"Pitch-dark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slow and steady; sky pitch-dark, and I just get a little light by sitting in the bow-window; diabolic clouds over everything: and looking over my kitchen garden yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of weeds gone to seed, the roses in the higher garden putrefied into ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... happens on a pitch-dark night, and your pardner has chosen camp out of earshot, you feel that you have looked close at the end of the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... His Aunt Sophia also embraced him. The Dean shook him warmly by the hand, and talked eloquent patriotism. Doggie already felt a hero. He left the house in a glow, but the drive home in the two-seater was cold and the pitch-dark night presaged other nights of mercilessness in the future; and when Doggie sat alone by his fire, sipping the hot milk which Peddle presented him on a silver tray, the doubts and fears of the morning racked him again. An ignoble ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... we are now. Can you see the 'air-pin turn at the bottom of this 'ill, with a ditch, beyond it? Well, we takes that turn in pitch-dark shadow with all four wheels in the air, an' you'd 'a thought we was a blinkin' airplane a doin' stunts. But 'e's a hexpert, 'e is, an' we 'olds the road. From there on we goes in one 'oly murderin' streak to a point about 'alf-way ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... till pitch-dark night, And then have something left to say; But, Mary, am I wrong or right, Or, do ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the East Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been once round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... There is not a single light on it from one end to the other. It creeps in like a great snake. There is nobody to tell you whether this is your train or not, but you take a chance and climb into a compartment which is pitch-dark. ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... crept across the marquee towards the farther corner where the stores were kept. Raymonde, as leader, went first, with her body-guard in close attendance behind her. Very, very gently she drew back the curtains and entered the larder. It was pitch-dark in here, and she began to grope her way along the wall. Then she stopped, for in front of her she fancied she heard breathing. She listened—all was silent. She started again, intending to go to the far side of the table. She put ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... the old sailor; "but, you see, I'm afraid. There was some fierce fighting over yonder in the pitch-dark, where the lights waren't showing. Sticks was a-going awful. If my poor boy got one o' they cracks on his head and went beneath, there was plenty o' water to wash him out o' the pool ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... and the moment I was safely up I undid my end and dropped it clear to the ground. They found it dangling all right when out they rushed together. Of course I'd picked the right ball in the way of nights; it was bone-dry as well as pitch-dark, and in five minutes I was helping the rest of the hotel to search for impossible footprints on the gravel, and to stamp out any there might ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... recoil from compulsory immersion which has no connection whatever with cowardice; and they will understand the amount of resolution that it required in Peterkin to allow himself to be dragged down to a depth of ten feet, and then, through a narrow tunnel, into an almost pitch-dark cavern. But there was no alternative. The pirates had already caught sight of us, and were now within a short distance ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... who roused up first, to find all pitch-dark around him. Bringing out a match, he lit the candle ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... a pitch-dark night, one of them was rammed by a British boat and nearly cut in two. Was there a panic? Not at all. As she settled in the water, they got out their boats and life-rafts, the officers and a few selected men stayed on board, and the rest pulled ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... The room is pitch-dark always, and it is full of tables and tomes. The tables are waiting-room tables and the tomes are as Mr. ASQUITH has described them. It is divided into two by a swing-door. One part is the female Private Secretary part, the other is the male Private Secretary part, and it is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... stood directly in the path of the shambling figure. It came on unheeding, with glazed eyes and spent senses, and bumped into the drover as if the hour had been pitch-dark midnight instead of a summer afternoon. Stobart caught it before it fell, and laid the limp body down very gently and looked into the man's face. He uttered an exclamation of amazement. It was Patrick Dorrity, a man whom he had seen only a few months ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... Iroquois; and woe betide the warrior who showed his head or dared to cross the open. All day the warriors kept up their cross fire. Thirteen Algonquins had perished, and the French were only waiting a chance to abandon the voyage. Luckily, that night was pitch-dark. The Algonquin leader blew a long low call through his birch trumpet. All hands rallied and rushed for the boats to cross the river. All the Frenchmen's baggage had been lost. Of the white adventurers every soul turned ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... It will be pitch-dark in less than an hour. We can see her plainly enough with the open sea beyond her, but like as not they can't see us, lying close up here under the land. The chances are that they won't see us at all, and then we can run out in the darkness; and I suppose you will have no difficulty in avoiding ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... all dark to me—pitch-dark. I returned to the smoking-room, lighted a cigar, sat fumbling at the new situation. I was in no worse plight than before—what did it matter who was attacking me? In the circumstances, a novice ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... to-day how men kill badgers, and maybe that's wrong. But look here, sir—I've taught him some things besides; the ways of birds and beasts, and their calls; how to tell the hour by sun and stars; how to know an ash from a beech, of a pitch-dark night, by the sound of the wind in their tops; what herbs will cure disease and where to seek them; why some birds hop and others run. Sirs, I come of an old race that has outlived books and pictures and meeting-houses: you belong to a new ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... It is pitch-dark when I am called, and still dark when we make a start by the light of lanterns. After a little a curious sound is heard across the plain. The clang becomes louder, coming nearer to us, and tall, dark ghosts pass by with ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the slightest sound thrilled him from head to foot. At length, all was still as death in the wood; and the world seemed as if it never would wake again. The Child bent forward to see whether it were as dark abroad as in the cave, but he saw nothing save the pitch-dark night, who had wrapped everything in her thick veil. Yet as he looked upwards his eyes met the friendly glance of two or three stars, and this was a most joyful surprise to him, for he felt himself no longer so entirely alone. The stars ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... had beheld, the fearful rattling and roaring of thunder over the great unsheltered plain before us—the hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment—the forked lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped together near the spot where we had halted—the furze-cutter pointed to them with his bill-hook, and told us that ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... she stood in the stern of the ship, in a pitch-dark, rather blowy night, feeling the motion of the sea, and watching the small, rather desolate little lights that twinkled on the shores of England, as on the shores of nowhere, watched them sinking smaller and smaller on the profound and living darkness, she felt her soul ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... friends on the Wolf, and feared that whatever might happen to us, they would never be free. For ourselves, too, the prospect was not a very pleasing one. The whole ship was smothered in coal-dust, the saloon was almost pitch-dark, as awnings had been hung over all the ports, the atmosphere was stifling, the cabins we were to occupy were still littered with the belongings of their former occupants, and the outlook was certainly very dreary. To make things worse a thick drizzle came on, converting ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... and narrow—up on the fifth floor of one of the huge tenement houses in the Rue Jolivet in the Montmartre quarter of Paris. A narrow stone passage led to it—pitch-dark at all times, but dirty, and evil-smelling when the concierge—a free citizen of the new democracy— took a week's holiday from his work in order to spend whole afternoons either at the wineshop round the corner, or on the Place du Carrousel ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the officer's voice - he knows it well - but comforted by his assurance ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... pitch-dark, and for the moment he stood still, not knowing in what direction to move next. All ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... hatch, and paused to turn the slide of his lantern. The shaft of light fell down the companion as into a pitch-dark well. He could feel his heart thumping against his ribs as he began the descent, and jumping with every creak of the rotten boards, while always behind his fright lurked a sickening sense of the guilty foolishness of ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... when the air became intensely hot and oppressive. Day by day black thunder-clouds gathered on the horizon. They crested the mountains in three directions, at times appearing to repel each other, at others marching fiercely on to conflict, when, the zenith becoming pitch-dark, they flung out long spears of lightning and exploded in overwhelming thunder. Very terrible were these perpetual storms. With the first peal the church-bells along the valley began solemnly to toll. It mattered not whether by night or day, the faithful bellringer was at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... of the hill there was no paving, and mud lay thick. Indescribable the confusion of this toilers' settlement—houses and workshops tumbled together as if by chance, the ways climbing and winding into all manner of pitch-dark recesses, where eats prowled stealthily. In one spot silence and not a hint of life; in another, children noisily at play amid piles of old metal or miscellaneous rubbish. From the labyrinth which was so familiar to her, Eve issued of a sudden on to a sort of terrace, where the air blew shrewdly: ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... third cellar, a tremendous, pitch-dark place, something extraordinary and horrible manifested itself. I had stationed Miss Hisgins in the center of the place, with her father and Parsket holding the background as before. When all was ready and just as ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... Pirmasens, and was made blissful by the thought that he could hold his court in the tobacco-reeking guard-room, who celebrated the greatest triumph of his reign when he had his entire grenadier regiment manoeuvre in the pitch-dark drill-hall without the least disorder occurring in the ranks, he is a real Rococo figure, for by his mad fancies he humorously destroyed the long pigtail appended ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various |
