The never-ending night and silence; the foul air reeking with close, stifling odors; the narrow walls where men move as ghosts with heads alight, their bodies lost in the shadows; the ominous sounds of falling rock thundering through the blackness; and again, when all is still, the slow drop, drop of the ooze, like the tick of a deathwatch.
"The Other Fellow"
F. Hopkinson Smith
Long and eerie was the night, as she gave herself up to all the horrors of a superstitious mind-ghosts, gray, black, and white, flitted around her couch; cats, half human, held her throat; the deathwatch ticked in her ears.
"Marriage"
Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
A short pause followed this word, the larvae of the deathwatch-beetle could be heard digging through the timber-work of the room.
"Andrea Delfin"
Paul Heyse