"Inaudible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought she was listening, nerves keyed to sense sounds inaudible to him. Then, as he sat, fascinated, scarcely breathing lest the enchantment break, leaving him alone in the forest with the memory of a dream, a faint aromatic odor seemed to grow in the air; not the close scent of the pines, but ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... became inaudible, As in the mazes of the Mammoth Cave, Fainter and fainter on the listening ear, The low, retreating voices die away. His eyes were closed; a gentle smile of peace Sat on his face. I held his nerveless hand, And bent my ear to catch his latest breath; ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the barbarous iniquity of the Courts of Justice when dealing with their witch prisoners. An expressed malediction, or frequently an almost inaudible mutter, followed by the coincident fulfilment of the imprecation, was accepted eagerly by the judges as sufficient proof (an antecedent one, contrary to the boasted principle of English law at least, which assumes the innocence until the guilt has been proved, of the accused) of the crime ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... extraneous stimulus, be it ever so slight, to suggest an initiative: the crooking of a finger, the whispering of a word, may be sufficient, but it must be something.—Ah! Has the moment come? Has the insane man caught some sound inaudible to the others? He pauses. Yes, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... grandeur of the apparition. In particular, we may say that the advance of civilization, as it is carried forward for ever on the movement continually accelerated of England and France, were it less stealthy and inaudible than it is, would fix, in every stage, the attention of the inattentive and the anxieties of the careless. Like the fabulous music of the spheres, once allowed to break sonorously upon the human ear, it would render us deaf to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... into the lists in answer to the challenge; and now all clamor was hushed. The Sheriff's daughter, a pale, hard-faced girl, with straw-colored hair and mincing ways, announced in inaudible voice the terms of the contest. The heralds repeated them afterwards in stentorian tones; and the rivals wheeled about, the white knights couching their lances from under the Sheriff's box. The others prepared ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... she almost dragged him forward, and introduced him to her guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of bashfulness and hauteur, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost in reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his aspect—which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was extremely slight and thin—his ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret, inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a huge banner with "No Surrender" across it, were walking off the ghastly field. Twelve or fourteen years old at most, they disdained to run. They were singing, singing the National Anthem, though their voices were inaudible through the turmoil. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... clashing cymbals, blaring trumpets and pealing organ, the tremendous vault seemed hardly capacious enough for the deafening combination of sound. As a relief came the funeral march of Chopin, the more subdued strains seeming almost inaudible after the tumult of the moment before. Never surely ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is tenderness between them. Their bodies, indeed, seem to have become overtones that mate in a delicious and inaudible melody. But this melody must be brought closer so that its beauty may be more definitely enjoyed. This melody must be played on instruments and not on ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... silence, the lady, as if she had mustered all her energy to perform a desperate act, said to me, in an almost inaudible voice: ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... partly inaudible in the roar of the artillery, but Maurice caught their significance clearly enough, and it left him dumfounded by astonishment and alarm. What! Marshal MacMahon wounded since early that morning, General Ducrot commanding in his place for the last two ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... with its graphic and horrible details that even Mr. Fitzgerald-Grenville, the well-known member for the Baroness Drummond-Lloyd (whose rotten or at least decomposing borough of Cherbury Minor he faithfully represented in three successive Parliaments), had mumbled out a few half-inaudible apologetic sentences about this state of things being truly deplorable, and about the necessity for meeting such a distressing social crisis by the prompt and vigorous application of that excellent specific and familiar panacea, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... while he stood in the woods, silent and listening, was a peculiar swashing noise, which continued a few seconds, followed by the same space of silence—the intervals being as regular as the ticking of a huge pendulum. Accompanying the sound was another, a soft, almost inaudible flow, such as one hears when standing on the bank of a vast stream ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... away, the two women stood silently following their diminishing outlines into the darkness and listening to the creaking of the saddles and the dull regular thud of the horses' feet upon the soft earth, until the sounds grew inaudible, when they turned to the inner shelter of the veranda. Melicent once more possessed herself of the hammock in which she now reclined fully, and Therese sat near enough beside her to intertwine her fingers between ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... just that. 'When we are paying a dollar a look at eggs, what do you mean by sending me two cracked ones out of twelve? To be sure somebody has been sitting on these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon, and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd give five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old woman's face, for she talks for all ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... system, and involves us not only in new calculations but in a newer phase of things. At any rate it can do no harm, in the present period of excitement, to preach a little moderation, even though our voice should be as inaudible as the chirp of a sparrow on the house-top. The speculative spirit of the age may be checked and controlled, but it cannot be put down, nor would we wish to see it pass away. All great improvement is the fruit of speculation, upon which, indeed, commerce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... It may be said of them as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of Chester, that they are horny-handed sons of toil and worthy of their wage. But one would like to say a little more. Granting that this is praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore accounted an unprofitable servant. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... in all his terrors," and shrank from the encounter. The fierce lightnings of his dreadful eyes seemed to shrivel and paralyze her; even his demoniac cunning and persuasiveness filled her with mortal fear. Her voice shook with a pathetic tremor, became hoarse and almost inaudible; her eyes sank, or wandered wildly; her brow was bathed with the sweat of a secret agony; she might have given way utterly under the paralyzing spell, had not some sudden inspiration of genius or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Swims to the surface of the silk like cream And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold!"— "These delicatest muslins rather seem Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be bold, Though such veiled Chakhi's face in Hafiz' dream."— "These carpets—you walk slow on them like kings, Inaudible like spirits, while your foot Dips deep in velvet roses and such things."— "Even Apollonius might commend this flute:[13] The music, winding through the stops, upsprings To make the player very rich: ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... window, and her answer was inaudible. Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each saw that the face of his ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... with Olga. It was very brief. For barely the fraction of a second her hand lay in Max's. Her greeting was quite inaudible. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... himself. In solitude his melancholy grew more black and sullen. He spent whole days—indeed, it was his sole occupation—in communing with the serpent. A conversation was sustained, in which, as it seemed, the hidden monster bore a part, though unintelligibly to the listeners, and inaudible except in a hiss. Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and poignancy to its opposite. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lies between, say, thirty and many thousand vibrations per second—the cry of the earthquake and the cricket; it is our limitation that renders the voice of the dewdrop and the voice of the planet alike inaudible. We even mistake a measure of noise—like a continuous millwheel or a river, say—for silence, when in reality there is no such thing as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singing and thundering about us," he added, holding up a giant finger ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... outstretched wings of his swooping hawk, but it did not get on fast. With a pathetic clinging to Phebe he seldom let her stay long out of his sight, but followed her about like a child, or sat on the hearth watching her as she went about her house-work. Only by those unconscious sobs and outcries, inaudible to himself, did he betray the grief that was gnawing at his heart. Very often did Phebe put aside her work, and standing before him ask such questions as the following on her swiftly ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... says that changes of the apparent impression of light are proportional not to the changes of the intensity but to these changes divided by the primitive intensity. A similar law is valid for all sensations. A conversation is inaudible in the vicinity of a waterfall. An increase of a load in the hand from nine to ten hectograms makes no great difference in the feeling, whereas an increase from one to two hectograms is easily appreciable. ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... continued the poet, with difficulty, "rung my door bell at night, nor eaten me out of house and home, nor written begging letters—" this phrase was well-nigh inaudible—"nor ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... from the vast herd that now encompassed them on every side came the low purring that in an elephant denotes pleasure. Almost inaudible from one throat, it sounded from these many hundreds like the rumble of distant thunder. And in answer to it there came from Badshah's trunk a low sound, indicative of his pleasure. Then it dawned on Dermot that it was to meet this vast gathering of his kind that the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... ministerial gallery. The most conspicuous persons were two Parsee merchants, dressed in a showy oriental costume, who occupied the first bench in the Speaker's gallery, and who, the previous evening, were admitted behind the throne in the lords. Lord John was nearly inaudible at first, his elocution throughout the speech was inferior, and utterly unworthy of his great name as a speaker. He was listened to with evident partiality, and every period which told at all against the conduct of the war elicited ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Woman's sting are unequal to the task of stopping a Woman's mouth; and as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been found to aver that they prefer the danger of the death-dealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... publications is sufficiently well known. Nor did I relinquish the purpose of concluding these "Tales of my Landlord," which had been so remarkably fortunate; but Death, which steals upon us all with an inaudible foot, cut short the ingenious young man to whose memory I composed that inscription, and erected, at my own charge, that monument which protects his remains, by the side of the river Gander, which he has contributed so much to render immortal, and in a place of his own selection, not ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... floor plates and rested the unconscious man's head and shoulders against his knees as the engine began to rock furiously. Nothing was said for a while; the uproar made by the banging cars would have rendered speech inaudible, but when they had been left behind, the engineer looked ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... with Minnie on his arm, clothed in pure white, emblematic, it struck him, of her pure gentle spirit. Friends were with him, all gaily attired, and very happy, but unaccountably silent. Perhaps it was the noise of the wedding-bells that rendered their voices inaudible. He was struck by the solemnity as well as the pertinacity of these wedding-bells as he entered the church. He was puzzled too, being a Presbyterian, why he was to be married in church, but being a man of liberal mind, he made no ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... was inaudible for the merry group came on at a rapid rate and surrounded them with all the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... woman's step was inaudible to Tom; but the heavy, deliberate waddle of the banker was not. He opened the house-door, and then the parlour-door, without knocking; but when he saw the visitor, he stopped on ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... a silence. She repeated the question. But Graylock's reply was inaudible and she thought he said good-bye instead of ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... you are suffering!" she said, in the same inaudible language. This time he discovered that the sense of what she said was received by his brain through the organ on ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... upon their knees where they stood; and Dr Drummond did little less than order Divine interference; but the prayer that was inaudible was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... into place with one hand and pulling her skirt modestly close with the other, activities leaving her very little to grasp the ladder with. The firemen seemed quite accustomed to this sort of irrationality, and paying no heed to the rush of words—inaudible to us on the street—bursting from her, they coaxed her expertly up onto the roof. Here she stood, statuesquely outlined against the bright sky, berating her succorers, until Mr Dinkman, rounded, bald, and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Mr. Ellerton?" went on Mary, rivalling Dora in composure. And she also added a barely visible and quite inaudible "Hush!" ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... a short and intensely subdued cough, as he turned his lips to a brown ear which seemed to rise out of the grass for the purpose, and spoke something that was inaudible to all save that ear. Instantly hand, lips, and ear withdrew, leaving the trapper in apparently deep repose. A sharp knife, however, had touched his bonds, and he knew that ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... little behind a timid woman Crimson which stained the tops and steeps of snow Errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest Exchanging inaudible banalities He might walk home with her if he would not seem to do so He's the same kind of a man that he was a boy Hollow hilarities which people use to mask their indifference If one must, it ought to be champagne Intent upon some ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... Murfrey, whose eyes were ever on the alert, noticed that Roland gave some injunctions to The Lifter, and he likewise observed the latter lay his finger upon his lips. Turning to the Captain, he muttered a few words in a voice that was inaudible, and the chief turned ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... extinguished the light Then, with almost inaudible step, he walked out of the room into the dark passage; noiselessly he proceeded to unbolt the street-door. Almost at the same moment a ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... the audience, silenced and steadied them in an instant, just as they were on the point of falling into fresh confusion. Every one stretched forward eagerly to hear what he would say. His lips moved; but the few words that fell from them were inaudible, except to the persons who happened to be close by him. Having spoken, he left the table supported by a police agent, who was seen to lead him toward the private door of the court, and, consequently, also toward the prisoners' platform. He stopped, however, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... part formed a group to themselves, and while the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... soliloquy of Brutus. He was resolving whether he would sacrifice his son's life to his fatherland. There was a solemn pause, and now, in the midst of the profound silence, the Duchess Ventadour in a shrill voice, which she believed to be inaudible, said to her servant: 'Do not fail to serve mustard with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... there!' he said, in an almost inaudible tone. He was supported, as before, by his hands resting on the table, and could only bow with his head towards the glass to intimate what he meant. 'Look in ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... that the general attention was fixed upon him, blushed, and said in an almost inaudible voice that he could ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Latter. "That if wars there had been, you'd have driven him to the nearest, I make no doubt at all; though your departed—if I may make so bold—was never the sort to hurt a fly. . . . Though, by God," wound up Mr Latter in an inaudible murmur as he blew the sawdust from the vent-hole, "the man must have had pluck, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... thought of loosening them for service in such a tempest. Her black sides, as they emerged from a wave, glistened and seemed to frown; but the wind howled through her rigging, whistling the thousand notes of a ship; and the hails and cries that escape a Frenchman with so much readiness were inaudible. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the jubilations of their kinsfolk; and although no account of any battle was more beclouded than that of Pultusk which the Emperor sent to Paris, the approbation of the fatherland could not reach Poland until long afterward, and in tones that were low and almost inaudible. It is an old French saying that next to the kingdom of heaven France is the most beautiful land, and every Frenchman believes it. The Emperor himself said that his French soldiers were unfitted for distant expeditions by their yearnings for home. In his mind, therefore, the one essential ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... at any rate, she was not dying now, and she began to start into strength. She sat up all the evening, she walked round the garden, she drove out, she came down to breakfast. The day after that achievement, she came to me sobbing for joy with something inaudible about "his sake," while George was assuring Dermot that there was only one woman ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the woman at the street corner is weeping for her Coffintop, and will not be comforted. We settle down with a rollicking ease into our seats (for we are a bold, devil-may-care race, the C's of Battersea), and an oath is administered to us in a totally inaudible manner by an individual resembling an Army surgeon in his second childhood. We understand, however, that we are to well and truly try the case between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, neither of whom has put in an appearance ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled; but then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, "I tell you I ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... seeped into her consciousness, the expression of her face changed little by little. "Making people happy!" She repeated the phrase as she had formulated the idea again, very softly, with a persistence that would have surprised Mrs. Delancy, could she have caught the inaudible murmur. Presently, the faint rose in the pallor of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper red, and the amber eyes grew radiant, as she lifted the long, curving lashes, and fixed her gaze on her aunt. There was a new animation in her voice as she spoke; there was a new determination in the resolute set ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... advanced thereto in little groups, gazed down into the ravine, and then retired again. When this had continued for some few minutes the sound of hoofs again became audible; but now the hoofs were retiring instead of advancing, and in the space of ten minutes had become inaudible. The creatures had retired to seek a safer ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... expensively decorated, but neither the senator nor any of the other men in the room were looking at anything else except the big thirty-six-inch screen that glowed and danced with color. The network announcer's words were almost inaudible, since the volume had been turned way down, but his voice sounded almost as excited as those from ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he conducted himself. It was now necessary to examine Feemy, and at last she came in, almost carried in Mrs. McKeon's arms, with a thick veil over her face, which, however well it hid her countenance, by no means rendered her sobs inaudible. Two chairs were placed for them by the table, and when they were both seated the book was handed to Feemy; then she had to take her glove from her right hand, and this was so wetted with her tears, and she herself was so weak, that ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... you, sir," he demanded, at last, in a tone far from being inaudible, "point out to a customer a defect in her purchase, and so ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... blossoms covered by a veil of Honiton lace. The bridal bouquet was composed of orange blossoms, white rosebuds, orchids and sprigs of myrtle. The actual ceremony was a very short one, the Prince giving his responses clearly, though the Princess was at times almost inaudible. The whole function had been a brilliant one—the first marriage celebrated in this Chapel since that of Henry I. in 1122—and no touch of mourning was allowed to mar the pageantry of the scene and the bright colours ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... filled with wonder! That host of Danvas then, O Bharata, of frightful visages and hair, set up a loud howl while I was waiting for it. In that fierce battle. I then, with the object of destroying them, fixed on my bow-string the weapon capable of piercing the foes if but his sound was inaudible. Upon this, their shouts ceased. But those Danavas that had sent up that shout were all slain by those shafts of mine blazing as the Sun himself, and capable of striking at the perception of sound alone. And after the shout had ceased at one place, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and octave-leaps, assisted by her peculiar attitudes of strangulation, came out well in this scene. The murmurs concerning the sour privileges to be granted by a Lazzeruola were inaudible. But there has been a witness to the stipulation. The ever-shifting baritono, from behind a pillar, has joined in with an aside phrase here and there. Leonardo discovers that his fealty to Camilla is reviving. He determines to watch over her. Camillo now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... read the Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... allusion to Barbara, Richard's rage boiled up with the swelling heave in a full caldron on a great furnace. Lady Ann turned pale, pale even for her, murmured something inaudible, put her hand to her forehead, and left ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... his mind a hundred times all that he should say to her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well disposed towards him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But what he really said, in a hoarse, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, will you marry me?" He was looking so intently into a little grove of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps the hyacinths heard what he said; at any rate, she did not. But she supposed, from long experience, that he was proposing, and ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... at Amberley was fitted, as a library should be, with a silent door, a door with an inaudible latch and pneumatic hinges. It shut itself behind Straker with a ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Rounds of cheering marked progress of narrative, concluding passages inconveniently rendered inaudible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... here we cannot equal quadrupeds; we have made no notable advance in our circulatory, digestive, renal, or hepatic functions. Even as regards vision and hearing, there are many animals that are more keen-sighted than man, and many that are capable of hearing sounds that to him are inaudible. But there are no animals in whom the sexual instinct is so sensitive, so highly developed, so varied in its manifestations, so constantly alert, so capable of irradiating the highest and remotest parts of the organism. The sexual activities ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... at all," she said, in almost inaudible tones; "last night we flew over the house." He stared at her, his hands trembling, and no longer able to play ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... with no response, when the Medium made an observation which was partly inaudible at the Reporter's seat, the purport of which was that the Spirit communications are sometimes retarded or facilitated by a compliance by the listeners with certain conditions. Another interval of probably ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. But the thing in the hollow was stirring in stiff jerks like a snake with its back broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. Thin, scratchy, inaudible more than a yard away, weary but still cocky, there leaked from the shape in the hollow the sound ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... protested with a choked cry; and Linda's voice, that new, deep, terrible voice, answered him, "Never mind, my dearest—just a minute, that's all! Mother is taking care of you!" And Harriet heard her sister say, in a breath almost inaudible: "Thy will be done—Thy will ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man's bedside, and going up so that he had not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him, just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent a good deal of time trying to discover which were ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She spoke with fire without raising her voice. The man listened round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment Dona Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, "Give me my hand-bag ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... night. He passed again the Cradle, and was bold enough to listen again. Alas! the wail was weaker, the bright lamp of these eyes was fast losing its oil. So he thought; for he could hear only now and then a very inaudible sob, and occasionally a very weak wail, shrill and yet low. He could not stay, for Janet would be coming stealthily with her cruse,—yes, her cruse; for, so far as he could see by the narrow slips, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered onward to Peter's door. There was such a creaking and groaning and rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen. His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which vanished as soon as he had stepped through it; Costigan kicked a valve open; and from various innocent tubes there belched forth into the water of the central lagoon and into the air over it a flood of deadly vapor. As the Nevian turned toward the prisoner there was an almost inaudible hiss and a tiny jet of the frightful, outlawed stuff struck his open gills, just below his huge, conical head. He tensed momentarily, twitched convulsively just once, and fell motionless to the floor. And outside, the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... le Baron?" he enquired in a voice which was naturally loud and strong, but had been reduced by careful training to a tone inaudible at the distance of a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... superior voice, "you can't drag business into religion, sir. Religion is one thing and I respect it,"—titters from the listening angels, "—and business is another thing, and we think, sir, that you are trying to mix the insoluble, and as business men who have our own deep religious convictions—" inaudible guffaws from the angels, "—we feel the sacrilege of asking this blatherskite Adams to speak on any subject in so sacred a place as our consecrated pulpit, sir." Hoarse hoots ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... requires, after all, as much breath support. A soft note which is taken with the "head voice" without being supported by a breath taken from the diaphragm is a helpless sort of thing. It does not carry and is inaudible at any distance, whereas the soft note which does possess the deep breath support is penetrating, concentrated ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain country, rich in all charms of field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green, dotted all over with handsome villas, handsome groves crossed by roads and human traffic, here inaudible, or heard only as a musical hum; and behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached to it ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... motion for some time, and was now winding through the rocky defiles into the long narrow strath which lay below him; but such was the extent of the train that the rear had but just cleared the sea-shore. It was a solemn and impressive spectacle to look down from such a height upon the sable and inaudible procession stealing along and meandering upon the narrow ribbon-like paths that skirted the base of the mountains. The mourners were naturally a silent train even when viewed from a nearer station: ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... glanced back irresolute across the flat, now ankle deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure. He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was lost to ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... human voices crying for aid, but put it down to my imagination, till I saw, to my horror, not a hundred yards from the shore, a French Chasse-mare, or fishing boat, driving straight for the rocks. I shouted, but the noise of the breaking sea rendered it inaudible five yards off against such a wind. Two of her three masts were gone, and by the next flash I could distinguish several men crouching by the bulwarks, and one at the tiller. Then came a sudden lurch and a dead stop, a tremendous sea crashed ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... soon after their departure, with an odd, dishevelled, abstracted look, and muttering something inaudible about not knowing the time. His depression absolutely courted notice, but as a slight cough would at any time reduce him to despair, he obtained no particular observation, except from Sophy, who made much of him, flushed at Genevieve's name, and looked reproachful, that ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny's murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Natural Law. Theology continues to be considered, as it has always been, a thing apart. It remains still a stupendous and splendid construction, but on lines altogether its own. Nor is Theology to be blamed for this. Nature has been long in speaking; even yet its voice is low, sometimes inaudible. Science is the true defaulter, for Theology had to wait patiently for its development. As the highest of the sciences, Theology in the order of evolution should be the last to fall into rank. It is reserved for it to perfect the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... and into the main corridor. Here he met a guard who had just come in from the outside. The man addressed him in the language of the country, and his heart almost stopped beating. How was he to answer? Mumbling something almost inaudible, he hurried on to the ground floor, trembling with fear lest the man should call to him to halt. He was relieved to find, in the end, that his progress was not to be impeded. In another moment he ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... by him to a part of the station where only a porter passed occasionally. The echoings beneath the vaulted roof allowed them to speak without constraint, for their voices were inaudible a yard or two off. Hilliard would not look into her face, lest he should be softened ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... goodness! Redwood and Cossar were coming out of the inaudible darknesses, and Redwood was ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Marcos as she spoke, but the remark must have been addressed to Sarrion, whose reply was inaudible. For some reason the two men seemed ill at ease and tongue-tied. There was a dull glow in Marcos' eyes. Juanita was quite cool and collected and mistress of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... very reverent and stately bow it was too—regarded him for a moment, and, taking a pace backward to the door, called after the retreating turnkey, to whom he addressed some order in a tone to me inaudible. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... tall and robust in stature, but all his life suffered from "scald-head"; for a definition of which ailment we may refer the curious to the dictionary. He possessed, for a chieftain and a fighting man, the disadvantage of a voice so hoarse as to be inaudible at a few paces distant. In default of offspring he maintained at his charges five hundred corsairs, whom he called his children. He died in the year 1580, and with him what has been called the "Grand Period of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... almost as much of matter-of-fact Nature as in Turner's "Swiss Valley." The eye untrained by study of Turner's works finds nothing but a blaze of color with no intelligible object, just as we have, in opera, music of which the words are inaudible;—both are there for practised ear and eye, but in neither case as of primary importance. Turner has even gone farther, and given us pictures of pure color, as in the illustration of Goethe's theory of colors,—a fantasie of the palette. And why shall Turner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the words became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, echoed insult in the Prince's brain. He fled the sounds. Hard by him on his right a road struck towards the palace, and he followed it through the thick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied Douglas, in almost inaudible accents. "It is impossible!" he exclaimed, after a pause, during which the physician waited quietly until his patient should have in some manner recovered his calmness of mind. "It is quite impossible. I have every confidence in your skill, your science; but in this instance, Dr. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the mirror to discover a flushed and dishevelled disorder. She began at once a hasty readjustment of her hair, while Ramage parleyed with inaudible interrogations. "A glass slipped from the table," he explained.... "Non. Fas du tout. Non.... Niente.... Bitte!... Oui, dans la note.... Presently. Presently." That conversation ended and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Polynesians, when thus collected in large numbers. Every robe is rustling, every limb in motion, and an incessant buzzing going on throughout the assembly. The tumult is so great that the voice of the placid old missionary, who now rises, is almost inaudible. Some degree of silence is at length obtained through the exertions of half-a-dozen strapping fellows, in white shirts and no pantaloons. Running in among the settees, they are at great pains to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... his position a little and glances through the window. His eyes are full of irritation, and the girl knows it, though they are turned from her. She gives a suppressed, inaudible sigh; his attitude now brings out the impatient discontent on his mouth and the rigid determination ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... difficult. There had not been much sympathy between them in recent years, yet he recalled his early boyhood on the farm, and it went against him to aim his piece at her. But after all it was his duty, and with an inaudible sigh he pulled the trigger. It was done. No one could have noticed his reluctance. It was quite likely that some of the soldiers that afternoon felt as much compunction as that. But as Sam went over all this long list of tests and passed them successfully, he felt, almost unconsciously, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby |
