Whelk

“ I could hardly support my own weight; my legs were trembling with the burden; sweat broke out over my whole body; the rays of light beat down upon me fiercely, overpoweringly....
Desperately, I quickly turned the dial until the two red marks coincided. A great weight, soft and enveloping, seemed to drop upon me. The senses of sight and hearing and feeling all left me. ”

“ The hands, large and pale rather than white, appeared to curve themselves consciously in an effort to look small, pretty, young, and aristocratic, though they were in reality worn by nervousness, as if disappointments and harsh, perhaps terrible, experiences had kept them thin and made them old, though face and body had contrived to remain young. ”

“ Once, at the dusk of the evening, we saw a figure all in white, apparently of more than human stature, flourishing about the road, now throwing up its arms, now leaping to an astonishing height in the air, then turning round several times successively, then raising itself to its full height and gesticulating violently. ”

“ Imagine, then, a meagre old man, about five feet two, whose head was a wedge with the thin side foremost, the nose standing abruptly out, like the cut-water of a man-o’-war gig; a large mouth, forming a bold semicircle, with the convexity downwards, the angles of which were lost in a mass of wrinkles on his withered cheeks ”

“ How small the little figures looked wandering through the trees! She became acutely conscious of the little limbs, the thin veins, the delicate flesh of men and women, which breaks so easily and lets the life escape compared with these great trees and deep waters. A falling branch, a foot that slips, and the earth has crushed them or the water drowned them. ”

“ Now, the Glugs abide in the land of Gosh;
And they work all day for the sake of Splosh.
⁠For Splosh, the First, is the nation's pride,
⁠And King of the Glugs, on his uncle's side.
And they sleep at night, for the sake of rest ”

“ One wretch is represented attempting to climb a tree, his brains being picked out by a bird from above, and his feet being torn off by dogs from beneath; another is seated on the ground, while two men are sawing him in halves, right through the head downwards, the blood all the while flowing in gallons! ”

“ One arm bore a great bundle enclosed in a white sheet—laundry, doubtless—while on the other she carried a plump and complacent infant, crowing as it came, in that fine oblivion of weight which marks the procession of the heaviest babies everywhere. ”

“ I fell on my forearms and head, among thorns, and rose with a torn ear and bleeding face. I had fallen into a precipitous ravine, rocky and thorny, full of a hazy mist which drifted about me in wisps, and with a narrow streamlet from which this mist came meandering down the centre. ”

“ A smothering weight flung itself on me, against which I struggled as hard as I could, shrinking in anticipation from the thirsty plunge of the knives. However, though the weight increased until further struggle was impossible, I was not harmed, and in a few moments found myself, wrists and ankles tied, beside a roaring fire. ”

“ Standing there, as a primitive man might have stood in his flame-guarded camp to face the horrors of the ancient world, I tried to judge by ear the direction of that whine.
It died, and I heard, perhaps in my imagination, a stealthy padding. Then the whining began again, from a new quarter and nearer.
I made myself step toward it. My shadow, leaping grotesquely among the tree trunks, almost frightened me out of my wits. The whine had changed into a crooning wail, such as that with which dogs salute the full moon. It seemed to plead, to promise; and it was coming closer to the clearing. ”

“ On each man's emaciated face, a look of agony, and on the canvas-clad back of one man, a great stain of wet blood from a raw wound caused by the cutting and rubbing of the stone-laden knapsack. Each man wore a fatigue-uniform, filthy beyond description. ”

“ Oh! that the God of heaven might please to tell them how abominable in his eyes are a weight and a weight, a stone and a stone, in the bag of weights!—one weight for themselves when they are under hatches, and another for others when they come to helm. ”

“ Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a mill—a brewing vat—a tanner's yard—a crucible, or a retort. You yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right ”

“ Too often have they felt the cruel snow-stick across their defenceless heads, and the sting of the long-lashed whip cutting a morsel of flesh at each blow, to doubt the quality of their reception, and the howl of pain as they start upon the grand rush is in anticipation of the end. ”

“ That this was beyond all question the case was clear from five shallow depressions in the stone of the table, all shaped like a human form, with a separate place for the head to lie in, and a little bridge to support the neck, each depression being of a different size, so as to fit bodies varying in stature from a full-grown man's to a small child's, and with little holes bored at intervals to carry off fluid. ”

“ Over and over we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing forms and waving legs and arms. When we had done the mass disentangled itself and I was able to raise my head from the shoulder of someone on whom I had fallen, lifting him, or her—which was it?—into a sitting posture alongside of me at the same time, while the others rose about us like wheat-stalks after a storm, and edged shyly off, as well as they might. ”

“ Then he felt himself leaping up with a choke in his lungs, leaping through layers and layers with no surface to reach. He must go up, up from the easy embrace of the phantom and keep on raging, yelling out to himself that something had sent him shooting up. ”

“ Occasionally when her foot slipped and showers of loosened particles rolled down startling birds from their perches in screaming clouds, she could feel the blood pounding in her temples in momentary fright. ”

“ Where Hugli flows,
Where Hugli flows, our English eyes are weary
Our hearts are sometimes very far away.
Needs must, that exile should be long and dreary
How slow the hours, how lagging long the day,
Where Hugli flows.
Yet, years hence, when the steamer’s screw shall beat
The homeward track, for us without return,
Our bitter bread, by custom almost sweet,
We shall look back, perhaps through tears that burn,
Where Hugli flows. ”

“ Numbers came momentarily around the turn of the bluff—women with jars upon their shoulders, old and very feeble men hobbling along on staffs and crutches. Some leaned upon the shoulders of others; a few—the utterly helpless—lay, like heaps of rags, upon litters. ”

“ It seldom if ever speaks, but either utters [276] some extraordinary noise—a prolonged howl that seems to proceed from the bowels of the earth, a piercing, harrowing whine, or a low laugh full of hellish glee, any of which sounds may be taken to express its assent to the favour asked.
It only remains visible for a minute at the most, and then disappears with startling abruptness. ”

“ But, as we have already stated, the measures of weight must be subject to this condition, that they are susceptible of being added: and therefore we cannot take the deflexion of the bough for our measure, till we have ascertained, that which experience alone can teach us, that under the burden of two equal weights, the deflexion will be twice as great as it is with one weight, which is not true, or at least is neither obviously nor necessarily true. ”

“ O rest not yet, ye Wolfings, lest void be your resting-place, And into lands that ye know not the Wolf must turn his face, And ye wander and ye wander till the land in the ocean cease, And your battle bring no safety and your labour no increase. ”

“ Amidst the awful roaring of the impetuous torrents, the noise of human instruments and the bustle of workmen, even the blowing up of the rocks when grand masses trembled in the darkened air, only resembled the insignificant sport of children. ”

“ In hell—in Sheol, which may be understood of the depth of the earth, the very centre of it. Should we dig as deep as we can under ground, and think to hide ourselves there, we should be mistaken; God knows that path which the vulture's eye never saw, and to him the earth is all surface. ”

“ I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs—being flesh in its fulness—ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people—mere people, not men—in black coats? ”

“ Stretch'd on his back, he dash'd against the stones
Their broken bodies, and their crackling bones:
With spouting blood the purple pavement swims,
While the dire glutton grinds the trembling limbs. ”

“ With his thumbnail he pried at the lid, and it came open easily. The box seemed full of darkness, and when he thrust in his hands he felt something crumble, like paper burned to ashes. That was what it was—ashes. ”

“ The hulks—symbolical of that daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach—the swift and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. ”

“ Then the organ tones deepened to the rumblings of approaching thunders—heralds of a climax of catastrophies, while above the rumblings a solitary, piercing voice, which ended in a thrilling, agonizing cry: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” Following this came peal upon peal from the organ; louder and louder; discord and confusion; ending in mighty crashings. The rocking earth; the earthquake; the rent veil—all the tragedy of Cavalry—was presented in awful realism to the minds of the kneeling worshipers. ”

“ Freshly does the lulling breath of night blow in your face, until once more you relapse into snoring oblivion, and your poor neighbour turns angrily in his corner as he begins to be conscious of your weight. ”

“ The Blind Man thought that his companion envied him his fine new whip, so he replied, "Ah, friend, I lost my whip and God has given me a better one. You, too, will doubtless find one as good if fortune favours you, but I am not the man to let any one cheat me out of my whip with fantastic tales and false alarms." ”

“ In the flex of the shoulder, the crook of the outstretched arm, the conquering onward stride, is expressed all the force of that word of the Lord to the first toiler, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." ”

“ We can imagine her, searching the closely packed iron-bound chests which held most of the worldly goods of the traversing pilgrims—those famous chests, the boards of which had been carefully doweled and faithfully put together to resist outward and inward pressure—packed and repacked with constant misgivings and hopeful foresight. ”

“ In the face of the threatened catastrophe they were hardly aware of wet or cold or the weight of objects. They were small women, but in the peril of the moment they carried back-breaking loads that would ordinarily have taxed the muscles of a strong man. ”

“ We had, let us say, always seen heavy bodies sink when their support was taken away; we had also seen, perhaps, that the sinking of heavier bodies forced lighter bodies upwards. But now we see a lever in action, and we are suddenly struck with the fact that a lighter body is lifting another of much greater weight. ”

“ When, at the end of much panic-stricken haste and the spurring of terror he judged it safe to strike a match, he ripped open the bundle, over which so many men and one woman had fought—and in it discovered only tightly packed newspapers and a few small pieces of broken brick—added to give it the plausibility of weight. ”

“ Sometimes the wind would cause her veil for a few moments to rear straight up above her head in a monstrous black column of woe. Sometimes, if she stopped a moment waiting to cross the street, it would whip round the body of any one who happened to be near, like a cord. ”

“ I said, "that we are each supplied with 'one armlet.' What's an armlet?"
"A badge that goes round your arm."
"Of course! How stupid of me! Just like a bracelet goes round one's—no, that won't do. Just like a gimlet goes—no, that doesn't either. I can't think of a simile, but I quite understand. Then we have 'one whistle.' What's that for? To whistle on if I feel lonely?" ”

“ Seeing thirty or forty living skeletons shuffling, leaping as far as their weight of chains and strength would allow, you knew, when one fell, that it was the weakness caused by starvation which had brought him down. ”

“ The action of hemlock usually is to produce a gradual motor paralysis, consciousness being unimpaired, and death being caused by paralysis of respiration, but sometimes hemlock may produce delirium and excitement. ”

“ But from the blunt bows to the weather-scarred stern, on which the name was faintly discernible, the hulk had an air about it, the air of something that has lived; it was eloquent of a varied and interesting past. ”