"Black hole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trap-door. What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... was opened for work, but there were no workers. The morning after the investigation, when the starting whistle blew there was no line of Indians ready to file into the big, black hole. The huts where they slept were deserted. A strange silence brooded over ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... Wherever he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair and fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The streets were a levy en masse of the peerage. The opera-house was a gilded "black hole of Calcutta." The front of Buckingham palace was a scene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either, gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and shortsighted ladies fainted, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... I suppose it was all due to the excitement and being fagged out with what we'd gone through in that black hole." ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... room! Number one gun, fire!" The shot boomed across the sunny, blue expanse of water, driving a white puff of smoke before it. The shell disappeared in the waves about one hundred yards ahead of the Japanese steamer. The next shot struck the ship, leaving in her side a black hole with jagged ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... we were come to the lip of the volcano (it took us half a day to get up to it) we found the stone was unbelievably large—big as a cathedral. Underneath it we could look right down into a black hole which seemed to have no bottom. The Doctor explained to us that volcanoes sometimes spurted up fire from these holes in their tops; but that those on floating islands were ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... finished his protest, three or four linnets flew down and were caught. Taking them from the nets, he showed them to me, remarking, with a short laugh, that they were all young males. Then he thrust them down the stocking-leg which served as an entrance to the covered box he kept his birds in—the black hole in which their captive life begins, where they were now all vainly fluttering to get out. Going back to the previous subject, he said that he knew very well that many persons disliked a bird-catcher, but there was one thing that nobody could say against him—he ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... horrible to see that old flunkey of the Empire, gaunt and stooping, covered with filth and crying like Jeremiah: "This is the end," with his toothless mouth wide open like a great black hole. I was afraid and ashamed before him, I longed to see his back; and I thought to myself: "O Monsieur Chalmette! O my ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fool you've been," I said to myself as I stood there staring at the black hole in the wall. Then, I gently, even caressingly swung old Ludwig the Red into place. There was another ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... lay between. And what is being done to them? No one asks—none likes to tempt the answer; all guessing what it would be, dreading to hear it spoken. Never did men suffer emotions more painfully intense, passions more heartfelt and harrowing; not even the prisoners of Cawnpore, or the Black Hole of Calcutta. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... giving her to wit that she might find him again at the forest lodge in the Lorenzer wall. Now when matters took so ill a turn, he pledged himself to get her safe away from the dungeon cell. To this end he feigned that he would ride into the town, after possessing himself of the key of the black hole and after stowing a suit of his man's apparel and a loaf of bread into his saddle-poke. Then he wandered about the wood for some time, and as soon as it fell dark he stole back to the house again on foot. He had made a bold and well-devised plan, and yet he might ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there was no mud, nothing but tangled sticks through which a breath of fresh air found its way now and then. In spite of this feeble attempt at ventilation I am obliged to admit that the atmosphere of the lodge was often a good deal like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but beavers are so constituted that they do not need much oxygen, and they did not seem to mind it. In all other respects the house was neat and clean. The floor was only two or three inches above the level of the water in the angles, and would naturally have been a bed ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... all the way over to Portsmouth by himself!" exclaimed good Mrs Driscoll, the Doctor's wife, on hearing the contents of this epistle. "Why, he might be spirited off to the Plantations or the Black Hole of Calcutta, and we never hear any more about him. What could Mr O'Flaherty ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... and broken masonry, until an angle of the great wall concealed them from view. Then the two who remained continued the climb yet higher, following the narrow, zigzag path leading up to the entrance of the descending passage. Immediately under the square black hole they stood and glanced ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the air and light came through the hatch way, a sort of trap door or cellar way. In this floating dungeon, we miserable young men spent our first night, in sleepless anguish, embittered with the apprehension of our suffering cruel death by suffocation. Here the black hole of Calcutta rose to my view in all its horrors; and the very thought stopped my respiration, and set my brain on fire. In my distress, I stamped with my feet, and beat my head against the side of the ship in the madness ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... much as to meet him in a snug quartett party, and hear his manner of playing his own music. If you can bring about such a thing while I am in town, either at Chelsea, or at Mr. Burney's, or at Mr. Salomon's, or I care not where—if it were even in the Black Hole at Calcutta (if it is a good hole for music)—I say, if by hook or crook you could manage such a thing, you should be my Magnus Apollo for the rest of your life. I mention Salomon because we are a little acquainted. He has twice asked me to call upon him, and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... than if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta; but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... hip and to come in contact there with the butt end of his revolver, under his red sash. No inspiration, no further word would come. But he drew his pistol, advanced two steps, and, taking aim, fired at the late monarch. The ball entered the forehead, leaving a little, black hole, like a spot, nothing more. There was no effect. Then he fired a second shot, which made a second hole, then, a third; and then, without stopping, he emptied his revolver. The brow of Napoleon disappeared in white powder, but ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... seem that the boy was right. The little black hole of a passage suddenly opened out into light that almost blinded them by its brilliancy. It was a broad track. On the right was the wall of the cliff pierced with little holes, through which they looked down again on the canon itself, the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... that either. Of course, to be sure of that, one must make a post-mortem examination. Let's get him out of this damp, black hole." ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... wall, petrified by what had happened. A thundering noise came up from the black hole, reverberating through the pass and over the mountains as sled and dogs were hurled to their doom. She put her fingers in her ears to ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... built on sloping ground, and on the lower side there is a small round-topped tunnel leading into a little cell dug out of the ground beneath the cottages. This little village prison was known as the "Black Hole," and was in frequent use about fifty years ago. An old resident in the village named Birdsall, who is now in the Almshouses, remembers that the last woman who was placed in the Black Hole was released by four men who forcibly broke their way in. The ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... torment! The babe is already motherless. Isabel can never return, mother; she is with the dead. I am not waiting idly here for her; I am waiting busily—for her slayer. He has fled; but when he sees he is not pursued he will come back to the spot,—to the black, black hole. He cannot help it. I know that. Oh, how well I know it! And the moment he comes he is caught,—caught in the web of proofs I ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... fast as he could. Carlo followed a short distance, and then got stuck. The black hole grew smaller at the other end, and Bumper felt that he was safe for ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... of the lake, indicates the whereabouts of a temple of Proserpine, or Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another, splashing us through dark pools, putting us down here and there as they pleased, picking us up again, grinning like demons, and by dint of shaking their torches above, and disturbing the water below, raising foul smells ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Passford did not crawl into this black hole for the fun of the thing. He had been spending his time in waiting for a movement to be made in regard to the Bellevite. He staid in the house all the forenoon, and, after lunch, he sailed down the river in the Florence, though with no object in doing so beyond passing the time. Not ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... that when the order had been given to confine them in the barracks, the prisoners had all expected to pass the night in comparative comfort. What was their amazement when they were escorted to the Black Hole, a little chamber no more than eighteen feet square, which was only used as a rule for the confinement of one or two unruly prisoners. In vain they protested; their brutal guards forced them, a hundred and forty-six in number, into the narrow space, and locked the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... woods known only to Rothsky. Close to where they finally halted and began preparations for the punishment of the prisoner, who was also expected to afford them infinite amusement by his sufferings, yawned a great black hole. It was of unknown depth, and was nearly concealed by a tangle of vines and bushes. Rothsky had stumbled upon it by accident only a few days before, and now conceived that it would be a good place in which to dispose of a body, in case they should happen ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Monday, 24th.—Myself and four companions in misery have passed a horrible night in a cabin worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta. The offensive odour from the chicken-coop, which stands just at the side of the only aperture where fresh air can find an entrance; the heat of the confined chamber; the myriads of insects, that devoured my body with ravenous ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... gone. Then it is as though an abyss were opened at your feet; you lean over it; you turn giddy; you almost fall. You fall. You think you are face to face with Death. And so you are; parting is one of his faces. You watch the beloved of your heart pass away; life is effaced; only a black hole is left—nothingness. ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... blameworthy; all that change in her life had come as of itself and in spite of herself; and really, after all, there was no harm in it. She prayed for that good man, who certainly needed her spiritual aid: he went so seldom to church and lived in such a dreary black hole. Her prayers and interest would for sure bring him to a better frame of mind. And yet she must watch, keep strong, avoid the dangers: her honour was a tender thing; and people were wicked. She stayed longer than usual in the confessional and offered ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... two guards before and two behind us bearing candles. They unshackled us, and opened a lattice door of heavy iron, bidding us enter. I knew then that we were going into a dungeon, deep under the walls of a British fort somewhere on the frontier. A thought stung me as D'ri and I entered this black hole and sat upon a heap of straw. Was this to be the end of our fighting ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down the black hole, and, in a ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... out its poison"—one could pray That the day's end might see the madness done And saner souls rise with the morrow's sun. But this incarnate hell that yawns before Your bright, brave soul keyed to the fighter's clench— This purgatory that men call the "trench"— This modern "Black Hole" of a modern war! Yea, Love! yet naught I say can save you, so I lay my heart in yours and let ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... me to his own chamber, where I had never been before, and showed me how, in the chimney-neuk, was a way into a certain black hole of little ease, wherein, if any came in search for me, I might lie hidden. And, fetching me a cold fish (Lenten cheer), a loaf, and a stoup of wine, whereof I was glad enough, he left me, groaning the while at his ill-fortune, but laden with ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... than sin. I say, it is a sin to give in to this system. It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artizans who are now choking and strangling each other to death, as the prisoners did in the black hole of Calcutta. Let those who will turn beasts of prey, and feed upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves pure. It may be the law of political civilization, the law of nature, that the rich should eat up the poor, and the poor eat ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... lantern on the broken floor and swung herself down into the black hole. She hung by her hands and her feet did not touch the bottom. Suddenly she felt a qualm of terror. Perhaps the cellar was a good deal deeper than she ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... captain's blow this afternoon had jeopardized the entire scheme. Indeed, it was on the verge of utter ruin. For Newman was in the black hole in irons, and the ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal, Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked 146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison—the "Black Hole" of Calcutta—from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning. Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain and France were openly at war, Clive did not hesitate to capture the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... was a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced a bit too heavy on an old trap-door, and the rusty bolts had broken. It had let him down into a dungeon that had no other entrance; and indeed this was a queer ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... unreasoning terror filled our fellow-passengers. Too ill to protect her helpless brood, my mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes approached her and sometimes receded, as they swept through the black hole in which we found ourselves when the hatches were nailed down. No madhouse, I am sure, could throw more hideous pictures on the screen of life than those which met our childish eyes during the appalling three days of the storm. Our one comfort ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... Waves like mountains; then a black hole, black as pitch, and great high walls. After that—I'll tell 'ee dreckly. As for the maid, ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... before her the sparking, darting flames spread the width of the ravine. Burning a black hole already in the deep drifts, the crossed wires forbade the girl ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... tissue, mass, pyramid; bing^; drift; snowball, snowdrift; acervation^, cumulation; glomeration^, agglomeration; conglobation^; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate [Chem], coacervation [Chem], coagmentation^, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum [Lat.], spicilegium^, black hole of Calcutta; quantity &c (greatness) 31. collector, gatherer; whip, whipper in. V. assemble [be or come together], collect, muster; meet, unite, join, rejoin; cluster, flock, swarm, surge, stream, herd, crowd, throng, associate; congregate, conglomerate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... completely did the great shell of smoke conceal the planet that the place occupied by the latter seemed to be simply a vast black hole in the firmament. ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... and then lit the fuse, and, running back, flattened himself against the side of the tunnel. There was at last a dull, rumbling roar and a great crash of falling rock. Roddy raced to the sound and saw in the wall a gaping, black hole. Through it, from the other side, lights showed dimly. In the tunnel he was choked with a cloud of powdered cement. He leaped through this and, stumbling over a mass of broken stone, found himself ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... clost to some water, somewheres over in Africy, and de man come in a little boat to de sho' and tell dem he got presents on de big boat. Most de men am out huntin' and my mammy and her mammy gits took out to dat big boat and dey locks dem in a black hole what mammy say so black you can't see nothin'. Dat de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... despite the torpor that is coming upon me in this suffocating atmosphere, I am resolved not to close my eyes. I will keep awake till daylight, and there will be no daylight for me till it is let into my prison from the outside. Perhaps even if the door were open it would not penetrate to this black hole, and I shall probably not see it again until I am ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... no!" she cried hastily. "Please, PLEASE don't do that. It's bad enough to choke slowly, like this, in the gloom. But to die in the dark—that would be ten times more terrible. Why, it's a perfect Black Hole of Calcutta, even now. If you were to turn out the lights I could ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... retribution for the atrocity of the Black Hole of Calcutta, Watson, under instructions from Clive, reduced Chandernagore on the 23rd of March 1757; the battle of Plassey was fought ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... English settlement at Calcutta by Surajah Dowlah, the Nabob of Bengal. Although scarcely any resistance had been made, the English prisoners, 146 in number, were all thrust into a close and narrow apartment called the Black Hole, which, in such a climate, would have been too close and too narrow for a single prisoner. Their sufferings during the dreadful night, until death put an end to the misery of most, cannot be described; 123 perished before morning, and the survivors had to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... my eyes as the mantel swung slowly outward, revealing the black hole beyond. I glanced about helplessly, and sprang to the door of the room to call back Farrell. He was not in the upper hall, but as my eyes swept its length I remembered a half-burned candle in the chamber opposite. By the time I returned with ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... and unchangeable as the dead. There are not many men in the modern world who do not know that mood, though it was not discovered by the moderns; it was the final and seemingly fixed mood of nearly all the ancients. Only above the black hole of Bethlehem they had seen a star wandering like a lost spark; and it had done what the eternal suns and planets could ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... confusion of the fight, Above six score were captured in their flight; These the victorious Nabob, had immured Within the fortress prison, well secured, Too well, alas! for the contracted den, Known as the "Black Hole of Calcutta" then, But eighteen feet in length by fourteen wide. Could air for twenty men at most provide; And there were four score odd strong, stalwart men, Thrust into that abominable den; Having ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... a pallet where lay a face like a girl's, Young, and pathetic with dying,—a deep black hole in the curls. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... from yonder ant-hill. He creeps this way and that, and anon is seen trespassing in the precincts of the unhealthy court. He crosses its centre, when, click! and in an instant his place knows him no more, and a black hole marks the spot where he met his fate, which is now being duly celebrated in a supplementary ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. It was a bloody smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips, and she had a black hole in her mouth. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... counting-house, and ascended the face of the cliff—then, walked a short distance along the edge, descended a little again, and stopped at a wooden platform built across a deep gully. Here, the miner pulled up a trap-door, and disclosed a perpendicular ladder leading down to a black hole, like the opening of a chimney. "This is the shaft; I will go down first, to catch you in case you tumble; follow me and hold tight;" saying this, our friend squeezed himself through the trap-door, and we went after him as we had ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins |
