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A strange thing is how men settle down after excitement. Birds do the same thing. A hawk swoops down on a hedgerow; there is a great flutter, followed by sudden silence. A minute later the chattering begins again, without any reference to one of their number being torn in the plunderer's beak.
From that moment he fell into despair, seeing everywhere the skinny, clawlike fingers of Mademoiselle Gamard ready to hook into his heart. The old maid, happy in a sentiment as fruitful of emotions as that of vengeance, enjoyed circling and swooping above the vicar as a bird of prey hovers and swoops above a field-mouse before pouncing down upon it and devouring it.
On we go singing elaborately, thinking no evil of nature, when a current, a quiet devil of a thing, comes round from behind a point of the bank and catches the nose of our canoe; wringing it well, it sends us scuttling right across the river in spite of our ferocious swoops at the water, upsetting us among a lot of rocks with the water boiling over them; this lot of rocks being however of the table-top kind, and not those precious, close-set pinnacles rising up sheer out of profound depths, between which you are so likely to get your canoe wedged in and split.
Hughie and Beth could do no less than follow as far as the fence, while Kate stood searching the band of sheep that milled about her. When she found what she sought, she made one of her swift swoops, caught the sheep by the hind leg and threw it with a dextrous twist. Then holding it between her knees, she took a knife from her pocket and tested the edge of the blade with her thumb.
Day comes with climbing, night by falling; hence the night is so much swifter. Happiness takes years to build; but misery swoops like an avalanche. Such, and even more depressing, are the thoughts young folk give way to when their first great trouble rushes and sweeps them into a desert, trackless to the inexperienced hope.
The angel swoops from heaven with extended arms, reaching forth one hand to show the ram to Abraham, and clasping the patriarch's wrist with the other. The ram meanwhile is scratching his nose with his near hind leg; one of the servants is taking a thorn from his foot, while the other fills a cup from the stream at which the ass is drinking. Thus each figure has a separate uneasy action.
The Tsar Feodul rode against Prince Ivan, and before and behind him rode an innumerable host of squires and knights. Ivan grasped his shield with one hand and his lance with the other. As the falcon swoops upon the geese, swans, and ducks, even so did Prince Ivan fall upon that terrible army; and his steed trod to the ground twice as many as he himself slew.
Already before him he could see the glistering crests and long files of the Spartans—the prey he would crush with one stroke as a vulture swoops over the sparrow. Then nigh involuntarily his hand drew rein. What came to greet him? A man on foot—no horseman even. A man of huge stature running at headlong speed. The risen sun was now dazzling. The general clapped his hand above his eyes.
It was making a wide circle beyond the rock spires, floating lazily above them in long, graceful swoops that were so lacking in effort that she longed to be up there with him to ride the air with him, to feel the exhilaration he must feel.
Generally the aeroplane with the black crosses on its wings is very high barely visible. Sometimes, when the other planes are near it, it swoops steeply to earth behind the German lines. Or it may be that, far behind our own lines, you see a plane diving to earth at an angle which makes you wonder whether it is falling or being steered. It straightens out suddenly, and lands a few fields away.
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