United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then she straightened up proudly and when McBain began to dictate her machine went on clacking defiantly. There followed long days in which Rimrock idled about town or rode back and forth to his mine, and then the gossips began to talk. A change, over night, had taken place in Rimrock the day after his return from New York.
Fred was up again in a moment, ready to pass his arms through and help his friend; but the latter had already recovered himself, and was holding on with both hands, now staring between the balusters like a wild beast through the bars of his cage. "What's the matter?" he said. "I thought you were falling. Which one broke?" "I don't know; neither of them." "But what was that clacking noise?"
The bitterness of despair was in his tones. Then, perhaps, the sullen, savage crowd had wrought their last act of anger and revenge on him, had it not been for a sudden change in that tide of ill fortune that now seemed to carry him forward to his doom. There came a sound of far-off cries, a distant clacking of hoofs, the clatter of steel, many shouts, entreaties and commands.
Such is the silence of the bush that the silken rustle of the butterflies becomes audible and the distinctive flight of birds is recognised not alone such exaggerated differences as the whirr of quail, the bustle of scrub fowl, and the whistle and clacking of nutmeg pigeons, but the delicate and tender characteristics of the wing notes of the meeker kinds of doves and the honey-eaters, and also the calculated flutterings of the fly-catchers.
"Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white. "There's wind behind this fog," said Troop.
Vincent, with the fruit-laden bum-boats swarming alongside, and the donkey-engines chattering, derricks clacking, and coal-dust pervading everything.
'The Derby Winner is my property, said Sir Harry, bluffly, 'and it sha'n't be shut up for a dozen Mrs Panseys. 'Think of a dozen Mrs Panseys, murmured Lucy, pensively. 'Think of Bedlam and Pandemonium, my dear! Thank goodness Mrs Pansey is the sole specimen of her kind. Nature broke the mould when that clacking nuisance was turned out. She 'Harry! you really must not speak so loud.
After some time the mill went on clacking and grinding corn as well as ever, when one day the miller stood looking at his meadow, thinking to himself, "The grass looks very green, and the weather is very fine; this meadow must be mown to-morrow."
"Law!" roared Cap'n Sproul, clacking his hard fist on the table rim. "Law will tie more knots in a man's business than a whale can tie in a harpoon-line. There ain't no justice in it only pickin's and stealin's.
He stooped and blew out the light, and the next moment his lips rested upon other lips which, as it had been unconsciously, resigned their soft sweetness to his will. Then the door closed, and he heard the click of the lock as the bolts were shot from within. The gallery ran round and round about him like a clacking wheel.