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Lapping   /lˈæpɪŋ/   Listen
Lapping

noun
1.
Covering with a design in which one element covers a part of another (as with tiles or shingles).  Synonyms: imbrication, overlapping.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lapping" Quotes from Famous Books



... For the word snow-wreaths does not mean the lovely garlands hung upon every tree and bush in its feathery fall; but awful mounds of drifted snow, that may be the smooth, soft, white sepulchres of dead men, smothered in the lapping folds of the almost solid wind. Path or way was none before him. He could see nothing but the surface of a sea of froth and foam, as it appeared to him, with the spray torn from it, whirled in all shapes and contortions, and driven in ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... children saw Michael and the queen waving their hands until they had dwindled to shadow-specks in the distance; they watched the wake of starshine lengthen out behind them; they listened to the ripples lapping at the keel. To and fro, to and fro, swayed the ferryman to the swing of his oar. "Sleep—sleep—sleep," sang the river, running with them. Bridget stretched her arms about as many children as ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... and laying back her ears and stretching her nose straight out, she would speed away with that quick, nervous, low-lying action which marks the rush of racers, when side by side and nose to nose lapping each other, with the roar of cheers on either hand and along the seats above them, they come straining up the home stretch. Returning from one of these arrowy flights, she would come curvetting back, now pacing sidewise as on parade, now dashing her hind feet high into the air, and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... the terrace, she became conscious of several forms moving about at the foot of the steps, some few feet below where she was standing. Soon she saw the glimmer of lanthorns, heard whispering voices, and the lapping of the water against the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... green shimmer of breaking seas gave an added terror to the scene of storm. Rain and stinging sleet swept constantly over us, thundering seas towered and curled at our stern, lapping viciously at the fleeting quarter, or, parting, crashed aboard at the waist, filling the decks man high with a power of destruction. Part of the bulwarks were torn from the side. That was, perhaps, the saving of us, for ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... to relieve their comrades needs to be told what a rush of armed men can be. With speed which was simply desperate they ran up the hill, and, circling to the left, made a ring round the topmost plateau, where stood the King. When the ring was complete, the stream went on lapping round and round till the whole tally was exhausted. In the meantime another Division had followed, its leader joining close behind the end of the first. Then came another and another. An unbroken line circled and circled round the hill in seeming endless array, till ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... nothing while he sped ashore. The keel clashed on the stones. He stood on the forward seat, holding out his hand. They were alone, in the ripple-lapping silence. She rose slowly, slowly stepped over the water in the bottom of the old boat. She took his hand confidently. Unspeaking they sat on a bleached log, in a russet twilight which hinted of autumn. Linden leaves fluttered ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... he paused to listen, but no sound save that of night-birds and the lapping of little waves on the lake shore came to his ears. The silence was profound, and assured him that even the savages, wearied with long fighting, were snatching a few hours of sleep. On either side of him lay the still smoking ruins of ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... her, too." Emma Ellis stood behind the Irishman's chair, her pale eyes lapping up ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... had to shout into each other's ears, now they spoke in low tones, but even so the echoes seemed to people the dark with whispers, and they desisted from talk. In the silence they heard presently the swirl and lapping of waters out in the canon, then the sound of men talking, and, what was strange, a noise as of paddles, These outside sounds were muffled and indistinct, but as the night went on they heard a laugh ring out from below, loud and shrill, followed by a confused ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... that the brackish water wore as it reflected the night. It reflected suddenly a face—a face with a long velvety muzzle, a pair of spreading antlers, and dark eyes, gentle, timorous, liquidly bright. The water stirred with a sibilant lapping sound as the buck's tongue licked at the margin. Once he held up his head to listen, with his hoof lifted, then he bent again to the ripples. There was slight relation between him, the native of these woods, and that wayward waif of the skies; but among ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... thought, violently, with self-contempt. It drove her forward. And at that moment she could see below, at the edge of the lapping water, the outline of a small boat and of a man who sat in it using the oars against the force of the current so as to keep the boat always near the steps. She heard a dear familiar voice call out with a ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... there on the back porch, I noticed, lapping away at her milk like a house afire. I wiped off my boots carefully like I'd been trained to do whether I was at home or in somebody else's house, pushed open the door to our kitchen and went in, expecting to see Mom, or Pop, or both of them there, but ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... flag fluttering over a cluster of palisades and embankments betokened the first intrusion of civilized men upon a scene which, a few months before, breathed the repose of a virgin wilderness, voiceless but for the lapping of waves upon the pebbles, or the note of some lonely bird. But now the sleep of ages was broken, and bugle and drum told the astonished forest that its doom was pronounced and its days numbered. The fort was a compact little work, solidly ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the drive to Richmond, where I gave her tea at the Star and Garter and was relieved to see her drink normally from the cup, instead of lapping from the saucer like a kitten. She was much more intelligent than during our first drive on Tuesday. The streets have grown more familiar, and the traffic does not make her head ache. She asks me the ingenuous questions of a child of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... shouts and the slaughters, You steal away to the lapping waters, And look at your ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... a quarter-mile from shore and the return was made at a fast pace, yet as they came up above tide mark, the waves were lapping the shingle and only a rock ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. Here are the roots of all the life of the valleys, and here more simply than elsewhere is the eternal flux of nature manifested. ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... bare feet of the baby beat across the grass The little white feet nod like white flowers in the wind, They poise and run like ripples lapping across the water; And the sight of their white play among the grass Is like a little robin's song, winsome, Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one flower For a moment, then away with a ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... down, listening to the mournful lapping of the waves on the beach, and the sigh of the dripping rain. The stimulus of excited action had passed and they felt heavy and depressed. They could see only a few yards over the lake, and must depend ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... was the incredible thing. She had chosen instead to do justice! It passed belief. Opening his eyes on a silence which had lasted some minutes, a silence rendered more solemn by the lapping water without, Tavannes saw her kneeling in the dusk of the chamber, her head bowed over his couch, her face hidden in her hands. He knew that she prayed, and feebly he deemed the whole a dream. No scene akin to it had had place in ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... it is, Owen," remarked my love, after sitting in silence for a few minutes. From where we sat we could see that it was high tide, and the waves were lazily lapping the base of the cliffs deep below. Now and then a gull would circle about us with its shrill, plaintive cry, while far on the distant horizon lay the trail of smoke from a passing steamer. "How delightful it is to ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... end, until those which crossed them, as we said before, at right angles, came together at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the last one formed the ridge-pole or comb of the whole. On these logs, lapping one over the other, and the lower tier resting against the butting poles, were laid slabs of clapboard—a species of plank split from some straight-grained tree—about four feet long, and from three to four wide. These were secured in their ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... about the marge. So strode he back slow to the wounded King. Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Hast thou performed my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen? or what hast heard?" And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag." To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale: "Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had followed, either hand, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... of the water to and fro; and a little mist of masts of the fishing and coasting craft by Otley village, near the river's mouth, was like a web in air. Cecilia led him to her dusky wood of firs, where she had raised a bower for a place of poetical contemplation and reading when the clear lapping salt river beneath her was at high tide. She could hail the Esperanza from that cover; she could step from her drawing-room window, over the flower-beds, down the gravel walk to the hard, and be on board her yacht within seven minutes, out on her salt-water lake within twenty, closing her wings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... of the conditions, Ted felt no nervousness about remaining by himself in the shack and perhaps every premonition of evil might have escaped him had he not been awakened one morning very early by a ripple of lapping water that seemed near at hand. Sleepily he opened his eyes and looked about him. The floor of the hut was wet and through the crack beneath the door a thread of muddy water was steadily seeping. In an instant he was on his feet and as he stood looking about him ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... Venetian workmanship in its own family emblem, that there is no present need of distance between him and his rival, and resting upon his oar, as he stands with a proud and graceful bearing of victory, he allows the gondola to glide back into position with the lapping of the water. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... with the gasps of the corpulent baritone who got behind it; nor was it the hurdy-gurdy man, who often played at the corner in the balmy twilight. No, this was a woman's voice, singing the tempestuous, over-lapping phrases of Signor Puccini, then comparatively new in the world, but already so popular that even Hedger recognized his unmistakable gusts of breath. He looked about over the roofs; all was blue and still, with the well-built chimneys that were ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... now, for always, night and day, I hear lake-water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... still, starry night. The Flushing boat stood out of harbour on a calm sea. The high arc lamps threw a blue gleam over the deserted moles and glinted in the oily swell lapping the quays. From the fast-receding quayside the rasping of a winch echoed noisily across the silent water. On the upper deck of the mail-boat Robin Greve and Mary Trevert stood side by side at the rail. They had the deck to ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... surprises of all. The tangle of plants and flowers crowds over the battered walls, the greenness makes an arrangement with the rosy sordid brick. Of all the reflected and liquefied things in Venice, and the number of these is countless, I think the lapping water loves them most. They are numerous on the Canalazzo, but wherever they occur they give a brush to the picture and in particular, it is easy to guess, give a sweetness to the house. Then the elements are complete—the trio of air and water and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... "double column line ahead," steaming due west instead of following the course that would bring them within sight of Table Bay. Less than a cable's length on the starboard column's beam was the cruiser. She had already overtaken two of the transports, and was now lapping the Zungeru's quarter. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... remained; but a few were killed from day to day; and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides; chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the Rectory, Biddy could clearly see the water shining in the morning sunshine, which was yellower and richer in colour now, for the season was getting on; the cold thin wintry look was giving place in this sheltered spot to the warmer feeling of spring. The little waves came lapping in softly; by listening intently and fancying a little, Biddy could almost hear the delicate sound they made as they kissed ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... was nothing, from lapping up Eisel to killing a crocodile, that Paul would not have done, in the fulness of his wondering gratitude, for his dearest lady, he meekly attached the heart to his chain and put it ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... stood at the foot of the glacier watching the miracle unfold before her eyes. The glacier was making queer cracking noises as it descended, and it sounded as though there was water underneath it. She could hear it lapping. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... Lulled by the gentle lapping of the water against the side of the boat, the Meadow-Brook Girls slept soundly. On shore the boys of the Tramp Club also were sleeping. The girls on board the "Red Rover," as already mentioned, had no fear of a second attack that night, nor had the youthful pirates the slightest intention ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge

... lapping of the lake water I imagined a horrible colloquy in that vault. It all came into my mind, his dialogue and my dialogue. "Great God," I cried out, "something must be done to escape!" and my eyes were strained out on the lake, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... perhaps not even that. So far as they are concerned we are just fodder, something to be eaten as we eat vegetables and cereals or the flesh of domesticated animals. Perhaps they have watched us for years, watching life on the world increase, lapping their monstrous jowls over the fattening of the Earth. They have awaited the proper setting of the banquet table ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak

... what the birds had seen, started back in astonishment, seemed to have a great dumb-show palaver, then one by one, clutching their weapons, they came forward to more closely examine the new 'debbil debbil.' Here some one would stoke the fire, out would belch through the funnel a big smoke and a lapping flame, away went the blacks into the bush as if too terrified to stay. But you can't describe a corroboree, it wants the scenic effects of the grim bush: tapering, dark Belahs, Coolabahs contorted into quaint shapes and excrescences by extremes of flood and ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by circumstances over which they have no control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated—rumble, hum, scream, roar—and establish an immense family washing-day at each paddle-box. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... whisper to the passing breeze. I hear the night-hawk's scream, the pipe of frogs, The baying of the distant village dogs, The lapping waves, the rustle of the trees. And every sound is musical to me, For every sound is a sweet song ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir

... the draught was cold the physician shivered and went and closed the door, but as he turned again he saw the Pestilence lapping at his mixing, who sprang and set one paw upon Adro's shoulder and another upon his cloak, while with two he clung to his waist, and looked him ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... filled her mind, that no other thought it seemed could follow it, it had an effect of being final; it so filled her mind that it filled the whole world; the broad sapphire distances of the sea, the lapping waves amidst the rocks at her feet, the blazing sun, the dark headland of Porto Fino and a small sailing boat that hung beyond came all within it like things enclosed within a golden globe. She forgot all the days of nursing and discomfort and pity behind her, all the duties and ceremonies ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... and the boy had passed on up the broad street—the fine, flag-bedecked street—just one of a hundred service hats bobbing in rhythmic motion like sandy waves lapping a shore ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... to demand service from his subjects; which was fortunate for us, for when we started down the Waidina River from Nabukaluka our canoes were so small and overloaded that the ripples were constantly lapping in over the gunwale, threatening momentarily to swamp us. Soon, however, we came upon a party of natives in a fine large canoe, and after receiving their tama Ratu Pope demanded: "Where are you going"? The men, who seemed somewhat awestricken, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... another lad from his perch. "Mad dogs wont drink, and this one is lapping out of a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... have sat there, shivering and yawning, for about an hour, when, tired of inactivity, I got up and went and leaned over the side of the vessel. The sound of the water gurgling and lapping by was so soothing ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... cared for thistles; for Miss May showed me one at Coombe; but it was not like what they are here—the spikes pointing out and pointing in along the edges of the leaves, and the scales lapping over ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... drowsy and still. The voices and laughter of the nut gatherers came back to them from the deeper woods in the distance, and the crackling of the fire where Bertrand attended to the roasting of the corn near by, and the gentle sound of the lapping water on the river bank came to them out of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... imperious, impetuous strength. Turn to "See, the heavens smile": note how the resonant swinging chords and that lovely figure playing on the top give one an instant vision of vast, translucent sea-depths and the ripples lapping above. Look at "Come unto these yellow sands" and "Full fathom five": he almost gives us the colour of the sea and the shore. These things did not come by accident, nor do they exist only in an enthusiastic fancy. They were meant; they are ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman

... principal merit was that, taken at a distance, it gave a gleam of abstraction to the concrete verdure, doing the office of an open eye in a dull face, it could also be approached without derision on a sweet summer morning when it made a lapping sound and reflected candidly various things that were probably finer than itself—the sky, the great trees, the flight of birds. A man of taste, coming back from Rome a hundred years before, had caused a small ornamental structure ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... down from the bald tip of Point Old with an eager gleam in his uncovered eye. There was the Rock with a slow swell lapping over it. There was an old withered Portuguese he knew in a green dugout, Long Tom Spence rowing behind the Portuguese, and they carrying on a shouted conversation. He picked out Doug Sproul among three others he did not ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... gradually—slowly but smoothly and surely, it moved, until its farther end rested upon the opposite cheek of the crevasse, lapping the hard ice by several feet. Then the cables were held taut, and securely fastened to the belaying-pin. The nearer end of the pole was tied with other ropes—so that it could not possibly shift from its place—and the yawning abyss was ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... after the American vessel, as I suppose he thought it was. I feared by his taking away of the bread that it was intended to starve me to death, and was sorry I had not eaten more at my last meal. I lay down on the shelf of rock, and soon fell asleep. I was awakened by the water lapping around me. The cell was intensely still. Up to this I had always enjoyed the company of a little brook that ran along the side of the cell farthest from the door. Its music had now ceased, and when I sprang up I found myself to the waist ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... yards wide. Then it goes over, still green, and rather more solid than before. After a minute or two, you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to understand that something has occurred; that the river has jumped between solid cliff walls, and that the gentle froth of water lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... Brazier pointed to the place where they kept their fire, and over which the water was now lapping and bearing off the soft grey ashes, which began to eddy and swim round the little whirlpools formed by the swift current, before the light deposit from the fire was ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... the Limited was lapping up the landscape and the Desert was rushing in under her pilot and streaking out below the last sleeper like tape from a ticker, the danger signal sounded in the engine cab, the air went on full, the passengers braced themselves against the seats in front of them, or ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... gripping two of the nearest of them, as if they had been no more than children, he dashed their brains out against the earth, and, shocking to relate, tore in pieces their limbs, and devoured them yet warm and trembling, making a lion's meal of them, lapping the blood; for the Cyclops are man-eaters, and esteem human flesh to be a delicacy far above goat's or kid's; though by reason of their abhorred customs few men approach their coast, except some stragglers, or now and then a shipwrecked mariner. ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... scene changed completely. Instead of the bustle of a large city, silence reigned, broken only by the lapping of the waters and the cries of the gondoliers as they plied their oars; it is a city full of charm but full of sadness. Even the Palace of the Doges, splendid though it be, is sad; we walked through halls whose vaulted roofs have long since ceased to re-echo ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... how many years after his flight from Pall Mall, one dim midnight, I, returning from Richmond, lounged over Vauxhall Bridge, listening to the low lapping of the current beneath the arches—looking above to the stars and along the dark polished surface that reflected a thousand lights in its undulations,—feeling the awfulness of the dense, suppressed life that was ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... you grow older, I expect. However, I must make the most of you while you are young. Why, let's see, you will be six weeks old tomorrow, and you can lap every bit as well as I can. Yes, and it's quite a treat to see you lapping, and ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... sun went down behind black clouds, shining on an ancient pile of grey stones that stood on a little spit of land near the bar of the river, she was reminded of Tennyson's "Morte d'Arthur." She heard the ripples lapping on the reeds and, with an imaginary Sir Bedivere at her elbow, hurried back to the farm to dress herself as a Scottish edition of King Arthur in kilts that had belonged to her grandfather. She worshipped the shine of the moon on the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... pink, or lavender, regular, 1 to 1 1/2 in. broad, solitary or a pair, borne on elongated peduncles, generally with pair of leaves at their base. Calyx of 5 lapping, pointed sepals; 5 petals, woolly at base; 10 stamens; pistil with 5 styles. Fruit: A slender capsule pointed like a crane's bill. In maturity it ejects seeds elastically far from the parent plant. Stem: 1 to 2 ft. high, hairy, slender, simple or branching above. Leaves: Older ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... and hauled the boat into the sand with little trouble, and, while Rajah held her on an even keel, we tugged at the painter and soon had the water lapping at her bows. The stock of provisions and water was restowed, and then we smashed the extra boat and took the oars. We covered Thirkle with sand, but Riggs said he would carry him back to Manila ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... and through the day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rattling, tearing on, spurning everything with its dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute where a crowd of faces are, that in a minute more are not; sometimes lapping water greedily, and before the spout at which it drinks' has ceased to drip upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rattling through the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... about water; until the images thereof, visible, audible, tactile, unite and steep and submerge every other notion. Nothing deliberate; and, in all probability, nothing even conscious; those watery thoughts merely lapping dreamily round, like a half-heard murmur of rivers, the waking work with which his mind is busy. Nothing deliberate or conscious, but all the more inevitable and efficacious, this ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... boomed out once more, full and unmistakable, the voice of the great drum of Africa. The beating was now rapid and sonorous, and the sound of the drum was accompanied by a savage volume of cries. A mass of shadow appeared at the end of the lane, soon lapping over into the yard in front of ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... arms. "But no! Father might live another ten years—though I don't think so—and I couldn't have stood it. He was lapping me in the mud." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... dish, with this difference, that his ancient prototype allowed the water and lighter particles to escape over the rim as he swirled the stuff round and round. I presume, in finishing the operation, he collected the golden grains by gently lapping the water over the reduced material, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... to admire the crowns to look at each other; and the guests knew well that old knaves are more expert in grimaces than any others, because of their physiognomies becoming tolerably curious, like those of cats lapping up milk, or girls ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... Onondaga in his measured tones. "No man, Indian or white, has been here today. The lilies are undisturbed. Not a reed has been bent. Ducks that have not yet seen us are swimming quietly up the creek, and farther on a stag is drinking at its edge. I can hear him lapping ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... mast, the child and cat, Through the dire time of slaughter sat, By terror both spellbound; But when night came, a silence drear Fell on the coast; and far or near, No voice caught Edric's wakeful ear, Save water's lapping sound. He wandered from the stern to prow, Ate of the stores, and marvelled how He yet might reach the ground; Till low and lower sank the tide, Dark banks of mud spread far and wide Around that fast-bound wreck. Then the lone boy climbed down ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sector almost as important strategically as it is beautiful scenically. What twelve hours previously had been a flint-hard, ice-paved road had dissolved to a river of soft slush, and one could sense rather than see the ominous premonitory twitchings in the lowering snow-banks as the lapping of the hot moist air relaxed the brake of the frost which had held them on the precipitous mountain sides. Every stretch where the road curved to the embrace of cliff or shelving valley wall was a possible ambush, and we slipped by them with ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... of the sea which had witnessed his triumphs? The sides of the boat, which was more than sixty-six feet long and fifteen across the widest part, were painted, and around it was ranged a series of shields lapping over one another like the scales of a fish, and not unlike the designs seen in the celebrated Bayeux tapestry. A block of oak intended to receive the mast was placed in the centre of the boat, and near the skeleton were oars some fifteen ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... mercy, too!" snapped Mrs. Jo G., lapping a plaid shirt waist over her scrawny chest. "Janet's 'bout as useful at such times as a flounder. Lord save us! how I have fell away this season! We've cleared two hundred dollars, an' about all my ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... grape-leaves, clotted cream that quivered at a touch, tall pitchers of whey, loppered milk ready for the spoon and buttermilk in new-washed churns. Through the moist freshness of the stone room the brook ran, chuckling and lapping; great stones roughly mortared together made the floor on either side of it; the Dame stood high on wooden clogs and hummed a ballad wherein the birds sang in the morning, but at night the eggs were broken, and the wind was high and scattered ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... on the edges of the broad side of feathers you find always a series of undulations, irregularly sequent, and lapping over each other like waves on sand. You might at first imagine that this appearance was owing to a slight ruffling or disorder of the filaments; but it is entirely normal, and, I doubt not, so constructed, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... survey of his surroundings the Jaguar stooped and began lapping up the warm but satisfying liquid. Something flashed dark beneath his nose and he drew back with a start; the action, sudden and violent, mired his forefeet deeply in the soft mud. Before he could recover his balance the long ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... formed of a thin flat board about eighteen inches wide, bent up in front, with a straight back behind to lean against. The sides are made of fresh buffalo hide, with the hair completely scraped off, and which, lapping over, entirely covers the front part, so that a person slips into it as into a tin bath. Each carries but one passenger. The driver, on snow-shoes, runs behind to guide the dogs. Each sleigh is drawn by four dogs, their backs gaudily decorated with ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... led over a low spur, and the scouts had halted and were squatting at the crest. Straightway before them, possibly four miles, a dull red glow lay in the midst of the moonlight, with occasional tongues of lurid flame lazily lapping at some smouldering upright. The fire had spent its force; gorged itself on its prey and was sinking ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... remembered those long days which she spent lying under an orange tree, looking up at the round, red fruit, amidst the green leaves. How she used to long to go out, as far as the sea, whose fresh breezes came to her over the wall, and whose small waves she could hear lapping on the beach. She dreamt of its immense blue expanse sparkling under the sun, with the white sails of the small vessels, and a mountain on the horizon. But she did not dare to go outside the gate; suppose anybody had recognized her, unshapely as she was, and showing her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... rose, a white, shining ball, and by its rays we perceived that we drew near to the city. But there was still something left for us to see before we reached its shelter. While we sat quietly in the boat—for the silence was broken only by the lapping of the still waters against its sides and the occasional splash of the slackened tow-line upon their surface—we heard a distant sound as of a hunt ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... it at last, almost winded, and stumbled out on the portico that gave to the sea, a wide blue stretch before him. He stopped, startled, as if he had unexpectedly sighted the heavenly strand, and gazed blinking at the stretch of blue with the wide white shore and the boom of an organ following the lapping of each white crested wave. Those palm trees certainly made it look queer like Saxy's Pilgrim's Progress picture book. Then the panic for home and his business came upon him and he slid weakly down the shallow white steps, and crunched his white feet on the gravel wincing. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... Viola Lake, cresting the high hill, and descending to a shaded valley where the lapping waters plashed upon the roadside: then mounted another hill, among thick clustering oaks and giant pines, to where three lakes are seen spreading broadly out upon a grassy plain between high wooded slopes. And these are Ekoniah! Twenty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... might fall in with the Sarah Jane, and be relieved of his chief cause of anxiety. His patience, however, on several occasions was sorely tried when the wind fell light. One day, too, a perfect calm came on, and the brig lay, her sides lapping the glassy sea, as she rolled in the slowly-heaving, sluggish swell, and her sails flapped lazily against the masts. In vain old Higson whistled for a wind till his cheeks were ready to crack; not that he really believed the proceeding would produce a ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... only as "the Lake." The road hitherward soon leaves the village and wanders in rural loveliness by the margin of this expanse. Sometimes the water is hidden by clumps of trees, behind which we heard it lapping and gurgling in the darkness: sometimes it stretches out from your feet in shining vagueness, as if it were tired of making, all day, a million little eyes at the great stupid hills. The walk from the tavern takes some half an hour, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... swiftly away across the troubled sea, beneath the dark sky. No one on board the vessel shouted any longer. The water was already lapping ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... river quivered like quicksilver. In the air was the nutty odor of dried grasses, the clear tang of coming frosts crystal to the taste as water; and if one listened, almost listened to the silence, one could hear above the lapping of the tide the far echo of the cataract. To Cartier the scene might have been the airy fabric of some dream world; but out of dreams of earth's high heroes ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... like hours the young man watched, waiting for the creatures to be done, hoping that they would go away. Fortunately the sphere lay between, and he was not forced to see too much. Only one portion of one of the monsters was visible, lapping out ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... fixed up the milk for the dog. In appetite, the canine was close second to Hungry Foxcroft. After lapping up all he could hold, our mascot closed his eyes and his tail ceased wagging. Sailor Bill took a dry flannel shirt from his pack, wrapped the dog in it, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... around the financial centre, while the cabalistic letters (meaning little or nothing to the stranger within the gates), E. C., safely comprehend a region which not only includes "the city," but extends as far westward as Temple Bar, and thus covers, if we except the lapping over into the streets leading from the Strand, practically the whole of the "Highway of Letters" ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... the Pool. It opened on her with a new surprise. The sun had just left it and its darkness was touched by mystery. The steep wooded bank opposite cast a dull heavy shadow across half the surface; the low lapping of the water sounded like somebody whispering old secrets that she seemed half to hear, garrulous histories of the dead—the dead whose blood was in her veins—old glories, old scandals, old trifles, all mixed together, all of great importance in the valley of the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... arrangement they obtained, as they sat and idly talked, an excellent view of all the land around the bay, and of the pale, clear sunset shining in the western skies. They lay almost motionless in the lapping water: the light breeze scarcely stirred the loose canvas. From time to time they could hear a sound of calling or laughing from the distant fishing-boats; and that only seemed to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... something occult why he should be singled out to be made miserable on a day like this? Why, among all the men he knew, he must go skulking about, lapping up cold mineral water and cocking one ear to the sounds of human ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... strong arms dropped down exhausted. Half-seen forms, mutilated, bleeding, were tearing with teeth and nails at their dreadful prison. Then for a while the smoky cloud involved everything in darkness. A moment after, the red fiery tongues came lapping upward, and a red, glowing halo encircles the fatal wreck. The first and second carriages were already burned. How long would it take the flames to reach the top? How many of the sufferers were yet alive? What power in heaven or earth could ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... it up a little way," returned Chillis, slowly, and turning his face back to the fire. He was listening attentively, and thought he caught the sound of lapping water. ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... leathery, the succeeding ones tipped with brown, wherever exposed, so that the whole bud is covered with a thick coat. The inner scales are green and delicate, and somewhat woolly, especially along the lapping edges. There are about seven pairs of scales. The larger terminal buds have a flower-cluster in the centre, and generally two pairs of leaves; the small buds contain leaves alone, two or three pairs of them. The leaves are densely covered with white wool, to protect them from the sudden ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell

... we, rocking it on its pivot, shrank from all that lay concealed below! Should I ever have blundered on the waterfall of St. Wighton, if you had not piloted the way? And when we got to Land's-end, with the green sea far under us lapping into solitary rocky nooks where the mermaids live, who but you only had the courage to stretch over, to see those diamond jets of brightness that I swore then, and believe still, were the flappings of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... excessive moisture may render the land unsuitable until April or May. The harvesting of the main crop then begins in May and continues during the whole of the summer, according to the character of the land cropped over, lapping the planting time for early potatoes first mentioned. It is also true by use of properly matured seed one can secure, in some places, two crops a year, if there is sufficient inducement therefor. Thus it comes about that we are continually planting ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... thinks you don't object to smoking. Anyhow, after my navy experience I came back home and landed on an East River tug. Said I struck the busy season. Must have struck a busy concern, too. From daylight to ten, eleven at night—once in a while a night lapping over. Nothing doing but work. I don't mind work, but this indulging a lawless passion for it—not for mine. I've had three months of that, and I think I'm due for a change. And don't you think that's enough autobiography to qualify me for pump-man ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... the company before it had reached the right of the gap by ten paces, and so left about one-quarter of the company lapping over on the one to his left. Even this was done with an unsightly jumble. His confusion as to the reversal of right and left still abode with him. He commanded "right face" instead of "front," and was amazed to see the whole ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... earth and waited to do battle for what remained of life, hearkening for the fierce hiss of that great wave that was to bear me back to the horror of those green deeps the which should bury me for ever; instead I heard the gentle, drowsy lapping of water all about me, and opening my eyes beheld myself lying on the edge of those white sands that bordered the lagoon, while behind me the seas thundered impotent against the reef. And now, little by little, I saw that the great wave must have ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... to be keeping his crew perched along the upper rail, where their weight had the effect of holding the boat with the narrower beam from toppling over on her side. It looked like a close shave, as Jud Elderkin said, with that swift current rushing past on the port quarter, and almost lapping the rim of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... The water's lapping whispers stole Into my brain, and there effaced All human memories from my soul,— An atom in a ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... in bloom were on the table; Mr. Punch, Arthur's Christmas present, lay as if watching the cat on baby's pillow in the basket; and Muff, the old cat, with Fair-Star her kitten, were lapping milk from a basin on ...
— The Nursery, June 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various

... lapping at Bryce's mind suddenly receded and left a chill. With instinctive wariness he thought of ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye

... the clouds, and whose innumerable towers and pinnacles were all pierced to the day, so that the blue sky shone and the birds of the air flew all through them. A slow brown river, broad enough for market boats and for corn barges, stole through the place to the sea, lapping as it went the wooden piles of the houses, and reflecting the quaint shapes of the carvings, the hues of the signs and the draperies, the dark spaces of the dormer windows, the bright heads of some casement-cluster of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... share that, too? Or a pineapple, for Pad, and a melon for Johnny? Isabel's friends could hardly go sneaking up to the nursery at the children's meal-times. All the same, as he bought the melon William had a horrible vision of one of Isabel's young poets lapping up a slice, for some reason, behind the ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... hurrying, all with one common flow, all with increasing speed, to the Thames. The sound of waters filled the air, dropping, poppling, splashing, trickling, dripping from leaves to earth, falling from bank to rills below, gurgling under gate-paths, lapping against the tree-trunks and little ridge piles in the brooks, and at last sweeping with a hushed content into the bosom of Thames. And the river himself was good for something more than a "stree-um." He was bank-full and sweeping ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... was built in a series of arches, fitted with stone bins, and in the upper part of one southward-fronting arch there was a narrow grating, through which came the cool breath of evening air and the sound of water lapping against stone. A patch of faint light showed pale against the iron bars, and as Angela looked that way, a great grey rat leapt through the grating, and ran along the topmost bin, making the bottles shiver as he scuttled across them. Then came a thud on the sawdust-covered stones, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... uncaught grandsire's mood, 50 I see a tiger lapping kitten's food: And who shall blame him that he purs applause, When brother Brindle pleads the good old cause; And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his claws! Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt, 55 I trust the bolts and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... never knew; for, overcome by frenzy and fatigue, he swooned away. When he opened his eyes, he was lying beneath the hole in the cliff, with the moonlight streaming upon his face. From below him came the soft sound of lapping water, and, looking down, he saw that the tide had entered the cave, and forced the besiegers to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... fears neither man nor devil," Cook was heard to mutter, after he had embedded his beak in her ankle; and it was quite true. He so terrified Horatio, our portly bull-dog, by pecking at his sensitive kinky tail from behind when he was absent-mindedly lapping water from Daisy's bath, that he never again ventured alone on to the lawn. I say "alone," for he dared once more, emboldened by the presence of his unwilling young wife, who accompanied him, tied by a rope to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various

... and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast. Beth watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand bird came tripping over the beach 'peeping' softly to itself, as if enjoying ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... "Why should you be kept in control? If you go out, the others come in. They bluster and threaten, in order to get themselves in; but, once they're elected, they discover that it wasn't the people's woes they were shouting about, but their own. And soon they are docile 'conservatives' lapping away at the trough, with nothing dangerous ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... that one of her great natural wonders has views like this. You gaze enraptured at the swishing, swirling, lapping mass of water above you, that falls from a series of terrace-like cascades. As it draws nearer, you are impressed by the glorious display of the wild, raging waters around you. How slowly you walk across the bridge, still noting the turbulent mass of water rushing past ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... into an arching recess which seemed as though made to hide it. All this camp was hidden. Arching crags of the ridge-wall jutted out over the cave entrance. From above, any passing flyer—even though well below the zero-height—would see nothing but this black breathing sea, lapping against its eroded, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... gun with a sigh, and the boat glided on, sending the rushing water in a wave to go lapping amongst the bushes that overhung from the bank, and directly after the serpent knot was hidden by ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... seemed scarcely damaged at all. It looked as though it had floated down into a position of rest. It lay on its side with one wing in the air. There was no aeronaut near it, dead or alive. There it lay abandoned, with the water lapping ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... French geologist, who has carefully examined the district, says that at the Montagne d'Oisans he found the granite in some places resting upon the limestone, cutting through the Calcareous beds, rising like a wall and lapping over them. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... were cleaned whenever necessary, and then oiled with fresh raw linseed oil from the press, put on pretty much as carefully as in ordinary varnish work. No second coat or lapping over of the oil. All was put on at once that it would take without ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... showered down missiles, in vain poured over the caldrons of boiling oil they had prepared in readiness. The strength of the beams defied the first; the hides lapping over each other prevented the second from penetrating to ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... from my chair when he said this, just as cool and easy as if he had been talking of rabbits lapping milk. What on earth had I to do with city lions, and such animals? Wild beasts like these are in no part of my ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... five occupants pushed off from the side of the schooner, and dipping and rising, made its slow way toward the Frenchman. Badding and one archer had single oars, the second archer was in the prow, while Black Simon and Nigel huddled into the stern with the water lapping and hissing at their very elbows. A shout of defiance rose from the Frenchmen, and they stood in a line along the side of their vessel shaking their fists and waving their weapons. Already the sun was level with Dungeness, and the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... seated on the banks of the Danube, with the waters of the river lapping the base of its walls, looked invitingly restful to the travellers who sought its seclusion on that sultry September afternoon. Three friars who formed part of the travelling party entered the monastery at the ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... unadventurous; some might call it monotonous. He takes his position on a smooth rock, protected from cold by the beautiful padded surtout which clothes him from neb to base, and from heat by the cool, limpid wave, softly lap-lapping against the impenetrable feathers. He feels like a stove in the winter, and like a water-bag in the summer. When, from a sort of drowsy, felicitous wantonness—for he never requires to act either on reason or impulse— he desires to visit an adjacent island, he simply allows the tide to encircle ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... require about two breadths to reach around the frame in the widest part. Cut enough of the roll to cover the frame and then soak it for a few minutes in water. Then turn the frame upside down and fasten the edges of the two strips of paper to it, by lapping them carefully on the under side of the bottom-board and tacking them to it so that the paper hangs down loosely on all sides. The paper is then trimmed, lapped and doubled over as smoothly as possible at the ends of the frame, and held ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... of clear and dark water was visible in front of him, no great way off. It flowed from north to south. The forest path led him straight to its banks. Maskull stood there, and regarded the lapping, gurgling waters pensively. On the opposite bank, the forest continued. Miles to the south, Poolingdred could just be distinguished. On the northern skyline the Ifdawn Mountains loomed up—high, wild, beautiful, and dangerous. They were not ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random, Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals, Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing, Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds, Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves, Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting, The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating, The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body, The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back lying and floating, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... the west, but in all other directions it was uninterrupted. As the girl had said, the tops of pines alone met the view, miles on miles of them, undulating, rising, swelling, breaking against the barrier of a dike, or lapping the foot of a great round boulder-mountain. Here and there a darker spot suggested a break for a mountain peak; rarely a fleck of white marked a mountain road. Back of them all—ridge, mountain, cavernous valley—towered old Harney, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... and orphans and suffering in the neighborhood where it happened. He could not tell his battles apart himself, except by their names; and by the time he had told one of then ten times it had grown so that there wasn't room enough in France for it any more, but was lapping over the edges. But up to that point the audience would not allow him to substitute a new battle, knowing that the old ones were the best, and sure to improve as long as France could hold them; and so, instead of saying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... their tall blue spikes, and fritillaries and Meconopsis burst into flower. On the black rocks the gigantic rhubarb forms pale pyramidal towers a yard high, of inflated reflexed bracts, that conceal the flowers, and over-lapping one another like tiles, protect them from the wind and rain: a whorl of broad green leaves edged with red spreads on the ground at the base of the plant, contrasting in colour with the transparent bracts, which are yellow, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... still, the water lapping faintly on the sand at my feet; it was hardly a sound. I looked out on the unruffled lead-colored river: there, about quarter of a mile from the bank, the boat was lying: empty —motionless. The oars were floating a few rods from her, drifting ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... ever brighter; the horizon ever wider, rimming the saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the Sound he saw that the fog had almost passed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl, lapping the sands, smoking toward the radiant sky. He passed over summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the opal sea. Even for the racer there ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... for the mist that hung over the surface of the deep appeared to increase in intensity, and they could not see even the faint glimmer of a star to cheer them; while all they could hear was the lapping of the waves as they washed by them, and the ripple and swish of some billow as it overtopped its crest, and spent its strength in eddies of circling foam, as David could imagine—for the darkness rendered everything invisible now, even the platform on which they were supported, and the unknown ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... stillness Odo became aware of some unseen influence that seemed to envelope him in waves of exquisite sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to waver and float on the stillness like sea-weed on the lift of the tide. He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... and silent into the shanty, Pilchard stood and looked at Swan's prostrate form. No sound came to them but the gentle lapping of the waves. Sober as a dove Day hovered in the sky, and that solemn change which is Death was somewhere near, hiding and waiting; and Pilchard and Death and the breaking Day were for one second alone. And Pilchard was overwhelmed with terror. Some spectre had seized him, and he ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... its own mother, into the sacred sanctuary of the chrysalis state. Then the queen's labor lightened a little for a period, so that you could again see her at spare moments sucking nectar from the flowers for herself, robbing the jam-dish, or lapping up the "honey-dew" of ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... of the stairs and listened. Sure enough, there was a most mysterious noise going on below,—a dull banging at regular intervals, and a curious lapping sound, as though there was water in the ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... between them and pulled up his horse in some concern. The ford had been difficult when they crossed it on the outward journey, but now the space between bank and bank was filled by an angry flood. It rolled by furiously, lapping in frothy ripples upon the steep slope ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... looking outwards. All were turned upon the attractive circle of Terpsichoreans, that, under the brilliant light of the fires, were bounding through the mazy figures, of the dance. The waggons forming the sides of the enclosure were in echellon; and their tilts lapping on each other, it was impossible to see between them. With the two, however, that closed the end of the corral, the case was different. These had been drawn up side by side, and parallel to each other; and though ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Lapping" :   overlapping, covering



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