Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“ Again Poppy urged him, with gestures and grimaces, to remain in camp throughout the afternoon—but he refused absolutely; and when the devoted fellow tried to follow him upstream, he drove him back with threats of his dire displeasure.
The sunshine was level from the west and the rocky gorge was flooded with amber twilight when Marlow looked up suddenly and saw the face for the second time. As before, only the face was visible. It shone from the sun-burnished greens and browns of the jungle wall, red-lipped, dark-eyed, alive—as alive as a bird or a flame of fire. ”

“ The white stars went up and down. Great guns thumped occasionally; now and then a high shell whined overhead; now and then the burst of an exploding shell sounded before or behind. It was a quiet night; but to the new battalion it was full of thrills. The sentries never took their eyes from the mysterious region beyond their wire. Every blob of blackness beyond their defenses set their pulses racing and sent their hands to their weapons.
Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie stood shoulder to shoulder on the fire step for hours, staring with all their eyes and listening with all their ears. ”

“ I heard the old man's quick breathing, then a grunt, then a soft thud.
"Come on up, Giddy," he whispered.
I went up the ladder, seeing nothing. I felt the top of the ladder and a floor thick with dust. As I thrust head and shoulders through the hatchway, the breath of dust and cobwebs and dry-rot was so stifling that I held my breath. I felt his hand on my shoulder, then under my arm.
"You've got the whole length of the house here," he whispered. "Mind your head—how you stand up! The old house will hide you, lad, from the devil himself." ”

“ There was a chill in the night air; the sky and world were black with a looming, crowding, menacing blackness; the muffled, swishing slobber of the river suggested strangling pools and drifting horrors; the voice of the stranger sounded flat and distant, as the voice of a dead man might sound. The Colonel shivered, though he was a person of very limited imagination. Soon he heard the dip of a paddle, then the impact of a canoe's bow against the shingle. He saw the stranger, a black shape in the dark, stooping to lift the canoe out of the water. ”

“ The light was stronger, though still gray and thin. It was the light of an unsunlit November day filtered through a small square of snow-drifted glass into a chilly garret. The light alone was enough to drop a man's heart to the depths; but it was not the only thing that depressed Harvey P. Banks. He was anxious, cold, and hungry. He was sickened with disgust of himself and hate of Captain Wigmore. His head ached, his neck and shoulders were sore. To add to all this he could now see the face and eyes of his jailer by the cheerless light. ”

“ The dogs ran ahead in Jim's deep trail. The wind swooped again, nearer this time, spun gleaming clouds in the sunshine and enveloped the girl in an icy blast and veils of stinging snow. She bowed her head and closed her eyes until the suffocating drift had passed.
The wind increased in violence. The sun continued to shine in a clear sky, but it and the landscape were frequently completely veiled from the girl by the flying drift. Sometimes the wind and the hunted snow swirled past her on the right or left, and sometimes it swirled over her, closing her eyes and snatching away her breath. ”