The faint creaking of a rope aloft caused my heart to thump, and when a loosened edge of canvas slapped the mast in a sudden breath of air, it sounded to me like a burst of thunder.

The fir trees quivered; they gave out slight creaking, crackling noises as the rain came down.

And in a while to Beltane's straining senses came the faint creak of a door, a soft rustle, the swift light tread of feet, and starting forth of his lurking place he stepped forward with yearning arms outstretchedthen paused of a sudden beholding her who stood at gaze, one slender foot advanced and white hands full of roses and lilies, one as fair, as sweet and pure as the fragrant blooms she bore.

My coming had silenced the others, and we waited motionless, the stillness so intense I could hear the lapping of waves against the side, and the slight creak of a rope aloft.

The slow creaking of the spliced oar, swung in its lashing by a half-naked yellow man, his incomprehensible chatter with some fellow boatman hidden in the bows, were sounds lost in a drowsy silence, rhythms lost in a wide inertia.

But the sash had not been raised for years; it stuck; when it yielded to his efforts, it gave a loud creak.

The unrest outside seemed to increase; a loud creaking sounded from the stairs.

He slowly straightened his arms and the iron gave an audible creak.

The Sylph was running smoothly, with the wind almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like a benediction upon the sea.

No echo of a voice came across the water, no slight flap of sail, no distant creak of pulley, or groaning of ropemerely that fleeting vision, seemingly a phantom of imagination, a vision born from sea and cloud.

" The flap-flop of the horse's hoofs died on Winterbottom Road, and no sound came but the wind sighing in old apple-boughs, and from somewhere the melancholy creaking of a swinging shutter.

Crickets were taking up their minor creaking, and there was no other sound.

No, not quite silence, for past his ear the splendid hyacinths drifted with a musical creaking, leaf on leaf, the buoyant bulbs brushing each other.

He could not sleep; he could only lie there listening to all the noises of the ship, the perpetual creaking and rattling, and tramping of footsteps above his head, and tortured by his impatience to be astir again.

Ensnared by superstition, soon and late; As sign and portent, it on us doth wait By fear unmanned, we take our stand alone; The portal creaks, and no one enters,none.

Yet now the first sounds that smote his ears as he opened his eyes were the rhythmic creak of the mine windlass and equally rhythmic, if less tuneful, chant of the men who were working it; "All-ah sa-eed!Ne-bi sa-eed!

" Now is the little hatch-gate slammed with the wind, contrasting its rude sound with the rusty creak of the "invisible" iron fence just set up, but already So loose that it

The rusty creaking of a pump-handle and a spatter of water upon the red-tiled courtyard showed that somebody else was astir, and a few steps farther he beheld a brawny, sandy-haired man gasping wildly under severe self-infliction at the pump.

Suddenly a sharp creak, like that of a rusty spring, broke the silence.

But when the cowshed door swung open with a sharp creaking, he heard a cow begin to bellow.

At the same time he heard Jerry Wood cursing softly in a neighbouring room, and then the telltale creak of bedsprings.

Another minute and she had fairly flown through the hall and reached the door of the garret stairs; she recollected that the latch had a troublesome creak occasionally; indeed, she had noticed it only that very day, as she and Sally Tracy had mounted to their eyrie in the big dormer window of the garret, where safe from all ears they were wont to confide their girlish secrets to each other.

I was about to give another tweak at the fishing-line when an unmistakable creak came from the upper stairs.

There were those who said that she was never seen to look towards that door; and that whenever a noise, as of a rat in the wall, or a blind creaking in the wind, came from that side of the house, Mrs. Billy turned white, and shuddered.

There was also a complex creaking and sighing, a rustling and rattling.