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Why might we not find out the secret of the marshes if we went very softly through the heart of them? that secret of which the slender reeds are always whispering; that mystery that keeps them always a-shiver. Is it something they have hidden from the searching tide? Is it known to the little marsh-hen that cunningly builds her nest at the foot of the sedges?
All tents, huts, and shelters of boughs for a hundred feet each side acquired a liquid flooring. There arose an outcry on the midnight air. Wet and cursing, half naked and all a-shiver, men disentangled themselves from their soaked blankets, snatched up clothing and accoutrements, and splashed through a foot of icy water to slightly dryer quarters on the rising ground.
In less than five minutes from the moment of tacking the ship reached the opening, and as she glided across the narrow channel Ned signed to Williams to put the helm gradually down. The result was that the ship shot easily up into the wind; and the moment that all her canvas was a-shiver Ned ordered the helm amidships.
One added oneself to the quality of the big, still apartment, with its antique furniture, its celebrities and notorieties pictured upon its walls, its great chandelier, a-shiver with glass lusters hanging overhead like an aerial iceberg.
With increasing frequency gusts of air set the trees a-shiver until their sibilant whispers of warning filled the valley. The rolling of the thunder grew more sharp, more instant upon the flashes.... When there was no wind the air seemed to quiver with terror as a dog cringes to the whip.... But of this Duncan was barely conscious.
But for weeks now he had often waked up in the middle of the night and found himself all a-shiver. "It's the fault of that horrid old Mr. Crow," Turkey Proudfoot complained to old dog Spot one day. "He would talk about cranberry sauce and drumsticks. And of course a person can't sleep well with such things on his mind." Old dog Spot nodded.
One fell the first night a distant pillar far away on the horizon. Four thousand years had it stood there. And it fell the first night of my arrival. I heard it; the nights are cold at El Teb Wells, and I was lying awake, all a-shiver, counting the stars to make me sleep.
Presently the square canvas was all a-shiver, slatting furiously and causing the ship to tremble to her keel. "Raise tacks and sheets!" was the next order; and now came the critical moment and the question Would she hold her way long enough to cant in the proper direction?
"Why, old Hank Handcraft come out in that crazy launch uv his and guv it ter me," rejoined the captain. "I ought ter hev told yer that in the first place, but I was all took aback and canvas a-shiver when yer tole me yer never wrote it." "Hank Handcraft," repeated Rob. "He's that queer old fellow that lives in a hut away down the beach?" "Yes, and a bad character, too," replied the captain.
The price paid for his strenuousness and earnestness will be a want of humor; his determination to glorify the human body, as God made it, will bring him in collision with our notions of the decent, the proper; the "courageous, clear voice" with which he seeks to prove the sexual organs and acts "illustrious," will result in his being excluded from good society; his "heroic nudity" will be apt to set the good dame, Belles-lettres, all a-shiver; his healthful coarseness and godlike candor will put all the respectable folk to flight.
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