion of their hunting ground by the English. The French-Indians incited by the French settlers in the Mississippi Valley who wanted the wealth of fur-bearing animals for themselves, began to swoop down on the settlements of the English-speaking people along the frontier, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... marks! Ingred gasped with amazed indignation. One at a time was the usual forfeit, but to lose five "at one fell swoop" seemed excessive, and would make a considerable difference to her weekly record. She blazed against the injustice. No girl in the form had ever had ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... soft as heaped feathers or drifted snow; it moved and shifted under him, took shape; it was a chair—no, a carriage. And there were reins in his hand—white reins. And a horse? No—a swan with wide, white wings. He grasped the reins and guided the strange steed to a low swoop that should bring him near the flare of torches in the street, outside the great front door. And as the swan laid its long neck low in downward flight he saw his cousins in a carriage like his own rise into the sky ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... beauteous feature of the valley was disclosed to her inspection. The early morning haze had lifted, and the few fleecy clouds that floated in the blue bowl of sky were motionless, their majestic billows glowing in the sun. She saw a Mexican eagle swoop over the cloud, sailing on slow wing high above it, and growing so distant in her vision that he became a mere speck moving in the ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... is. Just short of the roofs the taut wings flash a reverse, there is a lightning swoop, a startling hollow wind-sound, and the rushing bird is beating skyward again, hawking deliberately as before, and uttering again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... excited in love. You want to be carried away in love. You want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and love yourself. Don't deny it. I know you do. You want passion to sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the swooping eagle swoop right into the sun. I ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... power to make any pictures of the fortifications whatsoever. He appeared to nurse a horrid fear that the secret of the fortifications might become known above the line, and that some day, armed with this information, the Boy Scouts or a Young Ladies' High School might swoop down and capture the whole works. He explained to the lady, that, much as he regretted it, if she persisted in her suspicious and spylike conduct, he would have to smash her camera for her. ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... consisted of rich clothing, silks and other stuffs, wine, vestments, and altar hangings from churches, arms and armour, hides and skins. The prices obtained were far below the real value of the articles, for money was scarce, and none could say when the Danes might again swoop down and clear out the contents of the warehouses. Nevertheless the sum obtained was a large one for those days, and this did not include the value of the gold and silver goblets, salvers, vases, and utensils used in the celebration of ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... desirable for your possession; the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry seagull at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the sea's advance just as surely as the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... face of the clock, coated with verdigris as thick as a diachylon plaister, was rubbed till the figures emerged into day; while, inside the case of the same chronometer, the cobwebs that formed triangular hammocks, which the pendulum could hardly wade through, were cleared away at one swoop. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... his throat, as though all the truth lived in that man and he hoped to get it from him at one swoop, to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... was right," thought she. "He is unhappy. Why should this eagle—for he has the eyes of an eagle—swoop down on Besancon? Oh, I must know everything! ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... battle. Yet it is easier to travel in England, and to gain a commanding view of the river-system of the country, than it was three thousand years ago to travel over India, even over that part of India which the poet of our hymn commands. He takes in at one swoop three great river-systems, or, as he calls them, three great armies of rivers—those flowing from the north-west into the Indus, those joining it from the north-east, and, in the distance, the Ganges and the Jumnah with their tributaries. Look on the map and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... So he went on to the close. When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily, not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, at ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Thus at one fell swoop perished the only chance which ever came to French Canada of growing into a self-governing colony and of working out its own destiny. The physical conditions and administrative necessities of the land were, indeed, from first to last, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Turtle Island, a small island lying off the west coast of Hispaniola. Here in their most piping days flourished a buccaneer republic, where the seamen made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and yams. Occasionally the Spaniards or the French, without any warning, would swoop down on the settlement and break up the small republic, but sooner or later the buccaneers would be back once ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... subterfuge to outwit the authorities. On one occasion I purchased a consignment of silk Union Jacks for wearing in the lapel of the coat. I knew full well that if I placed these on sale in my shop the stern hand of authority would swoop down swiftly and confiscate the hated emblem without the slightest compunction. So I evolved a special means of clearing them out and that within a ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... to the panel of British prisoners of war by the hawk-like swoop of De Wet and the brothers Prinsloo almost under the eyes of three Divisions of the British Army. For not only were Colvile and Rundle aware of Spragge's predicament, but as soon as it was reported to Lord Roberts, Methuen was ordered to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... last long, however: he soon spent himself, and Mr. McGrath received him with a graceful swoop of his landing-net and secured him. Four more soon followed, all large fish—two to the credit of Mr. McGrath and two to myself. When caught they are of a dark olive-green on the back and sides, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... that it needed two people to circumvent his clever resistance. He had wonderfully acute vision, and would let me know directly a hawk was in sight, though it might be but the merest speck in the sky. He once had a narrow escape, for a sparrow-hawk made a swoop at him in his cage just outside the drawing-room window, and had no one been at hand would probably have dragged him through the bars. Whenever he saw a jay or magpie, a jackdaw or cat, his clicking note always told me of some enemy in sight. For many years Birdie was ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... gadgets that you and the other operators on the Row have worked out, Harry. But I'm in no position to take 'em away from you. Besides, we have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use illegal equipment illegally, the department will leave ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tearing up stubble and rending straws?—Stretch forth your hand, and grasp the oak—Labours worthy of your Herculean mind await and invite you. Away to the temple of Error; shake its pillars, and make its foundations totter!—Be yourself—Shall the soaring eagle swoop at reptiles, the prey of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... seemed perilously to sway. Breathless, awesome seconds. It swayed over, lurched back like a great tree in a wind. Then very slowly it swayed again and did not come back. Falling to the east, its whole giant length came down in a great arc. The descent grew faster, until, in one great swoop it crashed upon the wreckage of the Grand Central Station. The roar of it surged over the city. The crash of masonry; the clatter of its myriad windows, the din of its ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... The man who expected to get attention should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with a driving swoop into the palm of the other—and repeat as often as necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree upon the great, broad, fundamental ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... not feel disposed to give his fish up if he could help it, for it was what Harry called a regular robbery; so, for three or four minutes, it was—pull pike—pull Philip,—till at last, quite in disgust, the pike let go, gave one swoop with his tail, and ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... shall rest with the outlaws of the Yorkshire forests. I have sure spies on the Saxon's motions—To-night they sleep in the convent of Saint Wittol, or Withold, or whatever they call that churl of a Saxon Saint at Burton-on-Trent. Next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways, we swoop on them at once. Presently after I will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one from the hands of the rude ravishers, conduct her to Front-de-Boeuf's Castle, or to Normandy, if it should be necessary, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... long swoop, an abandonment of all the furious energies that for so long had been hurling her over burning sand and black crag, Nissr slanted to the grassy sward. A sudden, furious hissing burst out beneath her, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... balmy, the sun not too warm, so Peter lay back among the grasses in the sand smoking a fresh cigarette. Far overhead buzzards were wheeling. They recalled those other birds of prey that he had often watched, ready to swoop down along the lines of the almost defenseless Russians. Here all was so quiet. The world was a very beautiful place if men would only leave it so. The voice of the girl was silent now. Shad had probably joined her. Somehow, Peter hadn't been able to think of any relationship, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Reply to the Passionate Shepherd, if it be his, as Izaak Walton without suspicion assumes, and, if it did not compel comparison with Marlowe's more exquisite melody, would assure his place among the poets of the age. He was able to barb a fierce sarcasm with courtly grace. How his fancy could swoop down and strike, and pierce as it flashed, may be felt in each ringing ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... be considered is as to what food is best for breeding birds, and I say unhesitatingly maize. There is practically no waste, and you have not the mortification of seeing crowds of sparrows swoop down on your ducks' food as you ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... Scriptures. But if we should look at the matter earnestly, and give deep thought to the relative positions, lives, and endings of these two noble men, Issa and Christ, we could scarcely doubt that they are one. Without trying, as does the author, to break down with one fell swoop, the entire structure of the Bible, we cannot but admit the probability of the ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... I can tell, Bob, what a detective would do," replied Tom. "You see I ain't no natural detective like you. But I should think he'd swoop down on the den and ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... to get it!" the little boy cried. With his hat he made a swoop for the butterfly, and then suddenly he and Flossie, who was close behind him, tumbled down through a hole in the ground, which seemed quickly to open at their very feet, between two ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some successful coup-d'etat Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... with crushing weight on intellectual Germany! Soon she will absorb the old kingdoms of Scandinavia,—to wit, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. On the shores of Norway the ruler of the Sclavonic race will hang over Scotland and England, like a bird of prey about to swoop upon his victim. All despots and absolutists will array themselves under his banner or be his auxiliaries. The old hierarchies will be banded with him to crush out Protestantism, which is a plant of Teutonic growth. Old Asia, with her rancor and despotic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the eminent Twynintuft. Like every spirit that was ever called for, this ex-elocutionist happened to be within a few seconds' flight of the circle, and had nothing in the world to do but to swoop down and tip as long as the company could possibly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Honor last completes the stately group, With eye like eagle's in descending swoop, Fronted like goddess beautiful and proud When sailing on the "lazy-pacing cloud": Prouder her port than that of all the rest, With radiant forehead and translucent breast, She needs no gesture of supreme command ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... if we haven't any horses, we won't follow them; they will, therefore, take their time and travel so slow, that we'll have the chance to swoop down on them when they are not ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... morning, when Mr. Archibald went out of his cabin door, he looked over the lake and saw a bird suddenly swoop down upon the water, breaking the smooth surface into sparkles of silver, and then rise again, a little silvery fish glittering ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... watched her hand travelling across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the gentle scratching of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the entreating brown eyes at her elbow, straightway forgave Toady, and released her victim so suddenly that he fell sprawling into a nest of sharp-thorned Mormon pears; but of this she was unaware, for with one swoop she gathered up the now hysterical baby, and stalked off toward the house, saying grimly, "You boys stay right where you are until you are willing to apologize and promise to behave yourselves in the future. I've a mind to turn you over to the sheriff now. Come, girls!" Followed by the troop ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... came to Australia? Was there a chance of that? They had islands, naval bases, not so far away. They were Australia's neighbors. What of the German navy? Was it out? Were there scattered ships, here and there, that might swoop down upon Australia's shores and bring death and ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the midday meal, which was hurriedly eaten. Lars Gunnarson and the clerk still sat on the fence, laughing and chatting. They reminded Jan of a pair of hawks biding their time to swoop down upon helpless prey. Finally the men got down off the fence, opened the gate, and went toward ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... less ferocious than their nature is. Again, in Tishri, at the time of the autumnal equinox, the great bird ziz[7] flaps his wings and utters his cry, so that the birds of prey, the eagles and the vultures, blench, and they fear to swoop down upon the others and annihilate them in their greed. And, again, were it not for the goodness of God, the vast number of big fish had quickly put an end to the little ones. But at the time of the winter solstice, in the month of Tebet, the sea grows restless, for then leviathan spouts ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... against the current, thus forming a temporary dam. The water drains off below them, and when it has reached its lowest point, at a signal from one of their number who from the bank watches the proceedings, they rise and swoop upon the fish, frogs, etc., which the lowering of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... look—here's a whole benchful accounted for at one swoop." Still Jemmy did not reply. The sunbeam drifting between the benches before him fell on a little patch of earth—a patch collected by one of the slaves whose comrades, humouring his whim, had brought him a handful or two in ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he was the only one of the lot who heard with no misgivings the vicious swoop of the storm; so long as the tent-pegs held he didn't care how hard it rained. But the others who woke to the roar of wind and the crash of thunder and to the swish and beat of much falling water, turned uneasily ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... discontented ones who dare not act, like the vultures, they flee the living man, but swoop upon the corpse. The consuls of those countries who love not England or Claridge Pasha, and the holy men, and the Cadi, all scatter smouldering fires. There is a spirit in the Palace and beyond which is blowing fast to a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... boats are lowered; sail is immediately set, and, like swift huge-winged birds, they swoop down upon the prey. Driving right upon the back of the nearest monster, two harpoons are plunged into his body up to the "hitches." [Footnote: Hitches: a knot or noose that can be readily undone.] The sheet [Footnote: Sheet: ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the winds of the morning, Yon dread pennon streams as a lurid bale-star: Hark! shrill from his trumpets an ominous warning Is blown with the breath of the demon of war;— Then bright flashed his steel as the eye of an eagle, Then spread he his wings to the terror-struck foe; Then on! with the swoop of a conqueror regal, He rushed, and his talons struck victory's blow:— Wild then their shouts arose, Fled then their shivered foes, And snowy Ben-Nevis re-echoed their wail; Far from the field of dread, Scattered, they singly fled, As hound-startled ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... Nap," I ventured, climbing into the seat. "One would think this was a funeral. I must get a hustle on as I've got to do 120 miles before I can get to business, so if everything's right, I'll swoop up." ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... broad brown hand which held her. He whipped it back with an oath, while she tore herself free and slipped behind Alleyne, cowering up against him like the trembling leveret who sees the falcon poising for the swoop ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... termed the insolence of a handful of outlaws, and the cowardice of his picked troops, who had flaunted their banners and gone forth as if to assured victory, and had then fled like some gay-plumed bird before the swoop of the eagle. Not only the oppressed inhabitants of Jerusalem and its environs had cause to tremble at the rage of the tyrant, but his own Syrian officers and the obsequious courtiers who stood in his presence. And none more ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... down maps; and we arrived in this astonishingly perfect old town early in the afternoon, coming by way of Capel Curig (whence we saw Snowdon crowned with a double rainbow), sweet Bettws-y-coed, or "station in the wood," and so down the river valley in a bird swoop, to noble Conway, with its castle that was once a famous Welsh fortress. Now, in piping days of peace, its towers and turrets still dominate bridge and river, and the great pile is as fine, in its way, as Carcassone. Don't you remember, it was from Conway Castle that ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... would call a good time, because he couldn't help thinking of his mother's warning. He kept looking all around to see whether a weasel or a mink or a fox might be trying to steal up behind him. And he kept looking up to make sure that no big bird was ready to swoop down ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the forests are vocal with song; and when the gray and dewy morning calls the creeping things of the earth out of their night-cells, it summons from the neighboring wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through the hours ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... hand on the arm of his companion, and speaking with the gravity of a judge, "whin ye swoop yer gaze on thim playthings out there, bear in mind that there's our breakfast, as me grandmither obsarved whin the dinner table upsit and ivery thing ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... With a swoop his hand took her aloft and away. Then we saw her, twenty feet or so in the air, still on his hand as he held ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... it was a fine, exhilarating experience; for, added to the joy of battle with the elements, there was the wild grandeur of the scene, the great masses of black cloud scurrying athwart the sky, with little patches of starlit blue winking in and out between, the roar and swoop of the wind, and the menacing hiss of the phosphorescent foam-caps as they came rushing down upon the boat in endless succession, all combining together to form a picture the like of which, as viewed from a wildly leaping, half-swamped, spray-smothered ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... glide, coming up astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched—and as a score of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed—the lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... upon the deep-piled dais, Wrought in hallowed looms of Sais, O'er the impetuous torrent's swoop, Stands the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... crowed. All at once a voice burst suddenly in swaggering tremolo out of the darkness of the road beneath them, rising, rising, then fading off, then flaring up hotly like a red scarf waved on a windy day, like the swoop of a hawk, like a rocket intruding ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... that Hart, who was formerly the extreme right, would now become almost the extreme left, and, having thus extended his right arm, to cross the river where it flowed east and west, and make a still wider swoop on the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... a Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself. Green though he was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him—had rounded up for him—had made him his opportunity; so he took it, right ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... to dwell in imagination upon your surprise when you realize what you have overlooked. It seems so simple! To abolish, prohibit, banish, and remove, at one swoop, the chief preoccupation of mankind! The simple and high-minded felicity of still having something prohibitable subject to your omnipotent legislation! But there, I dare say I am wrong. Probably you ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... one swinging swoop, and I wished that Jerry and I had been strong enough to do that last night. Greg had only time for one gasp before he was quite comfortable against our man's shoulder. But he was brave, because it must have hurt like ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... of his words was electric. There was a sharp intaking of breath from the spectators. The dark man's face froze, and his eyes darted red. His right hand seemed to hang on the instant for the swoop to his gun. Rathburn appeared to be smiling queerly out of his eyes. ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... greater cheapness of the one or the other. So also with Hawes, never yet pardoned by the financiering economist of "cheese parings and candle ends" for the splendid Thames tunnel job, and L200,000 of the public money at one fell swoop. These people range under the generic head Charlatanerie, as of the distinct species classified as farceurs according to the French nomenclature. For other species, and diversities of species, of a lower scale, but of capacity to ascend into the higher order ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... loaded with gun carriages, ammunition wagons, and field kitchens. On one car of every train were three mounted machine guns with their crews, in readiness for any daring Boche plane that might swoop down on them. Most of the trains that traveled by day were camouflaged with branches of green leaves broken from ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... in the air, his schemes for revenge, his hopes of wealth, had vanished at one fell swoop. "Patrick Henry Keogh" seemed to grin up at him out of the paper. His case had crumbled about his ears; his defeat would be known all over the district, and nothing could much longer stave off the inevitable exposure of his misappropriations. But he was a fighter all over, and he still ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... and kill fish for food, saw them carve the thick, spongy hearts from certain giant growths and eat them. I saw a pair of killer sharks swoop down on the band, and the quick, deadly accuracy with which both men and woman met the attack. One man, older than the rest, was injured before the sharks were vanquished, and when their efforts to staunch his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... salmon in the new style. The day is promising better. I'm sure we'll have sport yet. Hilloa! I've another!" and Murphy began hauling in the salmon. "Billy, you rascal, get ready; watch him—that's it—mind him now!" Billy put out his gaff to seize the prize, and, making a grand swoop, affected to miss the fish. "Gaff him, you thief, gaff him!" shouted Murphy, "gaff him, or he'll ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... days became insufferably warm, but the nights were glorious. Talbot and I liked to sleep on the deck; and generally camped down up near the bitts. The old ship rolled frightfully, for she was light in freight in order to accommodate so many passengers; and the dark blue sea appeared to swoop up and down beneath ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... laughing. "I'll steer clear of the rocks! And as it happens, I have got a piece of news that will put your doings into the background at one fell swoop. Rosalind is going to give a party! The Earl and Countess of Berkhampton are coming down to the Larches the week after next, and are going to bring their two girls with them. They are great lanky ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... he said boyishly. "But of course his case is no different from that of hundreds of others who have come out here to 'God's Country' in the hope of beating the daily grind and jumping to fortune at one fell swoop. That sounds rather Irish, doesn't it?" he ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... a fierce one. With the mass of fire between us and the ground directly below, blinded by the smoke and half suffocated by the heat, we were not conscious of the good fortune that awaited us, until, with a swoop and a plunge, we found ourselves submerged, and, with an equal velocity, immediately thrown back again by the buoyant force of the balloon into the open air. The flood of fire in which we had descended ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... teachers as the Whole Arm, or Free Arm Movement, in which the arm is lifted free from the desk and completes the letter with a dash or a swoop, is necessary in ornamental penmanship and flourishing, but has no place in a practical style of business writing. The man of business would hardly stop, in the midst of his writing, to raise the arm, and execute an "off-hand ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... myself for a while," I said cheerfully; "I have had a deal of business swoop down upon me, and in order to dispatch it, must shut myself up for a time, and ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Duzer allowed interest at a liberal rate upon all deposits left in their hands by their workmen, all his surplus earnings remained untouched. The consequence was that the accumulations of years were swamped at one fell swoop, and he found himself reduced to poverty. And as though misfortune was not satisfied with visiting him thus heavily, the very day of the failure he was stricken down by typhoid fever: not the typhoid ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... so that nothing of the moon showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit, brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard hawks. And her dream came back to her. Where were her wings-the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thus cutting off the chief centers of Italian industry. At the same time, they undoubtedly meant to send an invading army through the passes of the Carnic and Julian Alps from their base at Tarvis, and by a sudden swoop southward take the Italian forces on the Isonzo in the flank. At least this is what the Italian staff believed was their plan, and they arranged their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... sudden swoop of the tempest arrived. The tall elms writhed as though taken with St. Vitus's dance. The hens began to screech and run to cover. Thunder ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... on the scene at Bannu. Up in the hills to the westward lived the Umarzai Waziris, among the worst of the outlaws. The knowledge that a fresh ruler had been appointed over them troubled them not a whit, and they proceeded to swoop down on the villages in the plain for the purpose of taking toll as aforetime. Nicholson acted promptly. Placing himself at the head of 1500 mounted police, he carried war into the enemy's country, penetrating the hill-fastnesses into ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... woman. The fact that Ted was contentedly munching a red apple told that he had already made his hawk-like descent on the stand of the market woman, and was now seeking to distract her attention so that his companion might also swoop down to seize a prize, when they would go off, laughing uproarously, as though they ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Colonel had to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling him severely with my sudden dash. He said, "I'm driving cows now," and, truth to tell, there was no denying it. Even as he spoke, a perverse beast of Nationalist tendencies ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... was cut down upon his own deck by a sweeping blow from Hennessy's cutlass. Then, followed by Arguello's curses, the Irish captain went back to his brig and set sail for Callao, leaving Martinas to get the better of his wound and swoop down upon the natives of Easter Island ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... between France and Germany had increased to the point where open rupture was feared. For years Germany had been waiting for a propitious moment to swoop down on France and overwhelm her. The French intrigues in Morocco, which were leading visibly to a French Protectorate over that country, aroused German resentment, for the Germans coveted Morocco themselves. The Kaiser went so far as to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... shout, and cheer on cheer, as first one, then another of the enemy was overturned or dodged. The more he achieved, the less his enemies ventured against him, and he dashed through their "forwards" and between their "quarter-backs." Next moment, with a mighty swoop, their "half-back" fell ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... was a substantial one; he seemed resolved, at one ample swoop, to repay Lady Annabel for all her hospitality; and he really took such delight in their participation of it, that his principal guest was constrained to check herself in more than one warning intimation that moderation was desirable, were it only for the sake of the strawberries and cream. All ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe her off the face of the earth—abolish her and her pretty island at one fell swoop?" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... he was afraid. But the great god ceased not, but arose upon him with darkness on his crest, that he might stay noble Achilles from slaughter, and ward destruction from the men of Troy. And the son of Peleus rushed away a spear's throw, with the swoop of a black eagle, the mighty hunter, strongest at once and swiftest of winged birds. Like him he sped, and on his breast the bronze rang terribly as he fled from beneath the onset, and behind him ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... some of the boys to trace the steps, and while they were gone outlined his plans to the others. Once they knew where the marauders were, they were to spread out fan-shape and swoop down upon the enemy. ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... good many years now," he told me. "I've seen them tackle a man, a bull, a team, and stand against the swoop of an eagle. Two ganders may be hard as swordsmen at each other, when they're drawing off their flocks, but they'll stand back to back against any outsider. Yes, I've watched them a long time, and I've never yet seen them do anything a man would be ashamed of. Why, I'd like to see the wild goose ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... the water before him from high in the air. The water spouted up, causing an osprey to swoop ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... this twenty-second of March did we realise fully the vast conception and the extent of the German swoop, and that our Brigade was as jetsam and as flotsam carried along on the mightiest part of the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... more significant of his ruthless nature. Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance, the unhastening ease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and the poise of a desert-hawk before the downward lightning-swift swoop on his quarry. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... The bishops, the universities, and the Dominican Inquisitors exercised this privilege; and by their means, in the age of manuscripts, the life of a book was soon extinguished. Whole libraries were sometimes sacrificed at one fell swoop, as in the case of the 6000 volumes destroyed at Salamanca in 1490 by Torquemada, on a charge of sorcery.[111] After the invention of printing it became more difficult to carry on this warfare against literature, while the rapid diffusion of Protestant opinions through the press rendered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... and came to the conclusion that he could swoop down, nip Mrs Gummidge, and get back to his bust of Pallas without being caught. He tried it, but his master was too quick for him, and foiled, he lay sullenly in Gethryn's hands, his two long claws projecting helplessly between the brown fists ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... a part of the garrison had gone to the rescue, as you call it, another party of redskins would swoop down and gobble up the remnant left ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... appeared upon the little knoll several warriors, mounted and uttering the usual war-whoop, as if they were about to swoop down upon a human enemy. This touched the dignity of Mato, and he immediately prepared to accept the challenge. Every Indian was alive to the possibilities of the occasion, for it is well known that Mato, or grizzly bear, alone among animals is given the rank of a warrior, so ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... It was like the swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward—and the deafening strike. The Austrians had varied a little. A shrapnel battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent interval. A hundred ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... beneath a shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed like lightning on the rippling top. I saw the dragon-flies flash and dart and turn, with a poise, with a speed that no other winged thing knows: I saw the hawk hover and stare and swoop: he fell like a falling stone, but he could not catch the king of the salmon: I saw the cold-eyed cat stretching along a bough level with the water, eager to hook and lift the creatures of the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... on fire, he made a swoop for the fellow, and managed to give him a tremendous blow that toppled him ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... of spirit; I longed to see a thousand wild and painted warriors swoop down upon the train. I thought of our peaceful dry-goods store at home, and I would gladly have sat down in another butter-tub could I have been there. I even thought of earthquakes with a sudden longing; ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... in readiness for the cruise, the Osprey ran through the inlet on the morning of the third day out from Newbern, and spread her wings to swoop down upon the first unsuspecting merchantman which happened to be holding along the coast inside of Diamond Shoals. Now the crosstrees were manned for the first time, a small pull taken at the sheets fore and aft, and with a fine breeze over her quarter the ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... sweeps War's lengthening coast, where each sea-swell Is Humans, gasping. Hope drags each cold form From hearth to hearth, to find no ember warm; Then, their eyes glitter frost, who hear hope yell As up she climbs the rocks and falls pell-mell Back from small herbs, where monsters swoop ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... arrival in New York she felt almost easy in her mind. New York, with its shoving, jostling, hurrying crowds; a giant fowl-run, full of human fowls scurrying to and fro; clucking, ever on the look-out for some desired morsel, and ever ready to swoop down and snatch it from its temporary possessor, had numbed her. But now she felt a slackening of the strain. New York might be too much for her, but she could ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... farm—a solid house of stone and red timbers, softened by the long grasses that made the orchard a pleasant place. They passed berry-bushes—raspberry and blackberry and currant, now turned wild; green-gold bushes that were a net for sunbeams. They saw yellow warblers flicker away, a king-bird swoop, a ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the warning whistle of an imaginary gas attack sounds. One backward fling of the head and the steel helmet falls off, for there is no time to lift it off. A dive into the bag carried on the chest and the respirator is grasped and with one skilful swoop it is drawn over the face. Your nose is pinched shut by a clamp, your teeth grip the rubber mouthpiece, and, like a diver, you must now get your one safe stream of pure air through the respirator. You draw in the air from a tube which rises from a tin of chemical ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... at table in my London boarding-house meant that, though he put it in a way all his own. He was a benevolent enough crank, but no friend of preaching. Being a crank, he condemned preachers with one fell swoop:— ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Ameshof, who with Mr. Kotze had made a stand against the President in this matter, was also obliged to relinquish his judgeship. Thus it will be seen that at one swoop Mr. Kruger disposed of three reputable intermediaries whom he had used to great advantage at one time or another. 'Something for nothing,' for Mr. Kruger! Whether Mr. Kotze acted in haste or whether Sir Henry de Villiers' plea for more time was justified ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... the pack, and in about five minutes the boar was found in his lair. They could have killed him at once, or at least shot at him, but that would have ended the hunt too quickly. The huntsmen launched the whole pack at the animal, which, seeing this troop of pygmies swoop down upon him, started off at a slow trot. He crossed the road, Roland giving the view-halloo, and headed in the direction of the Chartreuse of Seillon, the three riders following the path which led through the woods. The boar led them a chase which lasted until five in the afternoon, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... aboard and willing hands grasped the propellers and gave each a twist. Bang! bang! bang! went the explosions, and soon the propellers were revolving swiftly, and then with a swoop the Dartaway ran over the campus on its wheels and suddenly arose in the air. A cheer went up, and the students threw up their caps. Then Dick swung around in a quarter circle ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... albatrosses accompanied us all across the South Pacific. These birds never seem to tire and but rarely rest on the water, except when they swoop down and settle a moment to pick up something that has been thrown overboard; this is quickly devoured, and they are again in pursuit. The albatrosses, some white, some grey, and some almost black, are huge birds; some that we shot, and for which the boat was sent, measured nine feet ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... mile along a deep lagoon or bayou, he did not know which, and saw hawks swoop down and draw fish from its dark surface. The whole scene was ugly and cruel, and he was glad when he left it and entered the woods again. Once he thought he heard the mellow voice of a negro singing, but that was the only ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the spell of the great, simple, and primitive emotions; he had sat down to eat with buccaneers; he had seen the fierce, quick leap of unleashed passions, and had felt death swoop close at his nape and pass like a swift spurt of cold air. City life, his old life, had no charm for him now. Wilbur honestly believed that he was changed to his heart's core. He thought that, like Moran, he was henceforth to ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... amendment, to be sure; but what barbarity, after all! What! not thirty days' run from home, and lose our magnificent homeward-bounders! The homeward-bounders we had been cultivating so long! Lose them at one fell swoop? Were the vile barbers of the gun-deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent chins to the chill air of the Yankee coast! And our viny locks! were they also to be shorn? Was a grand sheep-shearing, such as they annually have ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... over Lake Gorgopis then it floats, To Aigiplanctos, waking the wild goats, Crying for "Fire, more Fire!" And fire was reared, Stintless and high, a stormy streaming beard, That waved in flame beyond the promontory Rock-ridged, that watches the Saronian sea, Kindling the night: then one short swoop to catch The Spider's Crag, our city's tower of watch; Whence hither to the Atreidae's roof it came, A light true-fathered of Idaean flame. Torch-bearer after torch-bearer, behold The tale thereof in stations manifold, Each one by each made perfect ere ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... be heard, sometimes with a noise of wrangling and discordance, sometimes in single cries of bodeful complaint. Occasionally the din is such that it is difficult to hear a friend speaking; the birds cluster and hover and swoop above with fierce argument and angry parleying. They are so accustomed to human presences that, even if sometimes a nuisance, they are more often a joy. They are never molested; they have a sense of privilege—the good women of the houses will come out and talk ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... class stand up to those of the Allies. They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann—he was put down by an English boy a month or so ago—had a sort of hawk's swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he missed in this hysterical lunge, he went on down.... This does not strike the Allied aviator as very brilliant. A gentleman of that sort ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... thus suddenly taken possession of the world, lost no time in setting up the signs of his rule. The leaves, whether green or brown, disappeared at one swoop; snow-gusts obscured the little remaining sunshine; the inhabitants came forth in furs and bulky wrappings; oysters and French pears became unreasonably dear; and sledges of frozen fish and game crowded down from the northern forests. In a few days the physiognomy of the capital was completely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the escape of Cornelia. Pompeius half rose from his seat; the boat was pitching in the choppy harbour swell; the general steadied himself by grasping the hands of Philip the freedman. Suddenly, like the swoop of a hawk on its prey, Agias saw the right hand of Septimius tear his short sword from its sheath. A scream broke from the Hellene's lips; before the Magnus could turn his head, the blow was struck. Pompeius received the blade full in the back, and staggered, while Salvius ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... for I have ceased To justify my deeds unto myself— The last infirmity of evil. Aye, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, 30 [An Eagle passes. Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Well may'st thou swoop so near me—I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision.—Beautiful! How beautiful is all this ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... birds and squirrels. Probably this much talked of fascination is nothing more than by its presence near their nests to incite them to attack, and to hazard near and nearer approaches to their enemy in hope to force him to retreat, until once within the compass of his fell swoop they fall victims to their temerity. I have often watched a cat act thus. Whatever explanation may be received, the fact cannot be questioned, and is ever attributed by the unreflecting, to some diabolic spell cast upon them by the animal. They have ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... stroke of the hurricane beat her down, and she continued to do so until, as she got dead before it, she rose suddenly to an even keel and went scudding away to leeward like a frightened sea-bird. The awful volume of sound given out by the fierce, headlong swoop of the wind as it bore down upon us quite prepared me to see both masts blown clean out of the schooner; but all her gear fortunately happened to be sound and good, and the loss of the foresail was the full extent of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... transformation-sleep? I do not know yet, What I do know is that her slender legs and her dainty velvet dress do not allow her to make underground searches. When she has found the propitious place, suddenly she will swoop down, lay her egg on the surface in that lightning touch with the tip of her abdomen and straightway fly up again. What I suspect, for reasons set forth presently, is that the grub that comes out of the Bombylius' egg must, of its own motion, at its own risk ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... tracking we came up with the beasts. There were four of them altogether, and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them into some ravine, where I thought I ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... they are perfectly nice, well-behaved brigands, but occasionally they forget their manners and swoop down upon the caravan road less than a dozen miles away. This is done only when scouts bring word that cargo valuable enough to make it worth while is about to pass. Each time the brigands make a foray a return raid ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Swoop! Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down to a snug noose under ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... difficulties were strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saw her swoop down like a mother bird to her young. (Winthrop tries to speak; his voice fails; he sinks limply back on the blanket). Steve! Only fainted. Ah! (he rises and goes slowly to Fair; when he speaks, his ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... party of hostile Lipans made a swoop around and skirting the garrison, killing a herder—a discharged drummer-boy—in sight of the flag-staff. Of course great excitement followed. Captain J. G. Walker, of the Mounted Rifles, immediately started with his company in pursuit of the Indians, and I was directed to accompany ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... because I find it already said to my hand, as it were, in a pretty verse, and because I must needs liken Montmorenci to something that is soft and light. Yet a cloud does not represent the glinting of the water in its downward swoop; it is like some broad slope of sun- smitten snow; but snow is coldly white and opaque, and this has a creamy warmth in its luminous mass; and so, there hangs the cataract unsaid as before. It is a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sail in the opposite direction? Death and destruction are concomitants of constitutional changes and revolution, no doubt; but you are such an impersonation of change, that, as you twist and turn and double, you deal destruction on all sides. At one swoop you are the ruin of a thousand oligarchs at the hands of the people, and at another of a thousand democrats at the hands of the better classes. Why, sirs, this is the man to whom the orders were given by the generals, in the sea-fight off Lesbos, to pick up the crews of ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... of 'Letters,' in which a number of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The famous Diatribe du Docteur Akakia is still fresh with a fiendish gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have glanced ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... silks and other stuffs, wine, vestments, and altar hangings from churches, arms and armour, hides and skins. The prices obtained were far below the real value of the articles, for money was scarce, and none could say when the Danes might again swoop down and clear out the contents of the warehouses. Nevertheless the sum obtained was a large one for those days, and this did not include the value of the gold and silver goblets, salvers, vases, and utensils used in the celebration ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... meanwhile on either side with those sly and stealthy eyes of his for a possible intruder, suggests to the observing mind the whole living drama of his native forest. One sees in that vivid world the watchful monkey ever ready to swoop down upon the tempting tail-feathers of his hereditary foe: one sees the canny parrot ever prepared for his rapid attack, and ever eager to make him pay with five joints of his tail for his impertinent ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... rush up the air as swiftly as possible, and then, with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at the sinking war-balloon of the foe. Down, down, down, through a vast alert tension of flight, down it will swoop, and, if its stoop is successful, slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment. Rifles will crack, ropes tear and snap; there will be a rending and shouting, a great thud of liberated gas, and perhaps a flare. Quite certainly ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... above the ramparts, a winged messenger of death, coming very swiftly through the sky, killing a few mortals down below and then retreating into the hiding- places behind the clouds. There were not many people who saw the "Taube"—the German dove—make its swoop and hurl its fire-balls. There was just a speck in the sky, a glint of metal, and the far- humming of an aerial engine. Perhaps it was a French aviator coming back from a reconnaissance over the enemy's lines on the Aisne, or taking a joy ride over Paris to stretch his wings. The little shop-girls ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... that to erect buildings in accordance with these plans would require a force of skilled mechanics under the supervision of a master builder? And do you realize that time is a most important factor in our present undertaking? Who can tell at what moment Brute MacNair may swoop down, upon us like Attila of old, and strike a fatal blow to our little outpost of civilization? And if he finds me here—" His voice trailed into silence and his eyes swept gloomily the northern reach of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the trees near the erections where Parsees put out their dead to be devoured, is not a pleasant sight. They also sit and watch near the Hindu burning-grounds, which suggests the uncomfortable idea that pickings are to be had there also. The rapidity with which they collect from all parts and swoop down upon the dead carcase of an animal is astonishing to witness. Their value as scavengers is great, and in a very short time nothing is left of ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... in the flirtations of the streets. Whether inviting eyes were ever thrown to me as to others, I cannot say. Sometimes, fancying so—hoping so, I would follow. Yet never could I summon up sufficient resolution to face the possible rebuff before some less timid swain would swoop down upon the quarry. Then I would hurry on, cursing myself for the poorness of my spirit, fancying mocking contempt in ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... hath fallen!" he muttered. "Fool, fool that I was never to dream of this! Friends, followers, all I hold most dear, swallowed up in this fell swoop! God of mercy, how may it be born! And thou, thou," he added, in increased agony, roused from that stupor by the wild shouts of "Sir Nigel, Sir Nigel! where is he? why does he tarry in such an hour?" that rung shrilly on the air. "Agnes, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... to expect plain sailing?" she continued with a knowing look; "and Ada Irvine is a perfect hurricane. She will swoop down on you at every opportunity, and bluster and blow; but let ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... French Revolution, then Bonaparte. It is more than possible that you are right, for France, whether Directory or Consulate, is not likely to change her policy regarding this country. Nothing would please either Talleyrand or Bonaparte better than to inflame us into a civil war, then swoop down upon us, under the pretence of coming to the rescue. Burr would be just the man to play into their hands, although with no such intention. Jefferson is quite clever enough to foil them, if he found that more to his interest. Well, neither is elected yet. Let us hope ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... horse jumps it slows, sidles, gathers itself together, goes up like a monster wave, and pitches down on the further side. Hedges and sky swoop in a semicircle. Then as if your own body ran into the horse's body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a mass of muscles, yet you have command too, upright stillness, eyes accurately judging. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... sky-larking, care-free crowd that infested the cozy quarters of the happy-go-lucky Hicks, every collegian present, except the ever-cheerful youth, seemed to have lost his best friend and his last dollar at one fell swoop! ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... though clouds of night Down on thy watch tower stoop: Though thou shouldst see thine heart's delight Borne from thee by their swoop. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... silently patrolling under lowered speed, swerved and darted a wine-colored, surrey-built touring car with a cape top. Durkin recognized it at a glance; it was Penfield's huge machine. Its movement, as it swung in toward the startled woman, seemed like the swoop of a hawk. It appeared to stop only for a moment, but in that moment two men leaped from the wide-swung tonneau door. When they clambered into it once more Durkin saw that Frank was between them. And one of the men was MacNutt, and the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... breath of the unquelled air Shrivels up like a parchment in the flame. No! let it stand upon the mountain's brow, And bid the untamed winds make sport of it; Yet though they drive it 'fore them in their might, 'Twill be like the strong eagle that exults In the wild rapture of his headlong swoop; The strongest ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Why is it? Like a snow-flurry, With swish of wings, And a swoop and a scurry, Comes a whole flock of them Now in a hurry! Busy and merry The little things, very; Watch them, and see How blithe they can be With their "Chick-a-dee-dee, Chick-a-dee-dee!" Each one such a bit Of ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... sullen rage I swoop down upon my inkstand after just lighting the Town Councillor downstairs with the kindliest countenance in the world. He sat here for two and a half hours by the clock, moaning and groaning, without the least regard for my wry face; I was just ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... far up, he had never flown a machine before at that height, and consequently his volplane seemed to occupy a longer time than it should have done. His fingers itched to start the engine again and raise the elevator just enough to arrest the downward swoop, and transform it into a soft glide, nicely calculated so that it would bring the wheels of the chassis into contact with the ground without any shock. He was over-keen on that landing, realizing that so many pairs of eyes ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... time after midday. Miela came first, alighting with a swift, triumphant swoop upon the roof where Mercer ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... so much racket," murmured Dave, lingering by his own door, "that, the first thing we know, a duty officer will swoop ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... Hurtle, Terror sublime! Swoop o'er the Land to-day— So the mist of wrong and crime, The breath of our Evil Time Be swept, as by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... movable little horns; so, when it wants to feed, it hides under leaves all of its body except these little horns which, as they move, seem to the birds to be some small worms at play. Then they immediately swoop down to pick them and the Cerastes suddenly twines round them and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... he obeyed, and found his way to the well where he lowered the bucket at the end of the swoop, and stood waiting for Nancy to follow him with the dipper fashioned from a long-necked gourd, as the drinking cup oftenest was in the western country of those days. She held it out to him with her head turned and he carried it to his lips ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... on!" put in Harry. "I move we go back to the cellar and get a bunch of those Russian rifles with sufficient ammunition, fill the tanks of the Eagle with some of this gasoline, get aboard a lot of canned goods and swoop down on the German camp like a hawk after some chickens. We can let down a trapeze for Jimmie ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and hearing his hail, the gulls gather, and swoop around his head in continuous screaming. In larger numbers, and with cries more stridulent, as his comrades come forth out of the cave, one after another—yawning, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the blanched face to the field of battle, towards the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced between his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... never have tested me on such a question! Don't you see that I'm the judge sitting in his or her own case? Two boarders gone at one swoop! How shall I break the news to ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... not get into our canoes," suggested Thorward, "make a dash at the spit of sand, and carry off the children at a swoop before the brown-skinned rascals ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... blind man could not defend himself from the other's terrible punishment. His whole face was so swollen and distorted, that not a feature was recognisable. But he evidently had his design. Each time Sayers struck him and ducked, Heenan made a swoop with his long arms, and at last he caught his enemy. With gigantic force he got Sayers' head down, and heedless of his captive's pounding, backed step by step to the ring. When there, he forced Sayers' neck on to the rope, and, with all ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering, inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved; against whom the ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... enemies, as under cover of darkness they snatch nervous mouthfuls of grain in the fields,—and hence their gray colour and their large, watchful eyes; but on the other hand, the baby owls in their hollow tree would starve if the parents were never able to swoop down in the darkness and surprise a mouse now and then,—hence the gray plumage and great ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... unfitness. Agnes might well have thought it better he should marry the cottar's than the farmer's daughter! Anyhow she was resolved to keep an eye on the young woman so long as Cosmo was within her swoop. He was chivalrous and credulous, and who could tell what Elsie might not dare! Her refusal to be his wife did not deprive her of antecedent rights. And there she was, gathering behind Cosmo, as two ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... moon showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit, brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard hawks. And her dream came back ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... upon Miss Letitia and hugged her with violence to make up for that moment of inward dissatisfaction with Miss Letitia's loving work. Miss Letitia's glasses were knocked off in the sudden swoop and fell into her lap. She looked most surprised at this unexpected proceeding, though highly gratified, as she retrieved the glasses. Had she asked Miss Asenath about it, Miss Asenath could probably have told her just what had been passing through Arethusa's mind. Miss Asenath had been watching ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... setting, a warm glow fell upon the dissolving mountains of Savoy and upon the shining mirror of the lake. The luminous, tranquil breadth of it caught me and held me. "I am done for." The light upon the lake and upon the mountains, the downward swoop of a bird over the water and something in my heart, gave ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... like flying at his throat, as though all the truth lived in that man and he hoped to get it from him at one swoop, to tear it ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... intruded, had been convened by the local doctor, who had got down from London, what the landlady termed a "lot of fine fresh matter," and was now about to strike a decisive blow at the small-pox, by vaccinating all the babies he could lay his hands on at "one fell swoop." The surgical ceremonies were expected to ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Sacramento, from Marysville to Placerville. Stockton, San Andreas, Sonora, and Mariposa are terrorized. Plundered pack-trains, murdered men, and robbed wayfarers prove that Joaquin Murieta is ever at work. His swoop is unerring. The yellow serape, black banded, the dark scowling face, and the battery of four revolvers, two on his body, two on his saddle, soon make him known ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Whitefoot saw all that happened. He saw Whitey suddenly sail out on silent wings from that stump and swoop with great claws reaching for some one. And then he saw who that some one was,—Shadow the Weasel! He saw Shadow dodge in the very nick of time. Then he watched Whitey swoop again and again as Shadow dodged this way ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... had begun to swoop down from the frozen North, and summer had gathered her dainty robes about her and fled shivering before them. Mrs. Hawley-Crowles stood at a window and gazed with unseeing eyes at the withered leaves tossing ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... whipped up in different places; the silver-white grass bent to the ground; round bunches of sage went rolling before us. The puffs grew longer, steadier, harder. Then a shrieking blast howled on our trail, seeming to swoop down on us with a yellow, blinding pall. I shut my eyes and covered my face with a handkerchief. The sand blew so thick that it filled my gloves, pebbles struck me hard enough ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... means the action of the "spade," or the use to which it is put. Hence this pair of words does not furnish an example of Inclusion. But as "dig" is frequently appropriated to "spade"—as we have often thought of those words together—this is a case of strong Concurrence. The term "swoop" is almost exclusively applied to "eagle." A certain action or movement of the eagle is termed swooping. But "eagle" does not mean "swoop," nor does "swoop" mean "eagle." We always think of "eagle" when we think of "swoop," but we do not often think ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... is a storm bound to swoop down on us?" demanded Bumpus, as he cast a nervous glance around at the watery expanse; for they were far out on ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... throw at it; but when I turned again, the creature was just disappearing into the water. It is their habit to lie quite still, and catch animals that come near them. Whether or not it was waiting until I came within the swoop of its mighty tail I know not, but I had the feeling that I had escaped a great danger. It was curious that it should have been so bold only a few days after Mr. Hollenbeck had been down shooting at them. There were ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... With open-blown jackets, Like black, soaring pinions, They swoop down the hillside, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... of this dashed Swoop of the Vulture business," he grumbled, as he paced before his tent, ever and anon pausing to sweep the city below him with his glasses. "I should like to find the fellow who started the idea! Making me look a fool! ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... and yet not alone. A rabbit scurries across your pathway. A faint little squeak voices the fright of a mouse. There is a swoop of wings which you neither distinctly hear nor clearly see, yet you are aware, in a less marked degree than was the mouse, that an owl was near. You feel certain that the downy woodpecker is asleep in that neat little round hole on the southwest side of a tree trunk, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... with the vicinity of safety that not one of us realized our chauffeur had forgotten to light up. All I remember is that we seemed suddenly to swoop down on a crowd, the peremptory "Halt!" rang out sharp and clear, and we came to a sudden standstill. The car was besieged by officials of every kind, and we all felt the genuine hostility in the air. A man in plain clothes was chief spokesman. ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... of action when the troops of Morillo were turned westward for the purpose of curbing the rebellious spirits in the neighboring Vice-Royalty,—when, quicker than thought, Paez was once more over the mountains, and recovered by a sudden swoop the Llanos of Barinas. Thenceforward, this region remained the surest foothold of the revolution in Venezuela. Encircled with Spanish troops, it remained, nevertheless, a practical republic in itself, and the vast basin of the Orinoco ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... carried him back twenty years to that gloomy morning in the casemates when the story was passed around that Captain Maynard had lost a wife and an intimate friend during the previous night. Chester saw at a glance that, despite his precautions, the blow had come, the truth been revealed at one fell swoop. ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... my sensibility to shame under his taunts of cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, I ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... fourteenth century Valenciennes was so wealthy that Jean Party, provost in 1357, was regarded as the richest man in Europe. He went to Paris during the fair of the Landit, and for his own account bought up all the goods brought there for sale at one swoop; he then retailed them at a great profit. He was invited to attend the court of France, and went there so magnificently attired as to excite the jealousy of the French nobles, who treated him in consequence with undue arrogance. He took off his cloak, enriched with fur and jewels, as no ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... he shrilly commented. "Here it is wrong!" And, grabbing up a slice of chalk, he made a deft swoop toward the material. Suddenly his arm stayed in mid air and he laid down the chalk with a muscular effort. "I think I take this ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Iamblichus, the Alexandrian platonist, of whom the Emperor Julian said that he was posterior to Plato in time but not in genius. At last, shutting up my book, I opened my door and took a last look at the dreary fell and still more dreary sky. As I protruded my head, a swoop of wind caught me and sent the red ashes of my pipe sparkling and dancing through the darkness. At the same moment the moon shone brilliantly out from between two clouds, and I saw, sitting on the hillside, not two hundred yards from ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... within arm's length of her. They were pursuing a shoal of small fish called atuli, and these every now and then darted under the canoe for protection. Sometimes, as the hungry bonita pressed them hard, they would leap out of the water, hundreds together, and then the sea birds would swoop down and seize them ere they fell back into ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... filled with the best food that the boy could wish for, so he darted toward it. But before the bird could get there a terrible clamour arose about him. Sparrows, crows, and swallows came rushing up with wild shrieks, thinking that the eagle meant to swoop down upon ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... last words left George's mouth his hands rose above his head, his body curved itself over towards the water, and in an instant he shot downward out of the rigging swiftly as a sea-bird making its swoop, and entered ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... and the knight saw the wave swoop down upon the noble steed, which had been vainly struggling in the water. Then slowly once more the wave reared itself higher and higher yet above the heads of the two who watched and waited until they too should be for ever ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery chargers up, allowing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... There were four of them altogether, and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... their appointed toll sometimes squandered much of their money in useless tribute. Karl is said to have freed them afterwards from the burden of this tax. After Gotrik had crossed Friesland, and Karl had now come back from Rome, Gotrik determined to swoop down upon the further districts of Germany, but was treacherously attacked by one of his own servants, and perished at home by the sword of a traitor. When Karl heard this, he leapt up overjoyed, declaring that nothing more delightful had ever fallen to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Sidney Johnston an "imbecile," a "coward," a "traitor"? or was he not rather an unparagoned strategist who, having at last "lured the presumptuous foe" into his toils, was now, with Beauregard, notwithstanding Beauregard's protracted illness, about to make the "one fell swoop" of our complete deliverance? And after the swoop and its joy and its glory, when Johnnie should come marching home, whose Johnnies, and how many, would never return? As to your ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... untie the reed that bound him to the dead Mouse, a Hawk came sailing over the pond. Seeing the body of the Mouse floating on the water, the Hawk swooped down, seized the Mouse and carried it off, with the Frog dangling from its leg. Thus at one swoop he had caught both meat ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... round her magic pathway swoop— Admiral, captain, commodore, in gunboat, frigate, sloop. Save to snatch a prize, or a foe chastise, as their feeble art she foils, She will scorn a point from her course to veer, to baffle all ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... making a spiral glide, coming up astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched—and as a score of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed—the lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk stooping ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees, together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths compared with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of sediments, may ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... take of courage and resolution to save Quebec and the colony. They will not listen—they will not hear. They are flying like chaff before the wind. They are leaving everything behind in their mad haste to be gone! And the Indians will swoop down directly the camp is empty, and take everything. Oh, it is a disgrace, a disgrace! Not even to take a night to think it over. If the English did but know, and sent out a few hundred soldiers upon them, they might cut the whole army to ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... practice, some artiste passed her in the street and gave her a smile, she believed that he was waiting for her; a "comic quartet," the Out-of-Tune Musicals, happening to come out of a bar and blow a kiss to her, were there on her account, she thought—four lovers at a swoop! ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... honest. It is foolish to set up a partnership in the dark. Is there anyone, Evelyn, who may swoop down upon us at a moment's notice, and carry you off to share ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a soft, warm young figure flashed through the door and with a swoop caught him in her arms. She dropped into a chair, nestled him closely, drooped her fragrant brown head over his little bullet-eyed red one, and rocked softly while she crooned ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... each telling of some unselfish service that the Prince had rendered him. Their voices all joined at last into such a roar of gratitude that the scissors were given fresh strength on account of it. They grew longer and longer, and stronger and stronger, until with one great swoop they sprang forward and cut the ugly old Ogre's head from ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... impetuous clash (against thine), they suddenly fell down, O king, on the earth. And in consequence of those steeds as also of thine occasioned by that clash, loud sounds were heard resembling what occurs at Garuda's swoop. And the rider of those steeds, O king, thus dashing against one another in that battle, began to slay one another fiercely. And during that general engagement which was fierce and terrible, the chargers of both sides (escaping from press of battle) ran wildly away over the field. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... her? Umbrellas would be splendid weapons. I have one with a lovely crooked handle. You could practice hooking it around my neck and when the fateful hour came you could bring the double-dyed villain to her knees with one swoop. ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... yards in length, were cleared among the palm trees by the whirling wind, which seemed to perform a demon-dance of revelry among them. In some cases it snapped trees off close to the ground. In others it seemed to swoop down from above, lick up a patch of trees bodily and carry them clean away, leaving the surrounding trees untouched. Sometimes it would select a tree of thirty years growth, seize it, spin it round, and leave it a permanent spiral screw. I was in these regions about the time, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... designated by writing teachers as the Whole Arm, or Free Arm Movement, in which the arm is lifted free from the desk and completes the letter with a dash or a swoop, is necessary in ornamental penmanship and flourishing, but has no place in a practical style of business writing. The man of business would hardly stop, in the midst of his writing, to raise the arm, and execute an "off-hand ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... in particulars, to be sure. How the tails of the entire flock disappeared in one fell swoop—whether by malice aforethought, at the instance of a lurking enemy, or in a miraculous accident, whilst the young shepherdess slept at her charge—has never been told, though thousands of wondering pows, multiplied by ten, have wanted to know. Perhaps it is better not explained. Mystery ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... which shelters you is desecrated with the marks of your irreverential contempt for all things human and divine. Would that—(and the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)—would that your entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we might crush you all at a single swoop! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... The involvement of other nations is merely accidental. It is ourselves whom Germany is making this huge effort to crush, and but for one small circumstance she would have come within a measurable prospect of success. To swoop down on France through Belgium, to crush her in three weeks, to seize her fleet, and with the combined fleets of France and Germany to attack ours—that was the proposition, and who can say that it might not have succeeded? The small circumstance which Germany overlooked was ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... with verdigris as thick as a diachylon plaister, was rubbed till the figures emerged into day; while, inside the case of the same chronometer, the cobwebs that formed triangular hammocks, which the pendulum could hardly wade through, were cleared away at one swoop. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... to her plate a wing-bone from his own, and Aunt Abigail, with one deft swoop, contributed the neck from the platter. As fast as she could, Elizabeth Ann fed these to Shep, who woofed them down at top speed, the bones crunching loudly under his strong, white teeth. How he did enjoy it! It did your heart good ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... there was a swoop of wings, and the largest raven, after hovering over her for a minute, lit upon her shoulder, and rubbed his black head ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... from the chief, food and wine were brought to her, while the brigands gathered together and listened eagerly to this counsel and to that. There were many who, like Vasilici, had taken to the hills merely to swoop down upon the defenceless for pillage and for ransom, who cared nothing who might sit upon the throne in Sturatzberg, and among these there was a certain resentment that latterly there had come a change into the councils, that the organization ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... shoals and hunting for the langustas, or giant lobsters. This was exciting sport. We used barrel-hoops with nets, and when we saw a lobster shining in the shallow water we waded noiselessly close to swoop down upon him with a great splash. I was always afraid of these huge crayfish, but C. was not. His courage might have been predatory, for he certainly liked to eat lobster. But he had a scare one night when a devilfish or tremendous ray ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... out joyfully. The snake had flopped from its hollow, plunged at full length aside; had started to crawl, writhing, dragging its hinder parts. But with a swoop the pony arrived before we were noting; the recruit plumped into the hollow; and bending over in his swift circle the courier snatched the snake from the ground; ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... up tamely, like huckleberries, and changed their style of hunting,—creeping, instead of trotting openly so that even a porcupine must notice them, hiding behind rocks and bushes and tufts of grass till the precise moment came, and then leaping with the swoop of a goshawk on a ptarmigan. A wolf that cannot catch a grasshopper has no business hunting rabbits—this seemed to be the unconscious motive that led the old mother, every sunny afternoon, to ignore the thickets where game was hiding plentifully and take her ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... cried Kenric grasping firmly his sword. "Cowards and brutes!" and wielding his weapon with a mighty swoop he brought it down once, twice, upon the ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... the spot where the power boat was secured, with his two companions aboard, he did not mean to go far. Night would soon swoop down on the wilderness; and from former unpleasant experiences the young hunter knew what it was ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... under the dragon so cleverly that the monster did not awake. Full of joy, they hurried off with her and sailed away. But presently the dragon awoke and missing the princess flew after them through the air. Just as he was hovering above the ship to swoop down upon it, the hunter shot him through the heart and he tumbled down dead, but falling on the vessel his carcase smashed it into pieces. They laid hold of two planks and drifted about till the tailor with his wonderful needle sewed the planks together, and then they collected ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... morning dawned on the double group, Facing each other on opposite shores, Where years ago with a mighty swoop The waters ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... to be carried, together with all materials for its construction. Not only had an army of workmen to be fed, but a body of troops to guard them; for Abu Hamed, at the other end of the line, for which they were making, was occupied by a large body of Dervishes; who might, at any moment, swoop down ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... hard work, from sordid living, from the indefinable cramping of the spirit that grows upon a man through months of monotonous labor. Town—a pyrotechnic display among the bright lights—one dizzy swoop on the wings of fictitious excitement—bought caresses—empty pockets—the woods again! Yet the logger dreams always of saving his money, of becoming a timber king, of setting himself up in some business—knowing all the while that he is like a child with pennies in his hand, unhappy ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... is microscopic and his aim sure. Quick as thought he has seized his victim and is back to his perch. There is no strife, no pursuit,—one fell swoop and the matter is ended. That little sparrow, as you will observe, is less skilled. It is the Socialis, and he finds his subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvae of insects, though he occasionally has higher aspirations, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... out that the success of the late coasting voyage, and the arrangements we had made with the Russians, promised a most advantageous trade, which it was a thousand pities to sacrifice, and lose the fruits of the hardships he had endured and the dangers he had braved, at one fell swoop, by this rash measure. Nevertheless, seeing the partners were determined to abide by their first resolution, and not being able, by himself alone, to fulfil his engagements to Governor Barnoff, he consented to embark once more, in order to seek ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... played the game; she played, now with the rhythm and precision of a calculating machine, now with the blind impetus and swoop of some undeviating natural force. It was not will, it was not intelligence; it was something beyond and above them both, infinitely more detached, more monotonous and cold; something independent even of her desire. Durant could see that she had as little love for the game ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... took a swoop to the right, nosed down into a shallow ditch and leaped like a shot deer ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... before a horse jumps it slows, sidles, gathers itself together, goes up like a monster wave, and pitches down on the further side. Hedges and sky swoop in a semicircle. Then as if your own body ran into the horse's body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a mass of muscles, yet you have command ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... cover of darkness they snatch nervous mouthfuls of grain in the fields,—and hence their gray colour and their large, watchful eyes; but on the other hand, the baby owls in their hollow tree would starve if the parents were never able to swoop down in the darkness and surprise a mouse now and then,—hence the gray plumage and great eyes of the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... question of how we rate the brotherhood, what per cent we will take. My neighbor at table in my London boarding-house meant that, though he put it in a way all his own. He was a benevolent enough crank, but no friend of preaching. Being a crank, he condemned preachers with one fell swoop:— ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... gas attack sounds. One backward fling of the head and the steel helmet falls off, for there is no time to lift it off. A dive into the bag carried on the chest and the respirator is grasped and with one skilful swoop it is drawn over the face. Your nose is pinched shut by a clamp, your teeth grip the rubber mouthpiece, and, like a diver, you must now get your one safe stream of pure air through the respirator. You ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... and creeping vines, showing that even here, in these lofty and deserted regions, Nature has her poetic moods. Birds almost entirely disappear at these altitudes, preferring the more genial atmosphere of the plains, though now and again an eagle, with broad spread pinions, is seen to swoop gracefully from the top of some lonely pine, and sail with unmoving wings far away across the depth of the valley until hidden by the windings of the gorge. Even the presence of this proud and kingly bird but serves to emphasize the loneliness of ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... white arc of his wings, against a sky so dark that it must symbolise the obscure discourse of those who write in prose. You are left quite doubtful whether he will strike the rocky terrace in the foreground with his slender, silver hooves, or will swoop down into the valley below, or will soar to heaven and out of sight. You are left by the painter in a pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may break out anywhere, and of the vivacious courser himself all that we can be sure of is that we ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... piteously bleak in winter, but most lovely when spring comes to clothe it. The volcanic nature of the soil in these parts gives a softer tint than usual to the coloring. The miles upon miles of open gray-green country, treeless, hedgeless, houseless, swoop toward one another with the strangest sinuosities and rifts and knobs of volcanic earth, till at last they sink in faint mists, only to rise again in pink and blue distances, so far off, so pale and aerial, that they can scarcely be distinguished ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... and alongside my road runs a bit of civilization in the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... fire, he made a swoop for the fellow, and managed to give him a tremendous blow that toppled him over ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... given up a secret in thinking how well worth while it had been, since Ellen was such a dear, young, loving thing. She found consolation in this frost-polished morning: the pale, bright sky in which the light stood naked, her abandoned veil of clouds floating above the horizon; the swoop and dance over the marshes of the dazzling specks that were seagulls; the fur of rime that the dead leaves on the hedgerow wore, and the fine jewellery-work of the glistening grass tufts in its shadow. The world had neglected nothing ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... entirely depending on the wind, but, like steamers, impelled by unseen powers within them. Alas! that power was not the force of innocent steam, but the arms of Christian rowers chained to the oar. Sure as the pounce of a hawk upon a partridge was the swoop of the corsairs upon the French vessel. A signal to surrender followed, but the captain boldly refused, and armed his crew, bidding them stand to their guns. But the fight was too unequal, the brave little ship was disabled, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her plate a wing-bone from his own, and Aunt Abigail, with one deft swoop, contributed the neck from the platter. As fast as she could, Elizabeth Ann fed these to Shep, who woofed them down at top speed, the bones crunching loudly under his strong, white teeth. How he did enjoy it! It did your heart ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... cornices like a terrier shaking water from its hair. Grinding his teeth, cursing, he wrenched at the window, tore at the clasp, then turned in desperation and saw the door, loosed by a sudden throe, swing open. Through reeling dust clouds Pancha darted for it, her flight like the swoop of a bird, and he followed, running crazily along the ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... tonnage as the one that preceded her. No flag is flying and I cannot guess her nationality. She continues steaming at full speed in an effort to pass the zone of danger before other engines can be launched. But how can she escape them since they will swoop back ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... off the manuscript influenza came down upon me with a swoop. I went to bed and am there still, with no chance of quitting it in a hurry. My wife is in the same case; item one of the maids. The house is a hospital, and by great good fortune we ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... occasioned by the sudden flight of the dove, which, escaping from her hold, soared aloft. Jennet followed the course of its silver wings, as they cleaved the blue sky, and then all at once saw a large hawk, which apparently had been hovering about, swoop down upon it, and bear it off. Some white feathers fell down near the little girl, and she picked up one of them and put ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... you," as Pip's means of paying his debts are lightened and made easy by his method of simply adding them up with a margin. "The time comes," says Herbert, "when you see your opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it, and you make your capital, and then there you are! When you have once made your capital you have nothing to do but employ it." In like manner Pip tells us "Suppose your debts to be one hundred and sixty four pounds four and two-pence, I would say, leave a margin and put them down ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... for a stick to throw at it; but when I turned again, the creature was just disappearing into the water. It is their habit to lie quite still, and catch animals that come near them. Whether or not it was waiting until I came within the swoop of its mighty tail I know not, but I had the feeling that I had escaped a great danger. It was curious that it should have been so bold only a few days after Mr. Hollenbeck had been down shooting ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... my books!' exclaimed Biffen, with a genuine groan. 'And all my notes! At one fell swoop! If I didn't laugh, old friend, I should sit down and cry; indeed I should. All my classics, with years of scribbling in the margins! How am I to buy ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... increase the anarchy, these 'foreigners,' and to learn the American twang and method of spitting. And there is the peril of politics. Upon these scattered exotic communities, ignorant of the problems of their adopted land, ignorant even of its language, swoop the agents of political parties, with their one effectual argument—bad whisky. This baptism is the immigrants' only organised welcome into their new liberties. Occasionally some Church raises a thin protest. But the 'Anglo-Saxon' continues to take up his burden; and the floods from Europe ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... hung about with a couple of hundred pictures presented by his admiring painter guests from time to time. The viands are bountiful and splendidly garnished and the consommations au premier choix. Then there are the occupants of "les petits menages" to swoop down on your table for crumbs,—pigeons only,—and in cages a score or more of canary-birds, and, as a sort of contrast, dogs and cats and fowls of ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp tilt. Banking, he advanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a half-tone higher, and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long and rising swoop. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... like a live thing under the terrific strain. At each downward swoop, before the upswing began, there was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... colloquial remarks delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with a driving swoop into the palm of the other—and repeat as often as necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree upon the great, broad, fundamental principles—principles ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... then said, 'Ye children, I myself saw the mighty hawk, that best of birds, swoop down and fly away with the mouse from the hole. And while he was flying away swiftly, I followed him behind and pronounced blessing on him for his having taken away the mouse from the hole. I said unto him. 'O king of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... maiden of the two strove to "cut across lots" when she came near the south-eastern corner, whereat, facing north, stood the big house of the commanding officer; but Mrs. Miller was too experienced a hand, and bore down upon the pair in sudden swoop from her piazza to the front gate, and they had to ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... those Imperialists were fairly up the glen and out of sight and the Dutch were plodding their way in. Then I'd launch the Highlanders, sword in hand, down the slope of that hill, and cut off the rear-guard, and take the baggage at a swoop, and in half an hour the army would be disabled and the third part of it ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... continuously tracking we came up with the beasts. There were four of them altogether, and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them into some ravine, where I thought I might possibly bring them into a state ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... the first sudden swoop of the tempest arrived. The tall elms writhed as though taken with St. Vitus's dance. The hens began to screech and run to cover. Thunder muttered in ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... the great Kemble had been bound to do so. Mr. Fechter's Hamlet, a pale, woebegone Norseman with long flaxen hair, wearing a strange garb never associated with the part upon the English stage (if ever seen there at all) and making a piratical swoop upon the whole fleet of little theatrical prescriptions without meaning, or, like Dr. Johnson's celebrated friend, with only one idea in them, and that a wrong one, never could have achieved its extraordinary success but for its animation by one pervading purpose, to which ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... maintained a discreet silence. Instead of the usual sky-larking, care-free crowd that infested the cozy quarters of the happy-go-lucky Hicks, every collegian present, except the ever-cheerful youth, seemed to have lost his best friend and his last dollar at one fell swoop! ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... this point, lighted on the hand. It was better to fall by desperate councils than to continue as he was; and with one tremulous swoop he pounced on the gloved fingers and drew them to himself. One overt step, it had appeared to him, would dissolve the spell of his embarrassment; in act, he found it otherwise: he found himself no less incapable of speech or further progress; and with the ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... "Oh, no! The creek takes a great swoop, below Crofield, and the road's a short cut. There'll be some ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... dissatisfactions, sittings and contempts,—threatened now and then to swoop down upon the family life and comfort with ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the edge of the town—the long, straight road to the south, and the road-trail that led west into the silence. There were no tracks in it now but the flat hoof-prints of burros and the wire-twined wheel-marks of desert buckboards; even the road was half obliterated by the swoop of the winds which had torn up the hard-packed dirt, yet the going was good and as the racer purred on Virginia settled back in ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... this field in a night or so,—the moon is 'most full now, and the nights are light,—and I've got to be able to signal him just how to find the powder magazine and the other munitions. Then he can swoop right over there and drop one of his little souvenirs where it will do the most good and fly away home. I advise you to keep away from that section of ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... young chickens; but the hens called their broods together under their wings, and the cocks put themselves in order of battle, so that the kite was disappointed. At length one chicken, not minding its mother, but straggling heedlessly to a distance, was descried by the kite, who made a sudden swoop, and seized it in his talons. The chicken cried out, and the cocks and hens all screamed, when Ralph, the farmer's son, who saw the attack, snatched up a loaded gun, and just as the kite was flying off with his prey, fired and brought him dead to the ground, along ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of God! We come! We come! In swoop for fierce flesh, like a bird of prey, In scent of the blood of the brave to-day, By the splendor of God! We come! We come! Sword in hand, for the Love of God! Since blood is holy and royal wine, Advance! Drink health to ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... country. "Without some provision of this kind," said Mr. Julian, "rebel speculators now hovering over the whole of that region, and hunting up the best portion of it, and the holders of Agricultural College scrip can come down upon it at one fell swoop and cheat the actual settler, whether white or black, out of his rights, or even the possibility of a home in that region, driving the whole of them to some of our Western Territories or ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... then, the scene below was illuminated by the flash and roar of hostile artillery. A shell exploded with a deafening report so near their Bleriot that it was evident that the firer had sighted them during Lafe's last lower swoop. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... with sleep, I had a curious sense of being whirled at a terrific speed into some subterranean suck of waters. There was nothing to do but wait. We struck rocks and went rolling, shipping buckets of water at every dip. Then there was a long sickening swoop through utter blackness. It ended abruptly with a thud that knocked ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... to "invite" the Stable. The Stable having been duly invited, its eight occupants come in, and each finds a place on a palliasse. It is a warm, still night. The great doors of the Coach-house stand wide open. The stars are out thick by this time. Little black bats flit and swoop about in the darkness. If you keep very still you can just hear the gentle "hshshsh, hshshsh" of the sea. The candle flickers as the night gives a little sigh. A few Cubs are rolling about on their straw beds. "Shut up, all!" commands an imperious ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... She thought he matched his surroundings as he disappeared at a trot round the corner of the church. Then from behind her came the hoot of a motor-horn, and she glanced back to see a closed car that glittered at every angle swoop through the open gates and swerve round to the churchyard. She wanted to stop and see its occupants alight, but decorum prompted her to pass on, and she entered the church, which smelt of the mould of centuries, and ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... with every fiery detail through her brain. He had marked her down for himself, long, long ago, and whatever Dr. Jim might say, he had never abandoned the pursuit. He meant to capture her at last. She might flee, but he was following, tireless, fleet, determined. Presently he would swoop like an eagle upon his prey, and she would be utterly at his mercy. He had beaten Grange, and there was no ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... of his and her line, had arrived in beggar's guise, a wretched idiot, a recipient of charity—all of which details the general gave out for greater effect! He was anxious to steal her interest at the first swoop, so as to distract her thoughts ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as near Oxford, it flows silently onwards with scarcely a dimple on its unruffled surface. Over its still waters the gnats rise and fall in their ceaseless dance. The swift-winged dragon-flies, blue, green, and red, swoop upon them like so many falcons on their prey; or, in the earlier year, the mayflies flutter above the stream, leaving their shed skins, like ghostly images of themselves, sticking on every tree trunk near ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... insurgents had converted the terrace of the Tuileries, developed their plan of action with great circumspection; two strong columns were sent out to right and left that, skirting the ramparts, should first seize Montmartre and the Observatory and then, wheeling inward, swoop down on the central quarters, surrounding them and capturing all they contained, as a shoal of fish is captured in the meshes of a gigantic net. About two o'clock Maurice heard that the tricolor was floating over Montmartre: the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... time and labour would lie waste, instead of providing a considerable part of the food of the household in summer and autumn. "But there was never no sense in them ladies like missus, no more in their sparing than in their spending." At one fell swoop she dismissed her own maid, the cook, and the parlour-maid, retaining only a young table-maid to "do" for ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... no scruples arising from conscious unfitness. Agnes might well have thought it better he should marry the cottar's than the farmer's daughter! Anyhow she was resolved to keep an eye on the young woman so long as Cosmo was within her swoop. He was chivalrous and credulous, and who could tell what Elsie might not dare! Her refusal to be his wife did not deprive her of antecedent rights. And there she was, gathering behind Cosmo, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and never have to work hard or git a beatin'. Then come de cradlers of de wheat, de threshers, and de millers of de corn and de wheat, and de feeders of de cotton gin. De lowest class was de common field niggers. A house nigger man might swoop down and mate wid a field hand's good lookin' daughter, now and then, for pure love of her, but you never see a house gal lower herself by marryin' and matin' wid a common field-hand nigger. Dat offend de white folks, 'specially ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... dashed Swoop of the Vulture business," he grumbled, as he paced before his tent, ever and anon pausing to sweep the city below him with his glasses. "I should like to find the fellow who started the idea! Making me look a fool! Still, it's just as bad ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... recollect them, and for which men so often have been and still are impleaded in Court Christian—these particulars, I say, being recapitulated and set forth in terrible array, by the rector, excited in the whole parish so much dread of the rapacious vulture, who was coming with such a swoop upon them, that high and low, young and old, rich and poor, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... it vigorously that her wild pets might get all the little pieces of food that fell. Not a bird came down as long as she remained in the yard, but as soon as she had tripped back to the house and the door closed upon her brown curls, I could see a drove of hungry snowbirds swoop from the trees, and in a minute every crumb would be picked up. I am sure they must have loved dear little Polly, for many a choice bit did they get through ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... of the families of the habitans after this swoop of your foragers?" asked the Seigneur de Beauce, a country gentleman who retained a few honorable ideas floating on top of the wine he ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... afford to dream. He once remarked confidentially to a friend, "I veel make ze millions and millions by ze great enterprizes in America, and zen I veel go home to France, and veel capture my comrades in ze French armee, an veel plot and plan, and directly zey veel put me in command, and zen I veel swoop down on ze government, and first zing you know I veel mount the zrone." One time his agent at Medora, his ranch on the Northern Pacific, wrote him at New York about the loss of three thousand head of sheep, the letter going into all the details of the affair. The Marquis ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... helped. Some of the seed, sown broadcast, of course falls there, and lies where it falls, having no power to penetrate the hard surface. As in our own English cornfields, a flock of bold, hungry birds watch the sower; and, as soon as his back is turned, they are down with a swift-winged swoop, and away goes the exposed grain. So there is an end of it; and the path is as bare as ever, five minutes after it has been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... whole country, and gradually destroying the red men; and would call forth all their supernatural powers, and blast them with fire and plague, unless they were taken by surprise, and annihilated at one fell swoop. All the superstitious fears of the ignorant natives were thus aroused, and if there were any in the assembly who were too well acquainted with the white men to credit all that Coubitant asserted, they ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Shepherd, if it be his, as Izaak Walton without suspicion assumes, and, if it did not compel comparison with Marlowe's more exquisite melody, would assure his place among the poets of the age. He was able to barb a fierce sarcasm with courtly grace. How his fancy could swoop down and strike, and pierce as it flashed, may be felt in each ringing stanza of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Yorkshire forests. I have sure spies on the Saxon's motions—To-night they sleep in the convent of Saint Wittol, or Withold, or whatever they call that churl of a Saxon Saint at Burton-on-Trent. Next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways, we swoop on them at once. Presently after I will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one from the hands of the rude ravishers, conduct her to Front-de-Boeuf's Castle, or to Normandy, if it should be necessary, and produce ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... dreaded. Its flat bottom enabled them to beach the vessel on any fitting coast; and a step on shore at once transformed the boatmen into a war-band. From the first the daring of the English race broke out in the secrecy and suddenness of the pirates' swoop, in the fierceness of their onset, in the careless glee with which they seized either sword or oar. "Foes are they," sang a Roman poet of the time, "fierce beyond other foes and cunning as they are fierce; the sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... taking up the hat of the unfortunate Elijah with a certain hesitation, as if he feared it had already lost its dramatic intensity as a witness, disappeared into the storm and darkness again. A lurking gust of wind lying in ambush somewhere seemed to swoop down on him as if to prevent further indecision and whirl him away in the direction of the justice's house; and Mr. Harkutt shut the door, bolted it, and walked aimlessly ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... sharper. He could hear Gino coming in on tiptoe. He even knew what was passing in his mind, how now he was at fault, now he was hopeful, now he was wondering whether after all the victim had not escaped down the stairs. There was a quick swoop above him, and then a low growl like a dog's. Gino had broken his ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... continued to let his men be taken. At last he had only one man left, but he had so managed the moves that, without my father being aware of it, this last man was in a position to take all the men my father had left in one single swoop,—and there were a good many, for M. de Balzac had taken only six up to that move. From that time onward my father regarded him as one of the keenest minds that had ever lived." (Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Touraine, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... earliest daffodils, When, before sunrise, the cold clear hours Gleam with a promise that noon fulfils,— Deep in the leafage the cuckoo cried, Perch'd on a spray by a rivulet-side, "Swallows, O Swallows, come back again To swoop and herald the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows, And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel. Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, Down the hillside hounding, they glided away o'er the meadow. Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters, Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow Brings from the shore of the sea to restore ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the buildings. They only came when an animal was killed for meat, and would then hang about, keeping a sharp eye on the proceedings and watching their chance. This would come when the carcass was dressed and lights and other portions thrown to the dogs; then the carancho would swoop down like a kite, and snatching up the meat with his beak would rise to a height of twenty or thirty yards in the air, and dropping his prize would deftly catch it again in his claws and soar away to feed on it at leisure. I was never tired of admiring this feat of the carancho, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... to make out the diverse branching of it in any maps I can lay hand on: but we may remember easily, and usefully, that it is all north of the Maine,—that it rests on the Drachenfels at one end, and tosses itself away to the morning light with a concave swoop, up to the Hartz, (Brocken summit, 3700 feet above sea, nothing higher): with one notable interval for Weser ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the bay Call to the distant flight Of ducks, that swoop from out the realms of space, Seeking a ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... bring men in at Ostend or Zeebrugge to reinforce you in a hard south-eastward push. There is no limit to what could be done by the extreme left-handed push and swoop along the Dutch frontier.... In a few hours I could have fifty 12-in. guns and seventy 6-in. firing on the enemy's right and rear. It is difficult for submarines to attack because ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... seeking their food were heard, and the cat feared one of them might find her and kill her. A mother tiger perhaps would snatch her, and take her to her hungry cubs, hidden away in the deep forest, or a bird of prey might swoop down on her and grip her in his terrible claws. Again and again she entreated the mouse to be quick, promising that, if only he would set her at liberty, she would never, never, never forget it or do any harm ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... and Patty danced away again. "Who gets me, I think, will have to swoop down in an aeroplane, and grabble me all up and ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... chivyings from herring-gulls; one nip from a crab who ought to have been dead; two winkles under big stones that took half-an-hour to shift; one dead pigmy shrew—length two inches—with a hole in its skull, no brains, and a horrible smell; nearly his life removed by the swoop of a kestrel falcon and the javelin-stab of a heron's beak; and twenty minutes' hard cleaning to remove the mud-stains that were not properly off—to his nice liking—yet. And, to add to that, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... entrusted to Montcalm, whose word was solemnly pledged for their protection and safe conduct. How was the pledge redeemed? No sooner were the British deprived of their arms than the Indian allies of the French were permitted to swoop down upon the defenceless prisoners and execute upon them their savage will. The sick and wounded were scalped, slain, and barbarously mutilated before the eyes of the Marshal of France, who had guaranteed that not a hair of their heads should fall. Nay, more; a score of the prisoners were ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... it? Why is it? Like a snow-flurry, With swish of wings, And a swoop and a scurry, Comes a whole flock of them Now in a hurry! Busy and merry The little things, very; Watch them, and see How blithe they can be With their "Chick-a-dee-dee, Chick-a-dee-dee!" Each one such a bit ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... that birds, flies, rabbits, and other ground game may carry the disease from one plant to another and from one crop to another. This is insufficient to account for the sudden onset and the wide extent of potato "epidemics," which usually attack whole districts at "one fell swoop." Some of those best qualified to judge believe that the spores are carried through the air, and I am myself inclined to trust in the opinion expressed by Mr. William Carruthers, F.R.S., before the select committee ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... droop under the extreme heat. It imbues them with a listless torpor. Carrion itself would scarce tempt them from their perch. Five minutes have elapsed; and not one moves from the tree—neither to swoop to the earth, nor soar aloft in the air! I no longer wish them to tarry. The suspense is terrible to endure—the more so from the ominous stillness that reigns around. Since the last angry challenge, not a word has been exchanged between my adversary ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe her off the face of the earth—abolish her and her pretty island at one fell swoop?" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... croaking the alarm. Up through a near thicket floundered a cloud of black birds, flapping their wings. They were ravens, too, all croaking and flapping through the rain-soaked branches, mounting higher, higher, only to wheel and sail and swoop in circles, round and round in the gray sky above his head. He shivered and hesitated, knowing that the dead lay there in the thicket. And he was right; but when he saw the thing he covered his eyes with both ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Xenophon, and would not see his old friend, Caesar, neglected without an effort to defend him; so he confiscated the gum-pot, and effectually stopped the stamp business by whisking away at one fell swoop all that lay ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... against that menace—to gain (by inspiration from the titular genius of commerce and craft so conspicuous in that famed art representation[6] exhibited in his Bourse) a dazzling prize for his nation by one fell swoop and, so to say, with folded arms, just by pitting against the English his almost forgotten and long-neglected clan, the Boer nation, inciting them to usurp Great Britain in South Africa, Holland sharing the spoils. See here the master mind exulting in the conception, gestation, and birth of ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... altitude they follow the attacking infantrymen and flash back wireless reports of the engagement. Only through them can communication be maintained when, under the barrier fire, wires from the front lines are cut. Sometimes it falls to our lot to guard these machines from Germans eager to swoop down on their backs. Sailing about high above a busy flock of them makes one feel like an old mother hen protecting ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... upon the man, whom he could have crushed with one swoop of his hands. The consternation of his first broken ideal possessed his heart. With a deadly pallor upon his face, he hurried up the clanging street, and the coarse laughter of brutes tingled in his ears. He swallowed ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... laying his hand on the arm of his companion, and speaking with the gravity of a judge, "whin ye swoop yer gaze on thim playthings out there, bear in mind that there's our breakfast, as me grandmither obsarved whin the dinner table upsit and ivery thing rolled ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... you fellows where you can all have a chance at them," said Mr. Choate with a smile. "It would be interesting to have a motion-picture record of the thoughts which flash through the mind of the average inland fisherman the first time he feels the tiger-like swoop of a five-foot barrancuda, the fierce yank of a hundred-pound amber-jack, or the sullen surge of a big grouper on his line; for even when armed with the heaviest rod, and a line as big around as a silver dollar, he is pretty sure to ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... voulez qu'en vrai dieu de la machine, "You will have me as theatre-god, then, "J'arrive pour te denouement? "Swoop in, and produce the catastrophe? "Qu'aux Anglais, aux Pandours, a ce peuple insolent, "J'aille donner la discipline?— "Tame to sobriety those English, those Pandours, and obstreperous people? "Mais examinez mieux ma ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... next instant he sees the heron. Away he darts, while knights and ladies rein in their horses and watch. Up, and up, he goes until he passes the heron and still he flies higher. Next instant he turns and, with a terrible swoop downwards, pounces upon the heron and ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... at what he termed the insolence of a handful of outlaws, and the cowardice of his picked troops, who had flaunted their banners and gone forth as if to assured victory, and had then fled like some gay-plumed bird before the swoop of the eagle. Not only the oppressed inhabitants of Jerusalem and its environs had cause to tremble at the rage of the tyrant, but his own Syrian officers and the obsequious courtiers who stood in his presence. And none ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... collision of the star with a star-cloudlet, or nebula, traversing space in one direction while the star swept onwards in another. A planet could not very well come into final conflict with its sun at one fell swoop. It would gradually draw nearer and nearer, not by the narrowing of its path, but by the change of the path's shape. The path would, in fact, become more and more eccentric; until, at length, at its point of nearest approach, the planet would graze its primary, exciting an intense heat where it ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... sublime! Swoop o'er the Land to-day— So the mist of wrong and crime, The breath of our Evil Time Be swept, as by ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... also transformed herself into an otter-bitch, and chased him under the water until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air; she, as a hawk, followed him, and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to swoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped among the wheat and buried himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... no time to lose. Every hour for us meant so much more of that precious pay-dirt that lay under the frozen surface. The Winter leapt on us with a swoop, a harsh, unconciliating Winter, that made out-door work an unmitigated hardship. But there was the hope of fortune nerving and bracing us, till we lost in it all thought of self. Nothing short of desperate sickness, death even, would drive us from our ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure flooring, O: And my wide wings drip As I slip, slip, slip Down through the rain-drops, Back where ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... the desolate landscape it sailed, growing more and more distinct as it drew nearer. It circled, turning first to the right and then to the left, rising and descending, as if responding willingly to the touch of its unseen pilot, until with a majestic swoop it hovered like a great bird exactly over the cradle, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... retired and watched for the flying pigeons, and whenever a flock came within a seeing distance our stool pigeon was raised and then dropped. This would cause it to spread its wings and then flutter, which attracted the flying birds, and after a circle or two they would swoop down and commence to feed. Then the net was sprung, and in a trice we had scores of pigeons under it. I do not remember to have seen this method of capturing pigeons practised since. If we captured many we took them home, put them where they could not get away, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... roared an answering hail to him up the wind. We were a bare twenty yards apart, but if he had not chanced at that moment to look in my direction, I doubt if he would have been aware of me, for all my efforts. The wind, in a fresh swoop, snatched the sound from my lips and ranged through the house with a turmoil of banging doors, falling crockery, and wildly fluttering draperies. As it was, he caught sight of me, shouted something unintelligible, and gesticulated toward a formless heap tucked up in oilskins behind him ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... accordance with McDowell's plan, which comprehends not only the bagging of Bonham, but an immediate subsequent demonstration, by Tyler, upon Centreville and beyond, while Heintzelman, supported by Hunter and Miles, shall swoop across Bull Run, at Wolf Run Shoals, some distance below Union Mills, turn the Enemy's right, and cut off his Southern line of railroad communications. Thus, by the evening of Wednesday, the 17th, Heintzelman is at Sangster's Station, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Talbot and I liked to sleep on the deck; and generally camped down up near the bitts. The old ship rolled frightfully, for she was light in freight in order to accommodate so many passengers; and the dark blue sea appeared to swoop up and down ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... fool!" said Hollanden, glaring through the smoke. "Under the circumstances, you are privileged to rave and ramp around like a wounded lunatic, but for heaven's sake don't swoop down on me like that! Especially when I'm—when I'm doing all ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... to you, in the first place, my dear friend, is, that your book has made me pass a sleepless night. I read it instantly, at one fell swoop, only stopping to fill my good pipe from time to time and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... be, we must be strong in order to annihilate at one powerful swoop our enemies in the east and west. But in the next European war it will also be necessary that the small states should be forced to follow us or be subdued. In certain conditions their armies and their fortified places can be rapidly conquered or neutralized; this would probably ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... a French port, as on, on they came, not entirely depending on the wind, but, like steamers, impelled by unseen powers within them. Alas! that power was not the force of innocent steam, but the arms of Christian rowers chained to the oar. Sure as the pounce of a hawk upon a partridge was the swoop of the corsairs upon the French vessel. A signal to surrender followed, but the captain boldly refused, and armed his crew, bidding them stand to their guns. But the fight was too unequal, the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... young, in their nest among the rafters; and at night we slept so soundly that we did not in the least mind the wild gambols of the little fellows through the rooms, even when, as sometimes happened, they would swoop down to the bed and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... "We have all we want to eat here, everyone is kind, and we have a good home. I have heard that in other places men set traps for birds or shoot them, and that sometimes large hawks swoop down and carry them off. You might be caught out in a storm and find no shelter; besides, it would almost kill me to be separated from you long. You might be able to bear it, but not I. Surely it is best to ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... comes of this dashed Swoop of the Vulture business," he grumbled, as he paced before his tent, ever and anon pausing to sweep the city below him with his glasses. "I should like to find the fellow who started the idea! Making me look ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... mighty weight. He was about to lay it at Thor's feet (for he thought it so heavy that no maiden could lift it or hold it in her lap), when suddenly Thor's heart swelled, and he gave a most unmaidenly shout of rage and triumph. With one swoop he grasped the hammer in his iron fingers; with the other arm he tore off the veil that hid his terrible face, and trampled it under foot; then he turned to the frightened king, who cowered ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office. He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and again she saw the horror at her feet; saw Nick, bent to destroy like an eagle above his prey, merciless, full of strength, terrible; saw the man beneath him, writhing, convulsed, tortured; saw his upturned face, and starting eyes; saw the sudden downward swoop of Nick's right hand, the flash of the ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... was not the worst, either. I heard that savage, "chacking" noise which brown owls make when they are perched. This great gleaming owl, five times greater than any earthly owl, was making that chacking noise, as though it would soon spread its wings, to swoop on some such wretched mouse as myself. I could see its eyes roll. I thought I saw the feathers stiffen on its breast. Then, as the sweat rolled down my face, both the horrible things vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. They were gone for more than a minute, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... of the Order, and the support of its officers both at the Convent and in the various European countries. The Knights were never seriously threatened financially till the French Revolution wiped out half their revenues at one fell swoop. Emergencies were always successfully met by an appeal to the self-denial of the members of the Order ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... cunning and keen, And the quarry of which he was in quest Was the heart of the lovely Tomasine; But the ladye thought him a kestrel kite, With a grovelling eye to the farmer's coop, And wanted the bold and daring flight That mounts to the sun to make a swoop. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... however: he soon spent himself, and Mr. McGrath received him with a graceful swoop of his landing-net and secured him. Four more soon followed, all large fish—two to the credit of Mr. McGrath and two to myself. When caught they are of a dark olive-green on the back and sides, the fins quite black at the ends, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... dript swiftly into the birchen cups. The faint, sweet smell of the sap seemed to cling upon the darkness. The candle flared up for an instant, revealing black, mysterious aisles among the ponderous tree-trunks, then guttered down and almost went out, the darkness seeming to swoop in upon its defeat. The woman examined it, found that it was all but done, and glanced nervously over her shoulder. Then she made anxious haste to empty and replace the last of the birchen cups before she should be left in darkness to grope her ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... What must her feelings have been when she heard that Prince Muishkin, the last of his and her line, had arrived in beggar's guise, a wretched idiot, a recipient of charity—all of which details the general gave out for greater effect! He was anxious to steal her interest at the first swoop, so as to distract her thoughts from other ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... chances and came to the conclusion that he could swoop down, nip Mrs Gummidge, and get back to his bust of Pallas without being caught. He tried it, but his master was too quick for him, and foiled, he lay sullenly in Gethryn's hands, his two long claws projecting helplessly between the ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... greatest enemy—besides the wild black man and the dingo—is the large eagle-hawk, which, though flying at an enormous height, is always on the watch; but it is only when the wallaby lets itself out, on to the stony open, that the enemy can swoop down upon it. The eagle trusses it with his talons, smashes its head with its beak to quiet it, and, finally, if a female, flies away with the victim to its nest for food for its young, or if a male bird, to some lonely rock or secluded tarn, to gorge its fill alone. I have frequently seen ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... adored his Xenophon, and would not see his old friend, Caesar, neglected without an effort to defend him; so he confiscated the gum-pot, and effectually stopped the stamp business by whisking away at one fell swoop all that ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... January a swoop was made upon me by my enemies, in the shape of a peremptory prohibition from the political governor of Madrid to sell any more New Testaments. This measure by no means took me by surprise, as I had for some ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... out the diverse branching of it in any maps I can lay hand on: but we may remember easily, and usefully, that it is all north of the Maine,—that it rests on the Drachenfels at one end, and tosses itself away to the morning light with a concave swoop, up to the Hartz, (Brocken summit, 3700 feet above sea, nothing higher): with one notable interval for Weser stream, of ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the nip in the air, the little wind that came so gently, yet with such sinister stealth, all portended one thing,—that the great northern winter was lurking just beyond the mountains, ready to swoop forth. Of course there would be likely time in plenty for a dash into Clearwater; yet the little breath of fall was almost gone. Far away, rising and falling faint as a cobweb in the air, a coyote sang ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... response to my request what to do to right the pont, I drew up my remaining gun and wagons on the south bank, and put the gun which was already across the river out of action under a guard below the river bank in case of any Boer swoop on it. ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... wine, vestments, and altar hangings from churches, arms and armour, hides and skins. The prices obtained were far below the real value of the articles, for money was scarce, and none could say when the Danes might again swoop down and clear out the contents of the warehouses. Nevertheless the sum obtained was a large one for those days, and this did not include the value of the gold and silver goblets, salvers, vases, and utensils used in ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... calling me day and night; I should feel the breath of the southwest trades in every wind that blew over that tight little island yonder; I should be always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky? And the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann—he was put down by an English boy a month or so ago—had a sort of hawk's swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he missed in this hysterical lunge, he went on down.... This does not strike the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... take you fellows where you can all have a chance at them," said Mr. Choate with a smile. "It would be interesting to have a motion-picture record of the thoughts which flash through the mind of the average inland fisherman the first time he feels the tiger-like swoop of a five-foot barrancuda, the fierce yank of a hundred-pound amber-jack, or the sullen surge of a big grouper on his line; for even when armed with the heaviest rod, and a line as big around as a silver dollar, he is ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... You see if when we get to the top here, it don't all go down full swoop like a house wall right ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... Fire; knows much of their dark magic and mischievous enchantments. He knows something, also, of the good Fire Fairies and their bright spells. Safe in his home amid the ash of the Borderland, he sees the Wind in the Chimney swoop down upon the Borderland and even out across the broad Hearthstone in his boldness, but he knows no fear of him. He sees the giant, Curling Smoke, rise stealthily from his lurking places, sees him grow vaster, and vaster, ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... power, as felt by the tenant, is arbitrariness. The agent may make any rule he pleases, and as many exceptions to every rule as he pleases. He may allow rents to run in arrear; he may suddenly come down upon the defaulter with 'a fell swoop;' he may require the rents to be paid up to the day; he may, without reason assigned, call in 'the hanging gale;' he may abate or increase the rents at will; he may inflict fines for delay or give notices to quit for the sole purpose ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... themselves dreaded. Its flat bottom enabled them to beach the vessel on any fitting coast; and a step on shore at once transformed the boatmen into a war-band. From the first the daring of the English race broke out in the secrecy and suddenness of the pirates' swoop, in the fierceness of their onset, in the careless glee with which they seized either sword or oar. "Foes are they," sang a Roman poet of the time, "fierce beyond other foes and cunning as they are fierce; the sea is their school of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... not, without looking at him. She tried to leave the room. She could not endure to be humiliated in Apollonius' presence till she was nothing but dirt under his feet. Her husband held her with a savage grip. He seized her with the swoop of a bird of prey. She would have had to scream aloud if her mental torture had not deadened her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... given to forty line-of-battle ships ordered by the Admiralty at one fell swoop, to be built by contract, towards the end of the Napoleon war, and which turned out badly. The writer served in one, the Rodney 74, which fully exposed her weakness in the first gale she experienced, and was sent home, thereby weakening the blockading fleet. Many never went to sea as ships ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and the others were coming so fast on the heels of the two leaders that the bewildered roughs could not pull their wits together in time to make any successful swoop. ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... in. I did not sink. Far from it. I was never more stimulated to swim in my life. My ten or fifteen feet dive took me into colder water than I had ever experienced before and I felt as if suddenly, and at one fell swoop, I were flayed alive. Gasping for breath I made for the boat, climbed in, and in the delicious glow that came with the reaction decided that it was quite as important to feel of the temperature of lake water before you leaped, as it was to ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... was shade, and waited, uneasy lest the quick-tongued Ailleen should again swoop down upon them with anger which they knew was just, and yet unable to do otherwise than wait, if only to see whether Slaughter would come, and what he would ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... wild animals which prowl about at night seeking their food were heard, and the cat feared one of them might find her and kill her. A mother tiger perhaps would snatch her, and take her to her hungry cubs, hidden away in the deep forest, or a bird of prey might swoop down on her and grip her in his terrible claws. Again and again she entreated the mouse to be quick, promising that, if only he would set her at liberty, she would never, never, never forget it or do any ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... Harry. "I move we go back to the cellar and get a bunch of those Russian rifles with sufficient ammunition, fill the tanks of the Eagle with some of this gasoline, get aboard a lot of canned goods and swoop down on the German camp like a hawk after some chickens. We can let down a trapeze for ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... on the Thier was all in the play, and a visible interference of fortune in favour of Henker Rothhals. Now general commotion shuttled them, and the stranger's keen hazel eyes read their intentions rightly when he lifted his redoubtable staff in preparation for another mighty swoop, this time defensive. Rothhals, and half a dozen others, with a war-cry of curses, spurred their steeds at once to ride him down. They had not reckoned the length and good-will of their antagonist's weapon. Scarce were they in motion, when round it whizzed, grazing the nostrils of their horses ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her crew too badly shot up to offer an effective bombardment. She was drifting helplessly under tattered ribbons of canvas and the Royal James, whose sails had suffered far less, bore down upon her opponent with the swoop of a hawk. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... and vanish into air just when the grasp of some grasping "blind man" was ready to fasten upon him. And when he was blinded, he seemed to know by instinct where the walls were, and keeping clear of them he would swoop like a hawk from one end of the room to the other, pouncing upon the unlucky people who could by no means get out of the way fast enough. When this had lasted a while there was a general call for "the fox and the goose;" and Miss Fortune ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... the froth of a pint of porter at the canteen sergeant's daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander's hand was laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place in one swoop. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... Mrs. Eagle did intend to take Cuffy home with her and serve him up for dinner that very night At first, after she had seized Cuffy, she mounted higher and higher into the air, so that she could at last swoop down on the top of the mountain, right beside her nest. But Cuffy was a very fat little bear. And soon Mrs. Eagle found that she had a heavy load. And it was only a few minutes before she discovered that she couldn't fly up any higher ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... his comrades, or catch a sound of their voices. This disagreeable idea caused him to hurry, and no doubt he became less cautious in navigating some of the various narrow paths, for before he realized that he had started a small avalanche, he was caught up in its gathering swoop, and found himself being carried swiftly down a rather steep declivity, unable ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... when the troops of Morillo were turned westward for the purpose of curbing the rebellious spirits in the neighboring Vice-Royalty,—when, quicker than thought, Paez was once more over the mountains, and recovered by a sudden swoop the Llanos of Barinas. Thenceforward, this region remained the surest foothold of the revolution in Venezuela. Encircled with Spanish troops, it remained, nevertheless, a practical republic in itself, and the vast basin of the Orinoco was the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... moments, for the thought occurred to him that the bird might make a swoop at him, as he had read of eagles acting under similar circumstances; but the next moment he had thought of what power there would be in the blow of a fist striking a bird in full career, and knowing full well that it must be fatal to the raven, he continued to descend, with the ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... such long and fearful intervals, and then, vision-like, of such short duration, that, with the closed oaks of the tradesmen, and the woe-begone faces of the starving scouts and bed-makers, a stranger might have imagined some ruthless plague had swept away, "at one fell swoop," two-thirds of the population of Rhedycina. It was at this dull period of time, that a poor student, having passed successfully the Scylla and Charybdis of an Oxonian's fears, the great go and little go, and exhausted by long and persevering ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... ceased not in his pursuit, and sprang upon him with a dark-crested wave, to stay his hands and save the Trojans from destruction. The son of Peleus darted away a spear's throw from him; swift as the swoop of a black hunter-eagle which is the strongest and fleetest of all birds, even so did he spring forward, and the armour rang loudly about his breast. He fled on in front, but the river with a loud roar came tearing after. As one who would water his garden leads a stream from ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... the endearing experience of the companions at the end of their day's pleasure. Not that it was really the end, for there was the airy swoop homeward in the Elevated train, through all that ugly picturesqueness of bridges and boats and blocks of buildings, with the added interest of seeing the back-flying streets below now full of children let loose from school for the afternoon, and possessing the roadways and sidewalks as if ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... hills. The mosquitoes have become savage. The marsh has tolerated us as long as it cares to, and we beat our retreat. The night hawks swoop down and boom as they pass overhead. One feels thankful that the mosquitoes are of some good in furnishing food to so graceful ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... ask thee concerning a dream which I had last night. There are twenty geese which I keep about the house, and I take pleasure in seeing them crop the grain from the water trough. In my dream I saw a great eagle swoop down from the mountains and slay them all, breaking their necks, There they lay dead in one heap; and I made loud lament for the slaying of my geese, so that the women gathered round me to comfort me. But the eagle descended again, and alighted on a jutting beam of the roof, and ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... chanting as he did so some weird and monotonous refrain, the meaning of which was unintelligible to me. Up to then it had been light—the sky, like all Indian skies at that season, one blaze of moonbeams and stars; but now it gradually grew dark. An unnatural, awe-inspiring shade seemed to swoop down from the far distant mountains and to hush into breathless silence everything it touched. Not a bird sang, not an insect ticked, not a leaf stirred. One might have said all nature slept, had it not been for an uncomfortable ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... And made a slave of me,—of me, a prince! All was fulfilled at last. I fled from them, In rags and sorrow. Nothing but my heart, Like a strong swimmer, bore me up against The howling sea of my adversity. At length o'er Sana, in the act to swoop, I stood like a young eagle on a crag. The traveller passed me with suspicious fear: I asked for nothing; I was not a thief. The lean dogs snuffed around me: my lank bones, Fed on the berries and the crusted pools, Were ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... grow restless; they see a funeral cortege of black men in spotless white robes; they bear a black corpse in a white shroud. The body is hastily deposited within the area on its bed of stone and mattress of charcoal. The vultures swoop down to the feast. In a short while, satiated, they rise on heavy wing and ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Twynintuft. Like every spirit that was ever called for, this ex-elocutionist happened to be within a few seconds' flight of the circle, and had nothing in the world to do but to swoop down and tip as long as the company ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... unblessedness a reproach to her. No sort of purpose would have been served by such a wholesale massacre of innocents as the extinction of all Pastor Smithson's, alias Jackson's, ten "pretty chicks at one fell swoop." ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... praises and heathen women were eager to obtain a glance from his eyes. She knew how devoid of all morality were the lives of the nobles at Rome, and Antinous appeared to her as a splendid falcon that wheels above a dove to swoop down upon it at a favorable moment and to tear it in its beak and talons. Hannah also knew that Selene was acquainted with Antinous, that it was he who had formerly rescued her from the big dog and afterward saved her from the water; but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the clerk, and at the cool negation of his tone my heart gave a sickening downward swoop. "Miss Jane Harding and party have left ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... taking part in the flirtations of the streets. Whether inviting eyes were ever thrown to me as to others, I cannot say. Sometimes, fancying so—hoping so, I would follow. Yet never could I summon up sufficient resolution to face the possible rebuff before some less timid swain would swoop down upon the quarry. Then I would hurry on, cursing myself for the poorness of my spirit, fancying mocking contempt in the laughter ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... illumining it faintly as a cloud may be edged with a suggestion of light. It was not motionless,—it stirred now and then as though about to lift itself to some supernatural stature and bend above me or swoop down upon me like an embodied storm,—and as I still gazed upon it fearingly, every nerve strained to an almost unsupportable tension, I could have sworn that two eyes, large and luminous, were fixed with ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... she does, she may exclaim with the Churchmen, "Yet are my years but labour and sorrow." The little chaps who have their birthday parties among sub-Arctic reeds are surrounded with enemies from the first day they crack their baby shells. Lynx and raccoon prey upon them by land, eagles and owls swoop upon them as they swim; and as with one eye they scan the sky above them, a greedy pike is apt to snap their web-feet from under them and draw them ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... exclaimed the Tailor, driving away the uninvited visitors; but the flies, not understanding his words, would not be driven off, and came back in greater numbers than before. This put the little man in a great passion, and, snatching up in his anger a bag of cloth, he brought it down with a merciless swoop upon them. When he raised it again he counted as many as seven lying dead before him with outstretched legs. "What a fellow you are!" said he to himself, astonished at his own bravery. "The whole town must hear of this." In great haste he cut ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... misery! there hung the helmet of Achilles, its plume waving in the morning air. Speechless and helpless the three friends stood, and would have given the last penny in their savings banks if a hawk or some other large bird would swoop down upon it and send it to ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... rate the brotherhood, what per cent we will take. My neighbor at table in my London boarding-house meant that, though he put it in a way all his own. He was a benevolent enough crank, but no friend of preaching. Being a crank, he condemned preachers with one fell swoop:— ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... be sure; but what barbarity, after all! What! not thirty days' run from home, and lose our magnificent homeward-bounders! The homeward-bounders we had been cultivating so long! Lose them at one fell swoop? Were the vile barbers of the gun-deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent chins to the chill air of the Yankee coast! And our viny locks! were they also to be shorn? Was a grand sheep-shearing, such as they annually ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... began to long for rain. Day after day vast clouds rose above the horizon, swift and portentous, domed like aerial mountains, only to pass with a swoop like the flight of silent, great eagles, followed by a trailing garment of dust. Often they lifted in the west with fine promise, only to go muttering and bellowing by to the north or south, leaving the sky and plain ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... eastward again, rotated the rising-plane, and brought the Pauillac up at a sharp tilt. Banking, he advanced the spark a notch; the engine shrilled a half-tone higher, and with increased speed the aero lifted them bravely in a long and rising swoop. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... get it!" the little boy cried. With his hat he made a swoop for the butterfly, and then suddenly he and Flossie, who was close behind him, tumbled down through a hole in the ground, which seemed quickly to open at their very feet, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... out at the mouth of the River and behold! There was a great eagle hovering over the waves of the sea and ready to swoop down on fishes. He turned back in the River. He made a leap that took him over the net that the Gods were dragging. But Thor was behind the net and he caught the salmon in his powerful hands and he held ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... greater stress on the brains of the hero than on his good looks. But, for the sake of one of your ardent readers, let that hero use his brains to get himself out of whatever he has gotten into. Don't let a space ship swoop down from above to rescue him. That type of story reminds me a lot of the one where Jonah was rescued from the deep by the timely arrival of the friendly whale. By the way, there's a suggestion for a reprint. I will admit that it would be just about as ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the tree-tops, See us swoop upon your flock; Yield us wool to make our nests warm In the branches ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... up his stand on the trunk of a tree a few yards distant, and every time the squirrel ventured timidly around where he could be seen the woodpecker would swoop down at him, making another loop of bright color. The squirrel seemed to enjoy the fun and to tempt the bird to make this ineffectual swoop. Time and again he would poke his head round the tree and draw the fire of his red-headed enemy. Occasionally the bird made it ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Germany, might invest the task with insurmountable difficulties, determined to cross the Pyrenees in person, at the head of a force capable of sweeping the whole Peninsula clear before him "at one fell swoop." Hitherto no mention of the unfortunate occurrences in Spain had been made in any public act of his government, or suffered to transpire in any of the French journals. It was now necessary to break this haughty silence. The Emperor announced accordingly that the peasants of Spain had ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... at him in which pride and uncertainty were strangely mingled, then made a sudden swoop towards the fire. He read her intention in a second, and stooping swiftly caught her hand. The ring shot from her hold, gleamed in a shining curve in the firelight, and fell with a tinkle among the ashes ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... now." Rynch saw that glittering swoop through the air, marked the landing of a ball ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... two of his planes whose erratic movements showed that they were being attacked. As he neared them he saw one catch fire and begin its earthward swoop. Then the fuselage crackled beside him, and his instrument board dissolved into ruin. Instinctively he went round in a tight bank and loosed his machine-gun. Nothing there! Nothing at all! Yet his right wing went ragged, and his own furious blasts into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... whole of her. As the beneficent insect sailed down near the table, she abruptly sprang to her feet and pushed back her chair. I advanced to the grating, but what could I do? Seeing me there, and doubtless with the desire immediately to assure me of his kindly intentions, my friend Vespa made a swoop directly at the ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... followed Ferry down to the water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us, and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts. Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the sergeants quietly ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... believe in the transfer of thought without physical connection is that, given telepathy, all the mysterious phenomena that have persisted in popular belief through the centuries could be swept away at one fell swoop. By telepathy, working mainly through the Sub-Consciousness, I will explain you Clairvoyance (that is, not the mere seeing of pictures, which is a phenomenon akin to dreaming, but the vision of other people's Sub-Consciousnesses), ghosts, witchcraft, possession, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... sheer excess of vitality and spirits? Well, there was one fly—the keenest player of them all, by the way—who, when it had alighted three or four times in rapid succession on my taboo wall and succeeded each time in eluding the velvet- careful swoop of my hand, would grow so excited and jubilant that it would dart around and around my head at top speed, wheeling, veering, reversing, and always keeping within the limits of the narrow circle in which it ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... begun to fight again—and still more welcome shall they be if they will go on. But they have had, or are to have, some four thousand pounds (besides some private extraordinaries for widows, orphans, refugees, and rascals of all descriptions,) of mine at one 'swoop;' and it is to be expected the next will be at least as much more. And how can I refuse it if they will fight?—and especially if I should happen ever to be in their company? I therefore request and require that you should apprise my trusty and trust-worthy trustee ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the deep-piled dais, Wrought in hallowed looms of Sais, O'er the impetuous torrent's swoop, Stands ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... when my brother was in trouble,' said Lucilla, mournfully, raising her face, which she had bent between her hands at the first swoop of the tempest. 'Heaven knows, I had no thought of spying. I came to stand by your wife, and comfort you. I only learnt all this in trying to shield you from intrusion. Oh, would that I knew it not! Would that I could think of you as ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the interior was nearly filled with papers. Many were letters; some fragments of manuscripts, memorandums, accounts, and other similar documents. The hawk does not pounce upon the chicken with a more sudden swoop than Judith sprang forward to seize this mine of hitherto concealed knowledge. Her education, as the reader will have perceived, was far superior to her situation in life, and her eye glanced over page after page of the letters with a ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... was empty, and took a bucket to go to the river for water. As she bent over to fill the vessel a roaring noise like thunder filled the air, and one of the birds darted down and seized her in its talons. The villagers saw the bird swoop down, and they wailed aloud in sorrow and terror as they watched her being carried through the ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... know who is secreting himself here under the name of Citizen Orage, that they follow every one of my steps and perhaps suffer me to be free only for the purpose of seeing with whom I have relations, in order to arrest and destroy me at one fell swoop, with all my friends at the same time. But we must use the time. I have come here with the firm determination of delivering the unhappy young king from the hands of his tormentors, and I will now confess every thing to you, my friends. I have gained for ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... silent movement; countless yellow caterpillars hung there, dangling to and fro, each on its slender thread; chaffinches and yellow-hammers swung themselves impetuously from bough to bough, and at every swoop snapped up a caterpillar; but these never became any fewer. Without a pause they rolled themselves down from the twigs, and hung there, so enticingly yellow, swinging to and fro in the gentle breath of the summer day, and waited to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "Let's see it." She gave the wire at the small end the slightest of twists. "There, it ought to swoop." ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of British officers at a swoop, and was taking his ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... under-hung lower mandible, and keeps a sharp look-out meanwhile on either side with those sly and stealthy eyes of his for a possible intruder, suggests to the observing mind the whole living drama of his native forest. One sees in that vivid world the watchful monkey ever ready to swoop down upon the tempting tail-feathers of his hereditary foe: one sees the canny parrot ever prepared for his rapid attack, and ever eager to make him pay with five joints of his tail for his impertinent interference with ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... for the watchers. The fiends would retire, pretending to have abandoned the field, only to swoop down again when least expected. There were periods of calm when it seemed as though a new and bewildered personality were emerging, amazed to find in life a kindly thing, gazing at the world as one new-born. And again, Mrs. McQuillen or Ella Finley might be seen running ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... it is a clear case, etc. I will speak to Johnson about the "Fears in Solitude." If he gives them up they are yours. That dull ode has been printed often enough, and may now be allowed to "sink with deep swoop, and to the bottom go," to quote an admired author; but the two others will do ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... round, each apparently doing its utmost to get above the other. The two, however, were very evenly matched, for, whereas the kite had its strong beak and talons, deadly weapons for seizing and rending when at close quarters, and could make a powerful swoop at his prey—the heron, though an awkward bird in the air, and ungainly in its movements, had yet its long, sharp, bill, with which it could receive its enemy as it were “at point of bayonet,” and even ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... joined themselves together, so that nothing of the moon showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit, brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard hawks. And her dream came back to her. Where were her wings-the wings that in sleep had borne her to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a little ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by a cry, a scream of pain, from the lighted cage. It paused on the instant, like a bird stricken a-wing, some four floors below, but at once resumed its downward swoop. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... minutes or so they watched that thing swoop and duck and sail up there overhead. And then, slow and easy as a feather in a May breeze, down she flutters and lands soft on a hummock a little ways off. And that Augustus—a fool for luck—staggers out of it safe and sound, and sets ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prisoner to deliver into the hands of his royal mistress! Fired with the thoughts, the good count forgot all the arrangements of the king; or rather, blinded by former success, he trusted everything to courage and fortune, and thought that by one bold swoop he might again bear off the royal prize and wear his laurels without competition.* His only fear was that the master of Calatrava and the belligerent bishop might come up in time to share the glory ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... hung a cigarette waggishly a-rake; and his billycock had just the correct and knowing cock. He kept well under the lee of the tent; and if he was brazen, it was clear that he was sinning and fearful of discovery: for he had one eye always on the watch for the Avenging Angel who might swoop down on him at ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind; it was one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle pause with ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to learn the American twang and method of spitting. And there is the peril of politics. Upon these scattered exotic communities, ignorant of the problems of their adopted land, ignorant even of its language, swoop the agents of political parties, with their one effectual argument—bad whisky. This baptism is the immigrants' only organised welcome into their new liberties. Occasionally some Church raises a thin protest. But the 'Anglo-Saxon' continues ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... which was so slow in making itself. But it was not until the little lady in the claret-colored party-gown had drifted, still with a hand on Gantry's arm, in among the palm and banana trees of the herbarium that the bird-of-prey person made his swoop. A moment later Gantry, taking a low-toned command from his companion, was disappearing in the direction of the refreshment-tables, and the lady looked up to say: "Dear me, Mr. Hathaway, you almost ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... swiftly as possible, and then, with a rapid contraction of its bladders, fling itself like a knife at the sinking war-balloon of the foe. Down, down, down, through a vast alert tension of flight, down it will swoop, and, if its stoop is successful, slash explosively at last through a suffocating moment. Rifles will crack, ropes tear and snap; there will be a rending and shouting, a great thud of liberated gas, and perhaps a flare. Quite certainly those flying machines will carry folded ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... it out that the sack must be filled with the best food that the boy could wish for, so he darted toward it. But before the bird could get there a terrible clamour arose about him. Sparrows, crows, and swallows came rushing up with wild shrieks, thinking that the eagle meant to swoop down upon some bird. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... when Mr. Archibald went out of his cabin door, he looked over the lake and saw a bird suddenly swoop down upon the water, breaking the smooth surface into sparkles of silver, and then rise again, a little silvery ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... a Man of War! Surely His hosts were abroad now. No work of man's hands could endure the onset of the forces let loose on that bad night. The sea jumped up like magic, and hurried before the lash of the wind. Then, with a darkening swoop, came the snowstorm, hurled along on wide wings; the last remnants of light fled; the vessel was shut in, and the devoted company on board could only grope in the murk on deck. No one would stay below, for the sudden, unexampled assault of ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... perception; and our ability to make this supposition is registered in the difference between the two words to be and to be perceived—words which are by no means synonymous but designate two very different relations of things in thought. Such idealism at one fell swoop, through a collapse of assertive intellect and a withdrawal of reason into self-consciousness, has the puzzling character of any clever pun, that suspends the fancy between two incompatible but irresistible meanings. The art of such sophistry is to choose for an axiom some ambiguous phrase ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... said, but the dial-hand of the times was left pointing with sinister prophecy at tragedy yet to come. And in the dark of the first moon of that century the shadowy hillsmen were getting ready to swoop down. And it was the dawn of the twentieth century of the Christian era that Burnham watched, the dawn of the one hundred and twenty-fifth year of the nation's life—of the one hundred and seventh year of statehood for Kentucky. And thinking of the onward ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... lady, don't let any one hear you make such a remark. One of these fine days somebody will swoop you up and run off with you. I don't know but that I could play the part ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... spade; already she herself had begun. But Alida stared at it dully, as if she did not understand. Then Judith pointed to something black that had begun to wheel in the sky, wheel, and with each circular swoop come closer to the roll of tarpaulin. Then Alida knew, and, taking the spade, she and Judith began to ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Phormio, Act I., scene 1, in the opening: "All that this poor fellow has, by starving himself, bit by bit, with much ado, scraped together out of his pitiful allowance—(must go at one swoop, people never considering the price it cost him ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... made another wild swoop at his enemy's skull, but the blow was easily turned aside. Pat returned with a feint at his foe's head, but came down with terrible force on the inside of his right knee. The Kafir dropped his sticks, seized his knee with both hands, stood on one ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... grasping firmly his sword. "Cowards and brutes!" and wielding his weapon with a mighty swoop he brought it down once, ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... they admired the stupendous salons, the hundreds of men and women in pairs, the thousands of tipplers. "No, there certainly was nothing like that in Paris." He was sick of such boundless pretension. He seemed to be attending a fiesta of hungry mariners anxious at one swoop to make amends for all former privations. Like his father, he longed to get away. It ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... came near Earth and its mountains were clear, then the Professor drew them across the world, into the darkness and over Spain; so that those two spirits ended their marvellous journey much as the snipe ends his, a drop out of heaven and a swoop low over marshes. So they came home, while Earth seemed calling to them with all her voices; with memories, sights and scents, and little sounds; calling anxiously, as though they had been too long away and must be home soon. They heard a cock crow on the edge of ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... human and divine. Would that—(and the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)—would that your entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we might crush you all at a single swoop! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... set, And till the spring disclose the violet. Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers, And in that narrow boundary appears, Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers, Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon. And all my hay is at one swoop impresst By one low-flying swallow for her nest, Strip god Priapus of each attribute Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot. The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon; And all my vintage drips in a cocoon. Generous are you, but I more generous still: Take back your farm and ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... duel and demolish her? Umbrellas would be splendid weapons. I have one with a lovely crooked handle. You could practice hooking it around my neck and when the fateful hour came you could bring the double-dyed villain to her knees with one swoop. ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... her arrival in New York she felt almost easy in her mind. New York, with its shoving, jostling, hurrying crowds; a giant fowl-run, full of human fowls scurrying to and fro; clucking, ever on the look-out for some desired morsel, and ever ready to swoop down and snatch it from its temporary possessor, had numbed her. But now she felt a slackening of the strain. New York might be too much for her, but she could cope ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... a succession of deceptions, tricks and chicanery she cheated Esau out of his blessing, obtained it for Jacob, and deceived and deluded her dying husband, all at one fell swoop. ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... I swoop down upon my inkstand after just lighting the Town Councillor downstairs with the kindliest countenance in the world. He sat here for two and a half hours by the clock, moaning and groaning, without the least regard for my wry face; I was just about to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... then an enemy came over the gates and high above the ramparts, a winged messenger of death, coming very swiftly through the sky, killing a few mortals down below and then retreating into the hiding- places behind the clouds. There were not many people who saw the "Taube"—the German dove—make its swoop and hurl its fire-balls. There was just a speck in the sky, a glint of metal, and the far- humming of an aerial engine. Perhaps it was a French aviator coming back from a reconnaissance over the enemy's lines on the Aisne, or taking ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... had been accustomed to picture himself bending with a proud tenderness over his partner in the scene and murmuring some notably good things to her bowed head. How could any man murmur in a pandemonium like this. From tenderness Bruce Carmyle descended with a sharp swoop to irritability. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... could not but expect, that, in stigmatising with contempt and ridicule so many persons by name, some of them would retaliate. Nor could he complain of injustice if they did; for his attack was so wilful, that the rage of it can only be explained by supposing he was instigated to "the one fell swoop," by a resentful conviction, that his impillory in the Edinburgh ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... company with the Common Tern, its nests and eggs being indistinguishable from the latter. When their nesting grounds are approached, all the birds arise like a great white cloud, uttering their harsh, discordant "tearrr, tearrr," while now and then an individual, bolder than the rest, will swoop close by with an angry "crack." On the whole they are timid birds, keeping well out of reach. The nesting season is early in June. Eggs like the preceding. Data.—Little Duck Is., Me., June 29, 1896. Three eggs in a slight hollow on the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... said Mr. Julian, "rebel speculators now hovering over the whole of that region, and hunting up the best portion of it, and the holders of Agricultural College scrip can come down upon it at one fell swoop and cheat the actual settler, whether white or black, out of his rights, or even the possibility of a home in that region, driving the whole of them to some of our Western Territories ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... violent check to the current of his feelings. He had collected his Bowlderos, and was giving his instructions as to the manner in which they were to follow, and keep near his person, in the expected hand-to-hand encounter, when the heavy rushing of the air, and the swoop of the mass from above, announced what had occurred. Turning to the men, he calmly ordered them to aid in getting rid of the incumbrances, and was in the very act of directing Wycherly to join in the same duty, when ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... its silver load reaches the shore with the noise as of a great wave breaking upon the beach, which is caused by the efforts of the fish to gain their freedom. The best fish are picked out and the others returned to the sea, while the gulls swoop down with querulous cry and gobble all that float on the surface of the water. These fishermen have a prejudice against skate, and use it ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... his uncle's pipe was coming freer now—most of it escaping up the throat of the chimney with a gentle swoop. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... crash of armies and the crumbling of an empire, to erase from his memory Elvas, and its "episode in winter quarters." From the heights of Traz os Montes, Wellington was now to make an eagle's swoop upon the north of Spain, and a lion's spring upon the herd, driven into the basin of Vittoria. The march now begun was to lead thence to the blood-stained passes of the Pyrennees, to Bayonne, Orthes, and Toulouse, and later, to Paris, from the field of Waterloo. But who shall measure, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... bestowed so much time and labour would lie waste, instead of providing a considerable part of the food of the household in summer and autumn. "But there was never no sense in them ladies like missus, no more in their sparing than in their spending." At one fell swoop she dismissed her own maid, the cook, and the parlour-maid, retaining only a young table-maid to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... commented. "Here it is wrong!" And, grabbing up a slice of chalk, he made a deft swoop toward the material. Suddenly his arm stayed in mid air and he laid down the chalk with a muscular effort. "I think I take this home," ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... fold his arms over his bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but at the present moment, when I laugh much less than ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... little abated by time. So he went on to the close. When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily, not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... the region of the Island that most of the battles take place between organized labour and the apostles of free labour. Let there be any industrial trouble of any kind, and down upon the district swoop dozens of fussy futilitarians, to argue, exhort, bully, and agitate generally. Fabians, Social Democrats, Clarionettes, Syndicalists, Extremists, Arbitrators, Union leaders, Christian Care Committees—gaily ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... as the blade Slices a cucumber. The blood of heroes Deluged the plain. On that tremendous day, With sword and dagger, battle-axe and noose,[9] He cut, and tore, and broke, and bound the brave, Slaying and making captive. At one swoop More than a thousand fell ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... which is one of the plates I have marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... instantly rush forward to re-arrest this prisoner; but it struck him there must be a reward for the recapture; so, determining upon taking the prisoner and the basket at one fell swoop, he tore away to the burgomaster's to inform him of the discovery. He reached the official residence, and drew the pompous little burgomaster to his bedroom-window in a moment. The burgomaster was rather scandalized that such a respectable man as Jodoque should be out at such an hour; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... gathered about Mrs. Kildare—and incidentally Jemima—were startled by the appearance of a vision in pink at the head of the stairs, who casually straddled the banister and arrived in their midst with the swoop of a rocket. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... have been watching the latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic over and in the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a jocund downward dip, splashing the spray in jets of diamonds—and then off they swoop, with slanting wings and graceful flight, sometimes so near me I can plainly see their dark-gray feather-bodies and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... brave and so proud, who marched so gayly to the fight—scattered to right and left; sometimes fleeing alone, sometimes in groups. Then those who, a little while before, trembled at their approach, grew bold; they came on, first timidly, but, meeting no resistance, became insolent. Then they would swoop down and carry off three or four laggards at a time, as I have seen crows in winter swoop upon a fallen horse, which they did not dare approach while he could yet remain ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... question. I expect that buzzard will be flying around again over this field in a night or so,—the moon is 'most full now, and the nights are light,—and I've got to be able to signal him just how to find the powder magazine and the other munitions. Then he can swoop right over there and drop one of his little souvenirs where it will do the most good and fly away home. I advise you to keep away from that ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... himself, that the Mahrattas were on the move. The prospects of his communications being harassed, by these daring horsemen, filled him with anxiety. Murari Reo was encamped, with six thousand men, at a spot thirty miles to the west of Arcot; and he might, at any moment, swoop down upon the besiegers. Although, therefore, Riza Sahib had for six days been at work effecting a new breach, which was now nearly open to assault, he sent on the 30th of October a flag of truce, with an offer to Clive of terms, if he ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... of stout palm fibres, then used for such purposes. His trained leopard or cheetah had drawn the beast from his lair, and by cunning devices had led him on until the unfortunate lion was half-entrapped. Just then, with a sudden swoop, a great golden eagle dashed down upon the preoccupied cheetah, and buried his talons in the leopard's head. But the weight of his victim was more than he had bargained for; the cheetah with a quick upward dash dislodged ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... moment of the most thrilling excitement of my life, as with a swoop the Indians dashed ahead, and with halter and rein dangling free, to see their horses strain their utmost powers to outstrip the fugitives, and bring them within reach of bow and lance. Nigger, I may confidently state, did ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
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