"Thudding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ray tube firmly attached to him, Vye climbed into the first tree. A slim chance—but his only defense against a possible ambush. A wild outward swing brought him, heart-thudding, to the next set of limbs. Then he had a piece of luck, a looped vine tied together a whole group of branches from one ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... through Brownell for three yards, slipping in the mud, panting, grunting to the accompaniment of thudding feet and the swish of wet canvas. Above the players a cloud of steam hovered as they disentangled themselves. Danny darted into the confusion. Benson was on his ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the cheering, rolling steadily toward them over the human ocean, came the deadened throbbing of drums. A far, thin strain of military music rose, was lost, rose again; the double thudding of the drums sounded nearer; the tempest of cheers became terrific. Through it, at intervals, they could catch the clear marching music of the 7th as two platoons of police, sixty strong, arrived, forcing ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... horse's wild snort; another; a shout; the crack of a rifle cutting the silence as a knife cuts a taut string; another crack; an awful, hoarse growl; the furious thudding of horse's hoofs stampeding and growing fainter and fainter; and an appalling series of receding, short, coughing, terrifying, grunting roars. Then silence and utter stillness only, and the cold, calm moon staring ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... the door and went with his oddly light and cat-footed tread down the hill. Just once more he paused, halfway between the headquarters of the East Coast Company's chief engineer and the thudding pile-drivers at the edge ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... same breath and in a jumble of shock and terror she saw Dudley Stackpole emerge into full sight, and standing clear a pace from his doorway return the fire; saw the thudding frantic hoofs of the nigh horse spurn Harve Tatum's body aside—the kick broke his right leg, it turned out—saw Jess Tatum suddenly halt and stagger back as though jerked by an unseen hand; saw him drop his weapon and straighten again, and with both hands ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... one-eyed man bent over their paddles, and very swiftly the long, dark canoe went gliding down the stream, but not any too swiftly, for in an instant they heard a triumphant yell behind them, and then light, thudding feet ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the north-west, chasing diaphanous clouds across the blue zenith. The roofs still shone wet and dazzling, and there were puddles in the street. But he knew the afternoon was going to be a fine one. He took pleasure in this when, a few moments later, his ear caught the thudding of a distant drum. . . . Yes, yes—it was Bank Holiday, and the children would be assembling, up the valley, for the Anniversary Treat of the Wesleyan Sunday School. There would be waggons waiting to convey them up-inland to Squire Tresawna's ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... came at her. Into the rushing of her ears broke thudding sounds. The thing leaped up. A horrible petrifaction suddenly made stone of Carley. Then she saw a gray mantlelike object cast aside to disclose the dark form of a ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... in that cool breeze under the great sycamore tree; drinking that fine old 'home-brewed,' and talking to the sweetest of all women. Far away in the distance is the rumbling of a coach; round the corner it comes into sight, the horses' hoofs thudding on the hard old Roman road! The guard raises his long coaching horn to his lips and blows a stirring call. Someone shakes us from behind! Lo! we open our eyes and—gone is the lovely green country, the shady trees and the coach! ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... then went thudding on in dull, horrid blows. Vainly he tried to read further. He followed every visible word of that paper to discover its date and origin, but those miserable bill-heads frustrated his effort. He felt like dashing his hand through ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... fisherman's bare feet were thudding on the deck, and he stood before the English captain, cap in hand, his little, quick black eyes roaming in all directions, over the wonders of the beautiful white ship, with innocent curiosity. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... replied: "I choose him." So he went, And there was silence in the summer night; Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep. Then, far away, the thudding of the guns. ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... sudden heavy thudding sound, and the Iroquois seemed to jerk sideways slightly. The spaceman's ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... clenched and jaws set—once again came the trampling of feet, the hiss of breath, and the thudding shock of ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds that sprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of the pervasive music of somnolent nature—the sough of the pine at the door, the murmur of insect life, the low, thudding beat of the steam-thresher out of sight hard by, the purring of the cat in the arms of Kitty Tynan as, with fascinated eyes, she listened to a man tell the tale of a life as distant from that which she lived as she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... other end of the room. Fenn had upset one chair and the noise had nearly deafened him. Now chairs seemed to be falling in dozens. Bang! Bang! Crash!! (two that time). And then somebody shot through the window like a harlequin and dashed away across the lawn. Fenn could hear his footsteps thudding on the soft turf. And at the same moment other footsteps made ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... easy chair by his bed-room window, with his favorite pipe bubbling rhythmically between his gleaming white teeth, the Senior Surgeon studied his new "solid gold bed" and his new sage green wall-paper and his new dust-colored rug, to the faint, far-away accompaniment of soft thudding feet, and a girl's laugh, and a child's prattle, and the tink-tink-tinkle of glass,—china,—silver,—all scurrying consciously to the service ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... clambering down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible, while little Weena's head showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... church and was now bouncing fussily against a sunlit window, in its efforts to pass through what seemed to itself clear space, made quite an abnormal noise. His heart beat heavily,—he fancied he could hear it thudding in his breast,—then, all at once, an inflow of energy rushed upon him as though the 'fiery tongues' of which Adam Frost had spoken, were in very truth descending upon him. Maryllia's face! There it was—so winsome, so bright, and proud and provocative in its every feature,—and the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... raindrops struck the pane, then the blurred dazzle of a shower came in a burst of wind, and hid the downs and the reeds that shivered in the marshy places. Siegmund sat in a chilly torpor. He counted the stations. Beneath his stupor his heart was thudding heavily with excitement, surprising him, for his brain ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... his ears, the unmistakable thudding of galloping hoofs on turf. The posse was riding for the bridge full tilt. He picked up his rifle and dodged in among the trees along the trail. Forty yards from the mined stringer he met Molly riding back with ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... straightened himself up and was wiping his brow. The timing of the strokes was very slow. Probably, therefore, the labour itself was fatiguing. Sometimes, too, the axe fell with a different swing, as if other hands grasped it, but always with the same dull thudding ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the common sounds of daily human life one hears in that one land the rattle and clash of arms and the unending thudding tread of marching feet," he said after one such visit. "Two generations of men creatures bred and born and trained to live as parts of a huge death dealing machine have resulted in a monstrous construction. Each man is a part of it and each part's greatest ambition ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... after a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed . . . It was tremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still—in spite of the thudding and banging that went all about ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sunset shone ruddily through the broad window these three sat together hand in hand, with hearts which were too full to speak. Suddenly the soft thudding of tennis balls was heard, and Mrs. Westmacott bounded into view upon the lawn with brandished racket and short skirts fluttering in the breeze. The sight came as a relief to their strained nerves, and they burst all three into a hearty ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove, unless it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the sheep issuing again into sunlight. But slowly that stillness stole into Miltoun's spirit. "Is it like this in the grave?" he thought. "Are the boughs of those trees the dark earth over me? And the sound in them the sound the dead hear when flowers are growing, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stairs; at the bottom of the first double flight were a couple of maids, screaming and white-faced, leaning and pressing against the door, immediately below the one he had just come through himself. The door was plainly barred as well, for it was now thudding and cracking with blows that were being showered upon it from the other side. The maids, it seemed to him, in a panic had locked the door; but that panic might be his salvation. He dashed down the stairs; the maids screamed louder than ever when they saw this man, whom they did ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... still night, and the family could hear other wagons approaching from various directions, the distant whinnying of ponies traveling singly, the barking of the Dutchman's dogs, and the thudding gallop of the nearing cavalry mounts; and when they arrived the same shouts that greeted them welcomed a score of their neighbors and the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates |
