United States or Hungary ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They cut the leaves and branches with sharp little crashes, and struck men's bodies with a peculiar slap. A score of men in the disordered group fell back dead or dying upon the green moss.
"The Reds shot up Sputnik and then Muttnik.... When ? Twenty-five years ago. We got up our answers a little later. There were a couple of spectacular crashes on the moon, then that space station that didn't stay in orbit, after that stalemate. In the past quarter century we've had no voyages into space, nothing that was prophesied. Too many bugs, too many costly failures.
In a few moments the sides of our little vessel began to creak and groan loudly. The men laboured like tigers at the ice-poles, but in vain. We heard a loud report in the cabin. No one knows what it was, but I suppose it must have been the breaking of a large bolt. At any rate it was followed by a series of crashes and reports that left no doubt in our minds as to what was going on.
For the next half-hour, the firing from the Bellevite was more rapid, and several crashes, produced by the striking of shot, were heard. It was soon apparent that one of the stern chasers had been disabled; and after a while the other ceased its noise. Beeks was so excited that he left the wardroom, and found his way into what proved to be the captain's cabin.
A small plain of coarse grass was bounded by the steep spur of a rise. To the left a little river would burst, all at once, in all its windings into a bluish sulphurous glow; and between the crashes of thunder there was heard the long-drawn, whistling swish of the rushes and cane-brakes springing on the boggy ground. We skirted the rise.
Distant crashes, single and impressive; stealthy footsteps near at hand; the subdued scratching of claws; a faint sniff! sniff! sniff! of inquiry; the sudden clear tin-horn ko-ko-ko-oh of the little owl; the mournful, long-drawn-out cry of the loon, instinct with the spirit of loneliness; the ethereal call-note of the birds of passage high in the air; a patter, patter, patter among the dead leaves, immediately stilled; and then at the last, from the thicket close at hand, the beautiful silver purity of the white-throated sparrow the nightingale of the North trembling with the ecstasy of beauty, as though a shimmering moonbeam had turned to sound; and all the while the blurred figure of the moon mounting to the ridge-line of your tent these things combine subtly, until at last the great Silence of which they are a part overarches the night and draws you forth to contemplation.
The father saw his boy wringing his hands, but of his cries he could hear nothing, for the sound of the roaring waters and rushing wind drowned them. The entire sky was now enveloped in black clouds and dark night hovered over the sea. Flashes of lightning illuminated the heavens and dreadful crashes of thunder filled the air.
Such sentences as these fell from his lips as he turned his face from the bleaching flares before they ended in mighty crashes: "That struck powerful nigh," or "I seen that one runnin' along the ground like a ball of fire," or "There goes somethin' near," or "That was a tree jest back o' the barn, you'll see in the mornin'."
At the same time a similar message came from the other flank as well. A shower of stick-bombs burst with a formidable crash from one side. A line of Germans was seen, coming steadily along in single file against the other end of the trench. A similar shower of crashes descended from that direction. A machine-gun began to crackle down the trench.
The Titanic, a mass of 40,000 tons, moving through the water at 20 knots an hour, a marvel of the science and skill of man, crashes into an iceberg, because the trained intelligence directing her errs and is reduced at once to an inert mass of iron and brass.
Word Of The Day