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And then then came, thundering through the blackness, the giant swells, boom on boom! ... One crash! the huge frame building rocks like a cradle, seesaws, crackles. What are human shrieks now? the tornado is shrieking! Another! chandeliers splinter; lights are dashed out; a sweeping cataract hurls in: the immense hall rises, oscillates, twirls as upon a pivot, crepitates, crumbles into ruin.
His first thought was of fire. Dry wood was not hard to find in the crackling forest and a few deft twirls of the fire-sticks produced the spark needed to set a handful of dry leaves aflame. Food there was none so, with his back to the thick butt of a castanha tree and the blaze in front Oomah silently and gravely awaited the coming of night. Hours passed.
"Eins!" We rub our glasses with a circular motion on the table. "Zwei!" Again the glasses growl; also at "Drei!" "Drink!" And with mechanical unison every glass is emptied and held on high. "Eins!" says the chairman. The foot of every empty glass twirls upon the table, producing a sound as of the dragging back of a stony beach by a receding wave. "Zwei!" The roll swells and sinks again. "Drei!"
Crisp comes gammocking up, wagging his tail, seeming in the best of good humours; poor Blanche receives him kindly, and sometimes walks before him to the buttery; then, all of a sudden, just as she is thinking how very glad she is to meet Crisp thinking, too, that notwithstanding his shaggy coat and crooked legs, he is a thousand times more to be esteemed and liked than the fine and conceited Bright-eye at that very time, and just as suddenly as you fly into your passions, Crisp stops, grins, twirls his tail, and will neither return her civility nor accept her invitation.
Starting up, he snaps his fingers, twirls round, first on one foot, and then on the other, till feeling the time approaching when he must give up, he strikes up again: "Shout, shout, the devil's about; Shut the door and keep him out," leaps frog over two or three of the servants' shoulders, disappearing from among them in an immoderate state of conceit and perspiration.
If he had been in the vault, he could safely have lighted a candle without their perceiving its beams; and though the safe was modern it probably had no time lock. Sorenson could unlock it with a few twirls of the combination, stuff his pockets with currency and negotiable paper to the amount of thousands and then slip away. Fortunately the moonlight was to Weir's advantage.
All the guests sit in a circle and the leader begins by saying: "This is a very solemn occasion." He then twirls his thumbs and looks very solemn. Commencing with the player to the right of the leader, each one in turn repeats what he has said, very solemnly twirls his thumbs, and keeps twirling them, until each one has repeated it, and it is the leader's turn again.
They were dancing something original and unpremeditated, with twirls and springs, sweeps and bends, bounds and footings, just as the little lady's fancy prompted, perhaps guided in some degree by her partner's experience of national dances. White and black, they figured about, she with floating sheeny hair and glistening robes, he trim and tight and jetty, like fairy and imp!
The men, too, perform all kinds of tricks and feats, some writing words of love and fantastic figures in their twirls, others making rapid pirouettes, then gliding backward on one leg for a long distance; others twist about, making numbers of dizzy turns in a small space, sometimes bending down, then leaning to one side, then skating upright or crouching like india-rubber figures moved by a secret spring.
The defenders of the house would attempt to repel such an attack by hurling heavy bars of iron-wood, sharpened at both ends, in such a way that the bar twirls in the air as it hurtles through it; and this is one of the few occasions on which the blow-pipe is used as a weapon of defence.
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