He let loose a stream of abuse, like water gushing from a hydrant. A torrent of insults, bad language, and bitchy remarks. His repertoire of threats, stares, and denigratory gestures. Unrepeatable. His breathing became ragged, and he began to bang the table with his fist. He raged at the futility of it all: he was mouthing off about society in general, the unemployed, the republican movement, his first wife. He stood for a few moments, catching his breath.
She looked down.
“Do you have a reservation?”
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, The American Heritage Dictionary
There was a mob of people in the streets to see the procession. The air was charged with menace and noise enough to wake the dead.
It all happened at a tremendous lick.
In an instantaneous explosion of acute sorrow and lawless violence, panic seized the crowd. They all began to shout at one another, people of every rank and station filled with a sudden access of rageful energy, and I was swept away by the undertow. Several policemen batoned their way into the struggling mass and endeavoured to restore order, though they sympathized with us in our affliction. They soon disabled the alarm.
I had to leave that scene. I was ashamed of my fellow creatures, abandoning a city to a conqueror. I wasn’t prepared to go along with that. I strolled about the streets, looking in vain for a face I knew. In an alley off the main street, a gang of boys. A few yards farther on were four more, one dead and the other three so badly savaged I had to finish them.
The city soon recovered from the effects of the explosion, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw a preoccupied face, a worried head, a body out of sync with the mind. The man that I saw, there was no fight left in him.
Sources: New Oxford American Dictionary, Macquarie Dictionary