For he could also see many men waiting for him with clubs, and he could hear the cracking of whips, and feel the sting of their lashes.

No sound, be it ever so shrill, cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed cracking of whips; you feel the sting of the lash right inside your head; and it affects the brain in the same way as touch affects a sensitive plant, and for the same length of time.

The smell of blood and of warm flesh tickled his nostrils, and his sharp ears could catch the cracking of bones.

General Washburn noticed the sudden cracking of the incrustation before I did, and I was aroused to a sense of my peril by his shout of alarm, and had sufficient presence of mind to fall suddenly backwards at full length upon the sound crust, whence, with my feet and legs extended over the spring, I rolled to a place of safety.

Very often Cedric would stop and listen for the tramp of horses' feet; but there was naught save the occasional cracking of twigs as some wild thing jumped from the roadside frightened, or the stir of the high wind in the giant trees.

Presently there would arise an ominous cracking.

Except for an occasional far-off detonation and the more or less constant and, so to speak, absent-minded cracking of rifles, a mere keeping awake, apparently, and letting the men in the opposite trenches know you are awake, the afternoon was peaceful.

The ear soon gave notice that this meeting had already taken place; for the frightful sound that attended the cracking and rending of the field might have been heard fully a league.