Had they remained within they would have been safe, for a ledge above the house parted the
avalanche so that it was diverted into two paths and swept past the house on either side.
It was necessary to let the French reach Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to surprise the French at dawn, falling like an
avalanche on their heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.
But at this moment his eyes closed involuntarily, to receive more resolutely the terrible
avalanche which was about to fall on his head, and to engulf his life.
I fell under that titular
avalanche a torn and blighted thing.
And as to contending for a reform short of that, it is like asking for a bit of an
avalanche which has already begun to thunder."
From the first stir of the air felt on his cheek the gale seemed to take upon itself the accumulated impetus of an
avalanche. Heavy sprays enveloped the Nan-Shan from stem to stern, and instantly in the midst of her regular rolling she began to jerk and plunge as though she had gone mad with fright.
Amid this tornado, an entire caravan, disorganized, broken, and overthrown, was disappearing beneath an
avalanche of sand.
How much of the fall of the
avalanche is in their anger?
The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an
avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over all obstacles.
The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the
avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow.
His proofs were corrected; and the volume was to come out among the publications of the early spring, when the public might be supposed to have recovered from the
avalanche of Christmas books.
The hounds at the same moment rushed into the grotto like an
avalanche, and the depths of the cavern were filled with their deafening cries.