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More "Coiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is broad daylight, and the men set to work to coil up preparatory to washing decks—not that this would seem very necessary. Certainly there is no hose wanted this morning, and a general kind of tidying up and coiling down ropes is more ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... pioneers. Here is his own simple record of the way he got to the hearts of the Levy: "How they enjoy the palaver in which I tell them that 'they are the eyes to the body of the snake which is crawling up the bush-path from the coast, and coiling for its spring! The eyes are hungry, but they will soon have meat; and the main body of white men, armed with the best of weapons, will help them win the day, and get their country back again, to enjoy ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... scratching Latin proverbs and texts of Scripture with his knife on the roof and walls of his fortalice, which were of sandstone. As the cave was dry, and filled with clean straw and withered fern, 'it made,' as he said, coiling himself up with an air of snugness and comfort which contrasted strangely with his situation, 'unless when the wind was due north, a very passable gite for an old soldier.' Neither, as he observed, was he without sentries for the purpose of reconnoitring. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... speak and give thee counsel, night shall give thee victory." After this Themistokles dreamed a dream. He thought that a snake was coiling itself upon his belly and crawling up towards his throat. As soon as it reached his throat, it became an eagle and flapped its wings, lifted him up, and carried him a long distance, until he saw a golden herald's staff. The eagle set him down upon this ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... sentence in Italian. The soft tongue sent it like a coiling serpent through Wilfrid's veins. In English or in German it would not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... powerful magnet can be produced by coiling a wire round a bar of soft iron, and attaching its extremities to the poles of a galvanic battery, when it will be found that its strength will be proportioned to the strength of the current and the turns of the coil. This is especially the case when the bar ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... tiny ship. Its landing-rockets spouted white-hot flame and fumes more thick and coiling than even the smoke of the bombs. The little ship surged momentarily toward the racing ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... was the prelude; then, with ever-increasing force, down came the rain in torrents, smearing out the fog from the atmosphere, as a painter, with a sponge, might wipe a color from his canvas. Long tails of yellow vapor, twining—twining—but always coiling downward, floated like snakes about them; and the oily waters of the Thames became pock-marked in the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... exactly what he craved, and he ate it rapidly in a curious mounting excitement. With the coffee he fingered the diminutive glass of golden brandy and a long dark roll of oily tobacco. He lighted this carefully and flooded his head with the coiling bluish smoke. Rosalie was smoking a cigarette—a habit in women which he noisily denounced. She extinguished it in an ash tray, but his anger lingered, an unreasoning exasperation that constricted his throat. Sharply ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... now the Ministry of Justice, where a liberal statesman has just drawn up the bill of civil marriage; and that in the convent of the Trinitarians a Spanish Rationalist, the Minister of Fomento, is laboring to secularize education in the Peninsula. There is much coiling and hissing, but the fangs of the ser-pent are much less prompt and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane;—a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged Perennially—beneath whose sable roof Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... flying, And thick the life blood's reek ascends of the downfallen and the dying. Clandonuil, still my darling theme, is the prime of every clan, How oft the heady war in, has it chased where thousands ran. O ready, bold, and venom full, these native warriors brave, Like adders coiling on the hill, they dart with stinging glaive; Nor wants their course the speed, the force, —nor wants their gallant stature, This of the rock, that of the flock that skim along the water, Like whistle ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... senses, his hour having come. And he quickly placed that insect on his neck. And as the king was smiling, Takshaka, who had (in the form of that insect) come out of the fruit that had been offered to the king, coiled himself round the neck of the monarch. And quickly coiling round the king's neck and uttering a tremendous roar, Takshaka, that lord of snakes, bit ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... beaten, not into mere creamy foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast, which hang in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave; and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white, and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... the Barracouta as she jogged smoothly over the starlit sea toward Tarpaulin Island. By the dim light of two lanterns, Jim, Throppy, Budge, and Filippo were busy baiting the trawls with herring and coiling them into the tubs in the standing-room. Percy had withdrawn from his companions and lay across the heel of the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... endeavored to pass the yawning gorges, bottomless swamps, and dense dark forests that lay between him and the snow-covered peaks of the Cordilleras. Entangled vines and trees of a luxuriant tropical vegetation, huge boas coiling in the branches, ready to spring upon their prey, screaming parrots, chattering and grimacing monkeys, mosquitoes, alligators, prowling savages,—amid such scenes as these he and his band had once more confronted famine and death in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... place of stay. But how much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders—not always very wise—than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. And Wick itself had in those days a note of originality. It may have still, but I misdoubt it much. The old minister of Keiss ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand, Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam, We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned. Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam Breaks or stays the strength of waters till they pass our bounds of dream. Where the waste Land's End leans westward, all the seas it watches roll Find their ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... jars glow against the dark, Dark green, dusk red, and, like a coiling snake, Writhing eternally in smoky gyres, Great ropes of gorgeous vapor twist and turn Within them. So the Eastern fisherman Saw the swart genie rise when the lead seal, Scribbled with charms, was lifted from the jar; And — well, how went ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... his shoulders, not thinking the matter worth further argument, and at that moment the Bee woke up shivering, drew the red snake from her head-dress and coiling it about her throat wrapped herself again in the ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... of a 'goaded bull the German attempted to fling forward. But men-at-arms, in steel and leather, who had come up quietly behind him, seized him now. Impotent in their coiling arms, he was borne away to his doom, that thereby he might complete the reparation of his hideous offence, and deliver Sapphira from the bondage of a wedlock which Charles of Burgundy had never intended her ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... from Beaulieu. It was a forest of magnolia, willow, and cypress, and of oaks, from which hung great solemn festoons of moss. A deep still bayou cut across it, and here and there were pools of stagnant water, in which coiling black forms swam. ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mighty cheer went up from the crowd and everybody was talking at once. While over beside the big steer the cowboy mounted his pony and coiling his rope as he rode, joined the group of riders who lounged in their saddles and ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... quiet, innocent, and fresh in the depth of the wood, at the edge of the hollow—and the outer heat penetrated hither only by an infinite coiling as of a scaly serpent impotent at last and deprived ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... Laocoon's torture dignifying pain— A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending:—Vain The struggle: vain against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... and unappeased famine, and unsatisfied hope. So you have, on the one side, the winds of prosperity and health, on the other, of ruin and sickness. Understand that, once, deeply,—any who have ever known the weariness of vain desires, the pitiful, unconquerable, coiling and recoiling famine and thirst of heart,—and you will know what was in the sound of the Harpy Celaeno's shriek from her rock; and why, in the seventh circle of the "Inferno," the Harpies make their nests in the warped branches of the trees that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... fastened as it progressed to the one already made by passing the splint wrapping of the wisp each time it was wound around the latter through some strands of the contiguous inner coil, with the aid of a bodkin. (See Fig. 506.) The bottom was rounded upward and the sides were made by coiling the wisp higher and higher, first outward, to produce the bulge of the vessel, then inward, to form the tapering upper part and neck, into which, the two little twigs or splint loop-eyes were firmly woven. ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... fighting-tops of battleships in the adjacent dockyard poise above the stone coping of the wall, there was a track laid down in a circle of a quarter of a mile. Switches linked it up with other lengths of track, a straight stretch down to a muddy cape of the Medway estuary, and a string of curves and loops coiling among the stone and iron factory sheds. The strange thing about it was that it was single—just one line of rail on sleepers tamped into the unstable ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... old Bridget there? We have a hundred acres of good land, And sit beside each other at the fire, The wise priest of our parish to our right, And you and our dear son to left of us. To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour For bidding Fate ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire (Little Blue Book#335) • W.B. Yeats
... jasmine, pansies, and verbenas, among which the stocks held open their fresh plump purses, of a pink as fragrant and as faded as old Spanish leather, while on the gravel-path a long watering-pipe, painted green, coiling across the ground, poured, where its holes were, over the flowers whose perfume those holes inhaled, a vertical and prismatic fan of infinitesimal, rainbow-coloured drops. Suddenly I stood still, unable to move, as happens when something appears that ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... garden lay in his path, and from a line supported by a single pole depended the homely linen of the cottager. To tear these garments from the line was the work of a moment (although it represented the whole week's washing), and hastily coiling the rope dexterously in his hand, he sped onward. Already panting with exertion and excitement, a few roods farther he was confronted with a spectacle that left ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... lee of the boulder on which the party now stood. A third time was heard the voice of Francois uttering one of his customary "hurrahs." The rope was now dragged up, and made ready for further use. Basil again took hold of it; and, after coiling it as before, succeeded in throwing the noose over the third rock, where it settled and held fast. The other end was tied as before, and all passed safely to the new station. Here, however, their labour ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... bedtime that one child, at least, used to wait for. We have seen in the clematis how its sensitive leafstalks hook themselves over any support they rub against; but the grapevine has gone a step farther, and by discarding an occasional flower cluster and prolonging the flower stalk into a coiling, forking tendril it moors itself to the thicket. We know that all tendrils are either transformed leaves, as in the case of the pea vine, where each branch of its tendril represents a modified leaflet; or they are transformed flower stalks or other organs. Occasionally the tendril of a grapevine ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... man of being washed overboard that he actually fastened one end of a small line to his waistbands, and coiling the rest about him, made use of it as occasion required. When engaged outside, he unwound the cord, and secured one end to a ringbolt in the deck; so that if a chance sea washed him off his feet, it ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... their several relations to it. It never once loses sight of their bearings upon each other—as the volition moves through every part of the body of a snake at the same moment, uncoiling some of its involute rings at the very instant it is coiling others. This faculty is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain couples or groups ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... beyond my skill. If I might be allowed to hazard a supposition, I should imagine that those filmy threads, when first shot, might be entangled in the rising dew, and so drawn up, spiders and all, by a brisk evaporation into the region where clouds are formed: and if the spiders have a power of coiling and thickening their webs in the air, as Dr. Lister says they have [see his Letters to Mr. Ray], then, when they were become heavier than the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... camp, with such reports as could be obtained. We have read Eastern tales of travelers, when accident had discovered them in closest proximity to the deadly cobra de capello, the breathless horror with which they contemplated its motions, and saw it slowly coiling itself upon their limbs, or upon a table at their bedsides, and knowing that a single motion on the part of the imperilled person would be but to invite certain death, the vigilance and eager solicitude, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... before the glass, while Bennet's dexterous fingers unbraided the silky hair and brushed it before coiling it up for the night. Looking at the face reflected in the glass, she perceived that it was not quite so tranquil as usual, and was irritated at finding that Mrs. Tell's words had disturbed her. Why was she disturbed? Her vanity had taken a chill, ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... those ringlets! Ev'ry dainty clasp That shines like twisted sunlight in my eye Is but the coiling of the jewelled asp That smiles ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... the sun, and would come all right. He resolved to spend the night in a tree near his fire for fear of wild beasts, and selected a fine branching cedar for his dormitory. Laying his gun securely in one of the forks, and coiling himself up as snugly as possible, where four boughs radiated from the trunk, about twenty feet from the ground, he settled himself to sleep as in an arm-chair, with the great hushing silence of the forest around him. Unusual as his circumstances were, he was ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... and scratch As I swallow it down; And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, Coiling and twisting in my belly. His snortings will rise to my head, And I shall be hot, and laugh, Forgetting that I ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... desires are fixed upon the highest of all objects, upon the god Shiva himself, and how, since Love is dead, she sees no way to win him except by ascetic religion. The youth tries to dissuade Parvati by recounting all the dreadful legends that are current about Shiva: how he wears a coiling snake on his wrist, a bloody elephant-hide upon his back, how he dwells in a graveyard, how he rides upon an undignified bull, how poor he is and of unknown birth. Parvati's anger is awakened by this recital. She frowns and her lip quivers as she ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... ain't the first time," said Mrs. Heeny, coiling the pearls in her big palm. "It's a pity too: they're such beauties. But you'll get others," she added, as the ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the starboard side of the top boat deck; the time about 12.20. We watched the crew at work on the lifeboats, numbers 9, 11, 13, 15, some inside arranging the oars, some coiling ropes on the deck,—the ropes which ran through the pulleys to lower to the sea,—others with cranks fitted to the rocking arms of the davits. As we watched, the cranks were turned, the davits swung outwards until the boats hung clear of the edge of the deck. ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... very little of what followed. There are vague pictures of blue moss and twisted trees, of coiling fog that wrapped itself about me, trying futilely to hold me back. And always there was the sense of a dark and nameless horror just beyond vision, hidden from me—though I was not hidden ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... crumbling boundary, 85 Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 90 In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the pedestal of the statue was seen to become slightly blurred, as though an intervening mist were rising from the ground. This slowly developed into a visible cloud, coiling hither and thither, and constantly changing shape. The professor half rose, and held his glasses with one hand further forward on the ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... in the sleekly pliant buckskins, was lean and supple. As he twisted, stretching an arm to draw out the crumpled folds, the lines of his long back and powerful shoulders showed the sinuous grace of a cat. He relaxed into easeful full length, propped on an elbow, his red hair coiling against his neck. Susan stole a stealthy glance at him. As if she had spoken, he instantly raised his head and looked into ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the harbor and let go anchor. Jonadab crawled into the cabin to get some terbacker, and I was for'ard coiling the throat halyard. All at once I heard oars rattling, and I turned my head; what I see made me let out a ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... himself looking into an empty hall. Half-way down a pair of curtains stirred slightly and parted suddenly, revealing a narrower passage which led to the door of the kitchen. The curtains streamed horizontally, twisting and coiling like snakes. Barrant stepped quickly inside and closed the door. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Hell come from? I will tell you; from that fellow in the dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir from the wild beasts. Yes, I tell you he got it from the wild beasts, from the glittering eye of the serpent, from the coiling, twisting snakes with their fangs mouths; and it came from the bark, growl and howl of wild beasts; it was born of a laugh of the hyena and got it from the depraved chatter of malicious apes. And I despise it with every drop of my blood and defy it. If there is any God ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Henry paused a moment at its crest, and looked back again. The aspect of the fire was more frightful than ever. The flames leaped higher than the tops of the tallest trees, and thrust out long red twining arms, like coiling serpents. Beneath was the solid red bank of the conflagration, preceded by showers of ashes and smoke and sparks. The roar increased and was like that of many great guns ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... moodily, and as if in great perplexity, coiling the rope as he spoke. "I don't know. There's some blame thing or other close to us, I'll bet a hat. I don't know the name of it, but there's a big Bird in the air, just out of sight som'eres, and," he suddenly exclaimed, smacking his knee and ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Behold, it glowed in the dusk of the chamber as a live ember glows among the ashes of the hearth. Red it glowed and green, and white, and livid blue, and its shape, as it lay upon her hand, was the shape of a coiling snake, cut, as it were, in ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... art striving, as fearful as thou, and as strong, Who like thee in his wars is victorious, who all of thy feats can perform, As brave, and as great, and as glorious, as tireless as thou in a storm, Then, in shape of an eel round thee coiling, thy feet at the Ford I will bind, And thou, in such contest when toiling, a battle unequal ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Along the summit of these furrows are produced numerous, small, pedicelled tubercles, quite similar to those of some species of worms or caterpillars; and these small tufts, in connection with the brownish-green color and peculiar coiling of the pods, make the resemblance nearly perfect, especially if seen from a short distance. The seeds are large, oblong, flattened at the ends, and of a yellowish color. A well-developed fruit will measure about three-eighths of an inch in diameter; and, when uncoiled, ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... tender nestlings, over which the mother bird spread her wings. Pitifully did the little ones cheep as the snake swallowed them all, and pitifully cried the mother as she fluttered over her nestlings. But of her, too, did the snake lay hold, coiling himself round her and crushing her life out. Then did the god who sent this sign show us that a sign from the gods in truth it was, for he turned the snake into stone. And Chalcas, our soothsayer, told us then the meaning of the sign. 'Nine years,' said he—for nine birds did ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... and nearer his quarry he saw the rope coil up, yet it looked to be coiling over nothing but air. One end of the lasso was made fast to a ring in the saddle, and when the rope was almost wound up and the horse began to pull away and snort with fear, Jim dismounted. Holding the reins of the bridle in one hand, he followed the ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... said the soldier, coiling it in his hand and then throwing it towards the barque. But the coil fell short of the mark, and another minute's ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... tape had wound round and round his legs, his arms, his neck. It lay in a curling, coiling mat, like a serpent's head, upon his throat, where his hands clutched the ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... these convincingly. After a little sojourn in that land you will believe them on their own account. It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the tradition ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... will need one another.' But then, suddenly, between my upward eyes and the two forms they had beheld, there rose from the earth, obscuring the skies, a vague, dusky vapour, undulous, and coiling like a vast serpent,—nothing, indeed, of its shape and figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly than I could have drawn breath, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kept the river two or three hundred yards on his left. He never failed to search the plains on either side, but chiefly in the south, with the eager, intent gaze that missed nothing. But the lonesome gray land, cut by the coiling yellow river, still rolled before him, and its desolation and chill struck to his heart. It was the depth of the Texan winter, and, at times, icy gusts, born in far mountains, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the trail, while Fairchild went to his work. And he sang as he dragged at the heavy hose, pulling it out of the shaft and coiling it at the entrance to the tunnel, as he put skids under the engines, and moved them, inch by inch, to the outer air. Work was before him, work which was progressing toward a goal that he had determined to seek, in spite of all obstacles. The mysterious offer which ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... crab-pots, came round the northern headland and entered the little bay. The elderly fisherman who was rowing rested on his oars and sat contemplating the crab-pots in the stem. A younger man, clad in a jersey and sea boots, was busy coiling down something in the bows. "How about this spot," he said presently, looking up over his shoulder, "for the first one?" The rower fumbled about inside his tattered jacket, produced something that glistened in the sunlight, and screwed ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... walking-stick, split it at the end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his hand went out into the heath. Clym had by this time lit a small fire, and despatched Susan Nunsuch for a frying-pan. Before she had returned Sam came in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in the cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... blood-red disk, was slipping into the deepening haze, and on either side of the river the city was darkening into dusk. All along the shore lights were pricking out of the twilight and sending wavering shafts down into the water. The coiling smoke from furnace chimneys lay level and almost motionless in the still air; sometimes it was shot with sparks, or showed, on its bellying black curves, red gleams from ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... linear ornamentation of its dress, record of the thoughts intended to be conveyed by the spotted aegis and falling chiton of Athena, eighteen hundred years before. Greek and Venetian alike, in their noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind and congealed hail in heaven—saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed softly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, ruling these, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, which leads the children of men to all knowledge, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... black snake lay in coil On the hot sand, a crow with sidelong eye Watched from a dead bough. All his Indian lore Of evil blending with a convert's faith In the supernal terrors of the Book, He saw the Tempter in the coiling snake And ominous, black-winged bird; and all the while The low rebuking of the distant waves Stole in upon him like the voice of God Among the trees of Eden. Girding up His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he thrust The base thought ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in the passage. In uttermost terror he opened the book and ran over the lines, and straightway the fiend appeared—not seraph-like as when he appeared formerly, but dark, hideous, and gigantic, with hissing snakes coiling around his brows. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... than eight varieties of it,—the most common being the dark gray, speckled with black—precisely the color that enables the creature to hide itself among the protruding roots of the trees, by simply coiling about them, and concealing its triangular head. Sometimes the snake is a clear bright yellow: then it is difficult to distinguish it from the bunch of bananas among which it conceals itself. Or the creature may be a dark yellow,—or a yellowish brown,—or the color of wine-lees, speckled pink ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... for more assaults on it. The nearest Rogans had leaped for him. Slimy arms were coiling around him, while the loathsome sucker-disks tore at his unprotected ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... namely Nepenthes, which is ranked by Mohl (p. 41) amongst tendril-bearers; and I hear from Dr. Hooker that most of the species climb well at Kew. This is effected by the stalk or midrib between the leaf and the pitcher coiling round any support. The twisted part becomes thicker; but I observed in Mr. Veitch's hothouse that the stalk often takes a turn when not in contact with any object, and that this twisted part is likewise thickened. Two vigorous young plants of N. laevis and N. distillatoria, in ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... to end in a human conflagration. A small fortune went up in gigantic pin-wheels; flower-pots that sent up amazing blossoms in all the hues of the rainbow; rockets that burst in mid-air and let fall a shower of coiling snakes, which, in their turn, exploded into a myriad stars; Roman candles that sometimes went off at the wrong end and caused a wild scattering of the audience in their immediate vicinity; and "set-pieces" that were the epitome of this school ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... horrors. Bowse observed the interest she took in all that was going forward, and, like a true sailor, felt as much gratified as if she was his own daughter, and under his especial protection. Jack, the cabin-boy, was coiling away a rope near him, and beckoning to him, he sent him down for a comfortable chair, which, on its appearance, he ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... social life, with natural impulses, cultivated worldly interests, moral and religious sentiments, all on the side of virtue. Crime here is not social. If it appear at all, it is segregated; and, as the burning taper expires when placed at the centre of the spirit lamp's coiling sheet of flame, so vice and crime cannot thrive in the genial ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... -r only the older form -"id:P"; the Latin has, so far as we know, only a single -s, but a double sign for -k (kappa -"id:k" and koppa -"id:q") and of the -r almost solely the more recent form -"id:R". The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds like the coiling of a snake; the more recent employs parallel broken-off lines from right to left: the Latin writing, as far as our monuments reach back, exhibits only the latter form of parallel lines, which originally perhaps may have run at pleasure from left ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... seemed to be so numerous that they could afford to leave plenty of them behind, probably having selected only the very best. We were not so particular, but ate many of those that they had rejected, and found them very good. About half a mile further we came close on a blackfellow who was coiling by a camp fire, whilst his gin and piccaninny were yabbering alongside. We stopped for a short time to take out some of the pistols that were on the horse, and that they might see us before we were so near as to frighten them. Just after we stopped, the black got up to stretch ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... his limbs as he swam; he felt himself slowly sinking, as if drawn downward by an invisible hand. He opened his eyes. The waves lapped musically above his head; a tawny glory was all about him, a luminous expanse in which he saw strangely formed creatures moving, darting, rising, falling, coiling, uncoiling. ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... last she said, 'It is your life or his. I will spare him on condition that you sacrifice your own life.' Sister Maddelena accepted the terms joyfully, wrote a last farewell to Michele, fastened the note to the rope, and with her own hands cut the rope and saw it fall coiling down to the valley bed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... mentions in his 'Autobiography' (volume i.) that he was led to take up the subject of climbing plants by reading Dr. Gray's paper, "Note on the Coiling of the Tendrils of Plants." ('Proc. Amer. Acad. of Arts and Sciences,' 1858.) This essay seems to have been read in 1862, but I am only able to guess at the date of the letter in which he asks for ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... as it vibrates the iron in it produces undulations (by induction) in the current which is flowing through the wires wound round the soft iron centre of the magnet. The wires of the coil are connected with the lines that go to the receiving telephone, so that this undulating current, coiling round the core of the magnet in the receiver, attracts and repels the iron of the diaphragm in it, and it vibrates just as the transmitter diaphragm did when spoken into; the undulating current is translated by it into ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... glow of warm sunshine fell athwart it and dazzled his eyes for the moment. But anxiety cleared his vision, and he saw that the glowing mass was a serpent drawn from a cleft of the rock by the warm sun. Disturbed by Lina's approach, he was that instant coiling itself up for a spring. His head was erect, his tongue quivered like a thread of flame, and two horrible fangs, crooked and venomous, shot out on each side his open jaws. In the centre of the coil, and just behind the head which vibrated to and fro with horrible eagerness, the rattles ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... out in a vicious stroke. An instant later the Navaho straightened up with his hand gripped about the snake's neck close behind the deadly triangular head. He gave no heed to its five-foot body writhing and coiling ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... in the gathering darkness. The autumn wind stirred the dead sedges at its brim, and though the dying twilight was still gleaming in the sky, the great bog had caught little of its glow, and lay full of coiling blue mists, pale quagmires, and islands of mysterious darkness. A dreadful moaning cry, uttered by some demon of the moor, sounded through the mist, chilling the blood in Florian's veins; and as if in answer to the cry, thousands upon thousands of will-o'-the-wisps appeared, darting and ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... medicines stood, looked at the watch, took up one of the phials and a cup, measured the draught, drop by drop, then he turned and looked round him stealthily, and then he drew from his breast a pale blue, coiling serpent, which he threw into the cup, and held it to the patient's lips, who drank, and instantly felt a numbness creep over his frame which ended in death. Edward fancied that he was dead; he saw the coffin brought, but the terror lest he should be buried alive, made him start up ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... saw that the Snake was getting weak, for, little by little, the Kookooburra was able to rise higher with it, until it reached the high bough. All the time the Snake was held in the bird's beak, writhing and coiling in agony; for he knew that the Kookooburra had won the battle. But, when the noble bird had reached its perch, it did a strange thing; for it dropped the Snake right down to the ground. Then it flew down again, ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... and mad against the regular deep soughing of the swell coiling heavily about the outer face ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... her shoulder something that we had not seen before—a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in her left hand, and plunged into the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... myself, 'What is this man really like? I know he is not the least bit in the world what he pretends to be. But what is the reality?' I felt just the same as I should if I had one of those great snakes they bring to our veranda coiling round me. The creature might look quiet enough, but I should know that if it were to tighten it would crush ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... sprang up, and going over to where the chain was hanging, took it from its place, and coiling it up into a knot, returned to George's side. The chain was made of large iron links, with several sharp, square swivels in it, and these Abdu so placed that they projected from the rest. Having arranged ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the opposite bank. Coiling up their line and jumping aboard, all hands poled her across. The bishop, gathering his cassock around his waist, was the first ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... treated to that self-same system to which they used to treat us in our arboreal days when the glassy eye of the serpent, gleaming through the branches, will have caused our fur to stand on end with horror. No beast provokes human hatred like that old coiling serpent. Long and cruel must have been his reign for the memory to have lingered—how many years? Let us say, in order to be on the safe side, a million. Here, then, is another ghost of the past, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Buffalo, the young chieftain was bending over an uncovered box, holding in one hand the shaft of an arrow, on the end of which was a piece of freshly killed dog; in the other hand he held a willow wand, sharpened. Beneath him, crawling and coiling and singing, were Lieutenant ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... fear of the woman; and greater than their fear of her was their terror of that long serpent which, no matter how far it might dart through space, remained always in the woman's hand. They well knew its venomous bite, and as they slunk from side to side, their eyes were upon its coiling black tongue. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... dwells the great Pearl-Feather, Megissogwon, the Magician, Manito of Wealth and Wampum, Guarded by his fiery serpents, Guarded by the black pitch-water. You can see his fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Coiling, playing in the water; You can see the black pitch-water Stretching far away beyond them, To the purple clouds of sunset! "He it was who slew my father, By his wicked wiles and cunning, When he from the moon descended, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... to the Vatican go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain; A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending;—vain The struggle! vain against the coiling strain And gripe and deepening of the dragon's grasp The old man's clinch; the long envenomed chain Rivets the living links; the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang and stifles gasp ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... was up to his middle in mud and water. He seized the prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy things touched his torn flesh; whirring birds shot past him, disturbed in their night perches. The deadly odor, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... of rifle fire in the darkness, and the sharp "phit" of bullets hitting the mud all around. Think of that as your portion each night and every night. When you have finished this job, the rest you get consists of coiling yourself up in a damp dug-out. Night after night, week after week, month after month, this job is done by thousands. As one sits in a brilliantly illuminated, comfortable, warm theatre, having just come from a cosy and luxurious restaurant, just think of some poor devil half-way ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... minute or two, till Mrs. Davilow said, while coiling the daughter's hair, "I am sure I have never crossed ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... apportioning the staterooms, getting into deck hats, and the other preliminaries, while the boat was steaming down the harbour. Isabelle stayed on deck and made friends with the captain and the sailors. It was fun to watch them padding about so swiftly, coiling ropes, and doing their tasks ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... rise; smiles lighten up their faces, and snatches of song can be heard as they work coiling down lines, lashing movables, and preparing the vessel for the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... fallen Illyria, stand I here spell-bound? Did my King love me? Did I earn his love? 85 Have we embraced as brothers would embrace? Was I his arm, his thunder-bolt? And now Must I, hag-ridden, pant as in a dream? Or, like an eagle, whose strong wings press up Against a coiling serpent's folds, can I 90 Strike but for mockery, and with restless beak Gore my own breast?—Ragozzi, thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of man's anguish went up unto God: "Lord, take away pain— The shadow that darkens the world thou hast made, The close-coiling chain That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs On the wings that would soar— Lord, take away pain from the world thou hast made, That it love thee ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... sound of swords draws near— The stir of searching steel. What find they here, Torch-bearer, swordsman, and fierce halberdier, On St. Bartholomew's?—A Huguenot! Dead in his chair! Eyes, violently shot With horror, glaring at the portrait there: Coiling his neck a blood line, like a hair Of finest fire. The portrait, like a fiend,— Looking exalted visitation,—leaned From its black panel; in its eyes a hate Satanic; hair—a glowing auburn; late A dull, enduring golden. "Just one thread Of the ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... in the golden mist of love. Spread, spread your wings, ye angel guardians bright, And shield these dazzling phantoms from her sight! But no; days passed, matins and vespers rang, And still the quiet Nuns toiled, prayed, and sang, And never guessed the fatal, coiling net Which every day drew near, and nearer yet, Around their darling; for she went and came About her duties, outwardly the same. The same? ah, no! even when she knelt to pray, Some charmed dream kept all her heart away. So days went on, until the convent ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... had expected, the last he had reason to look for, struck full and hard. He was blind then to the old men sneering at him there; his head seemed charged with coiling vapours; his heart, that had been dancing a second ago on the wave of passion, swamped and sank. He had no more to say; he passed them and left the room and went along the lobby to the stair-head, where he stood till the vapours had ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... must be confessed that, with the single exception of the "Areopagitica," Milton's tracts are wearisome reading, and going through them is like a long sea-voyage whose monotony is more than compensated for the moment by a stripe of phosphorescence heaping before you in a drift of star-sown snow, coiling away behind in winking disks of silver, as if the conscious element were giving out all the moonlight it had garnered in its loyal depths since first it gazed upon its pallid regent. Which, being interpreted, means that his prose is of value because it is Milton's, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... mother's back, clinging to her fur with their finger-like toes and wrapping their tails about their mother's tail. The Opossum is the only animal in this country the young of which are carried around in the mother's pocket, and the only one which has a prehensile tail; that is, one used for coiling around and clinging to branches, and the like. Its food is various, consisting of both animal and plant material—insects, young birds, pawpaws, persimmons, etc. In the food devoured the Opossum probably does ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... unlike is the bottom-land bordering upon the river. There the vegetation is lush and luxuriant, showing a growth of large forest timber—the trees set thickly, and matted with many parasites, that look like cables coiling around and keeping them together. These timbered tracts are not continuous, but show stretches of open between,—here little glades filled with flowers, there grand meadows overgrown with grass—so tall that the horseman ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... it rapidly in a curious mounting excitement. With the coffee he fingered the diminutive glass of golden brandy and a long dark roll of oily tobacco. He lighted this carefully and flooded his head with the coiling bluish smoke. Rosalie was smoking a cigarette—a habit in women which he noisily denounced. She extinguished it in an ash tray, but his anger lingered, an unreasoning exasperation that constricted his ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... glass or paste beads attained great celebrity as amulets under the name of serpents' eggs; it was believed that serpents, coiling together in a wriggling, writhing mass, generated them from their slaver and shot them into the air from their hissing jaws. If a man was bold and dexterous enough to catch one of these eggs in his cloak before it touched the ground, he rode off on horseback ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... etcetera; Barret anxiously scanning the columns of a newspaper; Quin and the skipper making each other's acquaintance with much of the suspicion observable in two bull-dogs who meet accidentally; the boy in the fore part of the vessel coiling ropes; and the remainder of the ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... favourite boy of his indulging in a little hunting with some friends; but on looking up he saw in front of him a woman at least three hundred feet high, with a sword thirty feet long. Her lower extremities were like those of a dragon, and snakes were coiling round her neck and shoulders. Eucrates was not in the least alarmed, but turned the seal of his ring, when a vast chasm opened in the earth, into which she disappeared. This seems rather to have astonished Eucrates; but he plucked up courage, caught hold of a tree that ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the land, looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can. As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... old man of being washed overboard that he actually fastened one end of a small line to his waistbands, and coiling the rest about him, made use of it as occasion required. When engaged outside, he unwound the cord, and secured one end to a ringbolt in the deck; so that if a chance sea washed him off his feet, it could ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... possibly could. The completion of the boy's course at the public school, to be followed in due time by Oxford and ordination, had been all previsioned and arranged, and she really had nothing to occupy her in the world but to eat and drink, and make a business of indolence, and go on weaving and coiling the nut-brown hair, merely keeping a home open for the son whenever he came to ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... mine. As always, my human organism shrank from Its unhuman neighborhood. Chill and repugnance shook my body, while that part of me which was not body battled against nightmare paralysis of horror. But now It did not menace or strive against me. It displayed a dreadful suavity I might liken to the coiling and uncoiling of those great snakes who are reported to mesmerize their prey by looping movements and figures melting from change to change in ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... with ever-increasing force, down came the rain in torrents, smearing out the fog from the atmosphere, as a painter, with a sponge, might wipe a color from his canvas. Long tails of yellow vapor, twining—twining—but always coiling downward, floated like snakes about them; and the oily waters of the Thames became pock-marked ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the glass, while Bennet's dexterous fingers unbraided the silky hair and brushed it before coiling it up for the night. Looking at the face reflected in the glass, she perceived that it was not quite so tranquil as usual, and was irritated at finding that Mrs. Tell's words had disturbed her. Why was she disturbed? Her vanity had taken a ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... pointed with his shrivelled finger at the sturdy muleteer, who stood in the innermost rank of the circle. "Was not this Greek, by your own showing, present at the martyrdom of the blessed saint Solomona?—was he not tried for his life at her grave, where he was discovered coiling like a serpent in the darkness?—is he not one of a race of idolaters, worshippers of images made ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... at the throat; the belt with its sheath-knife; her arms big and white and tattooed in sailor fashion; her thick, muscular neck; her red face, with its pale blue eyes and almost massive jaw; and her hair, her heavy, yellow, fragrant hair, that lay over her shoulder and breast, coiling ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... was still shining, however, when we reached the Gouffre de Revaillon and descended into the ravine over roots of trees coiling upon the moss like snakes, some arching upward as if about to spring at the throat of those who disturbed the elfish solitude. At our coming there rose from the great rock such a multitude of jackdaws that for some seconds they darkened the air. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... minutes the pedestal of the statue was seen to become slightly blurred, as though an intervening mist were rising from the ground. This slowly developed into a visible cloud, coiling hither and thither, and constantly changing shape. The professor half rose, and held his glasses with one hand further forward on the bridge of ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... slowly finished his task of coiling up a rope of wet cowhide, and then, producing a dirty pipe, he took a live ember from the fire and placed it on the bowl. He sucked slowly at the pipe-stem, and soon puffed out a great cloud of smoke. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... mountain springtime was bursting into flower and leaf. Presently walls of rock began to rise about them. They were of innumerable, indefinable rock colors—grayish-yellows, dull olives, old rose, elusive purples, and browns as rich as prairie soil. Coiling like a cobra, the Little Williston raced singing through the midst of the chasm, sun-mottled and bright as the trout that hid in its cold shallows. Was all the world singing? Were the invisible stars of heaven rhyming with one another? Had a lost rhythm been recaptured, and did she hear ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... whole purpose of life is to live honorably such days as these come and develop character. Every one has some lurking enemy eager to misinterpret him to his own advantage. The lark must fly to the open sky when he sees the serpent coiling among the roses, or he must fight and dare the odds. Woe be to the wrongdoer who triumphs in such a case as this! He may gain money and ease, and laugh at his adversary, but when a man has proved untrue to any man for the sake of his own advantage, it may be written of him, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... turned his steps successively to other parts of the town, still looking keenly about him as he went along. At length he seemed disappointed or indifferent, it was difficult to say which, and stood coiling the lash of his whip in the dust, sometimes quite unconsciously, and sometimes as if a wager depended on the success with which he did it—when, on looking down the street, he observed a little broad, squat man, with a fiery red head, a face almost scaly with freckles, wide ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... was coiling away a top-gallant-brace, directly in front of Mrs. Budd and Rose, and, at hearing this account of the wonderful equipment of The Rose In Bloom, he suddenly looked up, with a lurking expression about his eye that the niece very well comprehended, while ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... which this line contains is one of perfect balance, traceable in the standing figure. As an element of grace, alone, it affords the same delight as the interweaving curves of a dance or the fascination of coiling and waving smoke. Classic landscape, in which many elements are introduced, or any subject where scattered elements are to be swept together and controlled is dependent upon this principle. An absolute line is not of course necessary, but points of attraction, which the eye ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... head first. On one occasion when I watched attentively, Ophio, having seized a ring-snake by the middle, held it doggedly still for one quarter of an hour, while the lesser snake did its very best to work its way out of the jaws, and also to fetter its captor by twirling itself over his head and coiling round his neck. This continued while Ophio, with his head and neck raised, remained motionless, and after the quarter of an hour commenced to work his jaws up towards the head of the ring snake, which, as more and more of its own body was free for action, twirled itself ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... our bivouac. Huge trunks stand thickly around us; and massive limbs, grey and giant-like, stretch out and over. I notice the bark. It is cracked, and clings in broad scales crisping outward. Long snake-like parasites creep from tree to tree, coiling the trunks as though they were serpents, and would crush them! There are no leaves overhead. They have ripened and fallen; but the white Spanish moss, festooned along the branches, hangs weeping down like the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... mass of blond hair in one hand and deftly coiling it upon her little head, "I believe she got up early to meet him." But Kate only ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... impact of the harpoon the whole school is "gallied" or stampeded as they hear the death-song. The dying swan may not sing, but there is no doubt about the ante-mortem Valkyrie song of the whale. From the Bowhead the sound comes like the drawn-out "hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo" of the hoot-owl. A whaler stops coiling his harpoon-line to tell you that "beginning on 'F' the cry may rise to 'A,' 'B,' or even 'C' before slipping back to 'F' again." He assures us that, "with the Humpback the tone is much finer, sounding across the water like the 'E' string of ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... face, and gave him a look of sympathy as he saw how it was wrinkled and drawn with trouble; but nothing more was said, and he went on coiling up the rope as they passed along the dark chasm, only stopping to untie the knot as they reached the main rift and began the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... not far beneath him, a ghostly violet haze was spreading through the fog, and the fog itself was coiling back from it until it formed a dense ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... hundred fathoms out by this time," shouted Dick, "and if he does not come up soon, he will be lost. But no, it's 'haul in the slack;' he is rising; they are coiling away the line in ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... their progress and their vicissitudes; but underneath them all, unnoted, it may be, or treated to a superficial and perhaps supercilious glance, yet mainspring and regulator of all, runs an iron thread, true thread of Fate, coiling around the limbs of man, and impeding all progress, till he shall have untwisted its Gordian knot, but bidding him forward from strength to strength with each successive release. No romance of court or camp surpasses the romance of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... did much mischief?" said Kate, raising herself on her arm. "I am sure the fishes must have been frightened, and the water- lilies broken. Oh! you can't think how nasty their great coiling stems were—just like snakes! But those pretty blue and pink flowers! Did it hurt them much, do ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been coiling on for years; We have reasoned, we have threatened, We have begged almost with tears: Now, away, away with Union, Since on our Southern soil The only union left ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the current which is flowing through the wires wound round the soft iron centre of the magnet. The wires of the coil are connected with the lines that go to the receiving telephone, so that this undulating current, coiling round the core of the magnet in the receiver, attracts and repels the iron of the diaphragm in it, and it vibrates just as the transmitter diaphragm did when spoken into; the undulating current is translated by it into words and sentences ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... down the trail, while Fairchild went to his work. And he sang as he dragged at the heavy hose, pulling it out of the shaft and coiling it at the entrance to the tunnel, as he put skids under the engines, and moved them, inch by inch, to the outer air. Work was before him, work which was progressing toward a goal that he had determined to seek, in spite of all obstacles. The mysterious offer which he had received gave ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... clinches his fist Like a twisted snake; Coiling itself, preparing to raise its head, Above the long ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... come all right. He resolved to spend the night in a tree near his fire for fear of wild beasts, and selected a fine branching cedar for his dormitory. Laying his gun securely in one of the forks, and coiling himself up as snugly as possible, where four boughs radiated from the trunk, about twenty feet from the ground, he settled himself to sleep as in an arm-chair, with the great hushing silence of the ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... way on the other tack. On she came, with the spray flying up into the weather leech of her fore-sail, the dark mazes of her rigging marked out in clear lines against her white canvas, and the watch noiselessly coiling up the ropes on her decks. As she pushed her sharp snout through the water, and grazed along the brig's lee quarter, an officer on the poop gave a rapid and searching glance around, peered sharply along the brig's deck, waved his trumpet to the mate, and resumed his rapid ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... serpents appeared swimming from the island of Tenedos, and advanced towards the altar. The people fled; but Laocooen and his two sons fell victims to the monsters. The sons were first attacked, and then the father, who attempted to defend them, the serpents coiling themselves about him and his sons, while in his agony he endeavored to extricate them. They then hastened to the temple of Pallas, where, placing themselves at the foot of the goddess, they hid themselves under her shield. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... the rowers, but had been busily drawing in and coiling a line close beside us during those first terrific plunges of the boat after she had taken the water. But now he turned hurriedly to where we sat, and without a word seized me roughly by the arm and drew ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... The coiling, slashing serpent-forms had fastened to the doomed ship. Their thrashing bodies streamed out behind it. They made a cluster of flashing color whose center point was a tiny airship, a speedster, a gay little craft. And her sides shone red as blood—red as they had shone ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... undressing. Old Keskarrah followed a different plan; he stripped himself to the skin and, having toasted his body for a short time over the embers of the fire, he crept under his deer-skin and rags, previously spread out as smoothly as possible and, coiling himself up in a circular form, fell asleep instantly. This custom of undressing to the skin even when lying in the open air is common to all the Indian tribes. The thermometer at sunset ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... "You were going to bump me off, were you? You planted me cold, did you? Oh, hell!" His laugh, like the laugh of one insane, jangling, discordant, rang through the room. "Well, it's my turn now, and"—his body was coiling itself in a slow, curious, almost ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... loosen even a fraction of an inch. Desperately Blake sent his fists smashing into the gray face. The scale armor of Zehru's skull, fast weakening in the liquefying influence of the oxygen, gave way beneath that battering attack. He staggered, and his coiling tentacles relaxed slightly. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... strand. Fig. 319 serves to show the construction and surface appearance of the base of a coil made vessel still quite free from any color decoration. Now, if it is desired to begin a design, the plain wrapping thread is dropped and a colored fillet is inserted and the coiling continues. Carried once around the vessel we have an encircling line of dark color corresponding to the lower line of the ornament seen in Fig. 320. If the artist is content with a single line of color he sets the ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... The yacht was backing out, and the bishop, coiling a rope in her bows, straightened up to wave farewell. Automatically Clark waved back, then, with the telegram crumpled in his palm, turned and walked slowly toward his office. Something the bishop had said began to sing in his brain. Could ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... one, and very much shot, and came straight for Tom and Sam. An instant later the savage reptile was coiling itself around ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... a little fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common habit with her, coiling it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist, and braiding it in with her long, delicate fingers. Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes, not large,—a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie in the Townley bust,—black hair, twisted in heavy braids,—a face that one could not help looking ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... getting up, and the girls helped her arrange her dress, dusting it for her, and aiding her in coiling up ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... breakfast was ready, and they had just finished their meal when a party of horsemen were seen in the distance. Rifles were slung over their shoulders, and bandoliers and belts full of cartridges strapped on, and they donned their forage-caps after coiling up the picket-ropes and halters and fastening them with their valises to the saddles. Then they mounted and formed up in line just as the general, with two of his staff, rode up. After saying a few words to Chris, the general examined the ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... with him on the occurrences of the preceding day. But no! he approached the table on which the medicines stood, looked at the watch, took up one of the phials and a cup, measured the draught, drop by drop, then he turned and looked round him stealthily, and then he drew from his breast a pale blue, coiling serpent, which he threw into the cup, and held it to the patient's lips, who drank, and instantly felt a numbness creep over his frame which ended in death. Edward fancied that he was dead; he saw the coffin brought, but the terror lest he should be buried alive, made him start ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... line, its own moisture congeals into these white—I believe, ice-clouds; threads, and meshes, and tresses, and tapestries, flying, failing, melting, reappearing; spinning and unspinning themselves, coiling and uncoiling, winding and unwinding, faster than eye or thought can follow: and through all their dazzling maze of frosty filaments shines a painted window in palpitation; its pulses of color interwoven in motion, intermittent in fire,—emerald and ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... floor he pulled upon one end of the lariat until he had drawn it free of the bedpost above, when it fell into his waiting hands. Coiling it carefully Billy placed it around his neck and under one arm. Billy, acting as a professional, was a careful and methodical man. He always saw that every little detail was properly attended to before he went on to the next phase of his endeavors. Because of this ingrained ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... serpents, not far above his face, kept continually coiling their long viscous bodies round the branches, and rapidly uncoiling them again—equally uneasy at the presence of the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Kid went quietly up to her, coiling the slack of the rope as he advanced. Without bothering to tighten the reins, but watching closely the look in the maverick's big brown eyes and the nervous twitching of her ears, he laid one hand on the withers of the outlaw, with the other he ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... this he sprang up, and going over to where the chain was hanging, took it from its place, and coiling it up into a knot, returned to George's side. The chain was made of large iron links, with several sharp, square swivels in it, and these Abdu so placed that they projected from the rest. Having arranged it to his fancy, he seized his prisoner's hair, and raising his head by it, placed the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... a loud report, like a clap of thunder. The fore-top-sail, close-reefed as it was, had blown out of the bolt-ropes, and the shreds fluttered in streamers from the yards. Away it flew, lashing the yard with fury, and coiling itself into thick twists of rope. The wind unfortunately caught the bow, and bringing her right round, exposed her broadside to the sea. The instant the accident happened, the mates, with some of the crew, had rushed forward, and loosing ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... subdued, yet singular beauty. He looked with almost scientific closeness of observation into the diamond eyes; but that peculiar light which he knew so well was not there. She was the same in one sense as on that first day when he had seen her coiling and uncoiling her golden chain, yet how different in every aspect which revealed her state of mind and emotion! Something of tenderness there was, perhaps, in her tone towards him; she would not have sent for him, had she not felt more than an ordinary interest in him. But through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... hayfield below the barn where Matthew was coiling hay, and, as luck would have it, Mrs. Lynde was talking to Marilla at the ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that formed no real opposition to Jack's purpose. Five minutes of maneuvering to get close, and Jack had twisted his fingers in the taffy-colored mane; he went up, and landed fairly in the middle of Solano's rounded back and began swiftly coiling ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... bonbons. The board is drawn in— the moorings are cast off—the wheels revolve—the bell rings—the engine squeals, and away speeds the steamer down the calm waters of Lake Ontario. Little children and inquisitive young ladies are knocked down or blackened in coiling the hawser, by "hands" who, being nothing but hands, evidently cannot say, "I beg your pardon, miss." There were children, who always will go where they ought not to go, running against people, and taking hold of their clothes with sticky, smeared hands, asking commercial gentlemen to spin their ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... paralysis; the difficulty of vivisection underground; the desperate coiling of the victim: all these things tell me that the Cetonia-grub, as regards its nervous system, must possess a structure peculiar to itself. The whole of the ganglia must be concentrated in a limited area in the first segments, almost under the neck. I see this as clearly as though it ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... a trance, clasped his hands tightly together, and lifted them above his head,—then springing up, he drew back from me, as if I were a viper coiling at ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... his greedy maw. All stood amazed. But {Calchas}, the son of Thestor, a soothsayer, foreseeing the truth, says, "Rejoice, Pelasgians, we shall conquer. Troy will fall, but the continuance of our toil will be long;" and he allots the nine birds to the years of the war. {The serpent}, just as he is, coiling around the green branches in the tree, becomes a stone, and, under the form of a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... innocent, and fresh in the depth of the wood, at the edge of the hollow—and the outer heat penetrated hither only by an infinite coiling as of a scaly serpent impotent at last and ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the deck. Here and there were men in blue overalls, cleaning the deck, coiling ropes, and polishing metal; and in a little house with windows a man was standing beside an upright wheel. Near the first mast, in a group, were Aunt Amanda, Mr. Toby, the Churchwarden, and the two old Codgers. Freddie hailed them with ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... fire, And put new turf upon it till it blaze; To watch the turf-smoke coiling from the fire, And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love, And ...
— The Land Of Heart's Desire • William Butler Yeats
... smugglers leaped down upon the lugger; the gaskets were cast off the sails, a few ropes were flung clear. I saw one or two men coiling away the lines which had lashed us to the rocks. The dapper man waved his hands ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... after the Cornish sailor came aboard, the weather having moderated and the ship making good progress, I was leaning over the port bulwarks moodily gazing at the sea, when I felt a touch on my hand. Looking round, I saw the Englishman engaged in coiling a rope close to me. He continued his task and spoke in ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... "They were coiling away a spare cable—all but Bob Thomas, who was to pull the captain ashore; and the visitors were ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... or equally small, society would seem to them to have reached the highest ideal. The same people admire an old French garden, with its clipped yew-trees, forming artificial walls and towers and pyramids, far more than the giant yews which, like large serpents, clasp the soil with their coiling roofs, and overshadow with their dark green branches the white chalk cliffs of the Thames. But those French gardens, unless they are constantly clipped and prevented from growing, soon fall into decay. As in nature, so in society, uniformity means ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... with glowing eyes, while her father and Carson were busy coiling the rope. "How could you cut loose in that splendid way?" she cried. "It was—it was ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... full of bitumen, and to make lime the Arabs stack up alternate stones and blocks of bitumen, setting fire to the pile. The effect of these kilns with their great columns of heavy, black smoke, writhing and coiling up into the still sky, ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... scarce an eligible place of stay. But how much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders - not always very wise - than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. And Wick itself had in those days a note of originality. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dressed, her clothes looking as if they had been thrown on and pinned together. Yet her coiffure was almost a proud and careful-looking thing. It proclaimed, alas, that the scrubwoman, despite the sensible employment of her time, was not entirely free from the vanities of her sex. The deliberate coiling and arranging of her stringy black hair must have taken a good fifteen minutes regularly out of Mrs. Rodjezke's otherwise ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Cerberus, the dog of Hell. This animal had three heads with frightful jaws, from which incessantly poison flowed. A dragon's tail hung from his body, and the hair of his head and of his back formed hissing, coiling serpents. ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... it cannot be! The wire must be coiling itself up somewhere. It is incredible! The lead cannot have gone ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... calculated that in an hour, or less, the brig would strike on the reef. He took the helm from the man who was steering, and told him that he might go below. Previous to this, he had been silently occupied in coiling the hawser before the door of Newton's cabin, it being his intention to desert the brig, with the seamen, in the long-boat, and leave Newton to perish. When the brig dashed upon the reef, which she did with great violence, and the crew hurried upon deck, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... within the broad shadow of the sanctuary, while far above him rose the tall spire, with the sunbeams coiling like a heaven-halo around it, pointing to the golden battlements of the far-off city, within whose blessed precincts nothing "which defileth shall ever enter." The massive church doors swung slowly open as one and another entered, and the child looked eagerly up the long, mysterious ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... drew forward an armchair; the Special Messenger sank into its tufted depths and stripped the gauntlets from her sun-tanned hands—narrow hands, smooth as a child's, now wearily coiling up the lustrous braids which sagged to her shoulders under the felt riding hat. And all the while, from beneath level brows, her dark, distrait eyes were wandering from the signal officer to the sleeping major of artillery, to the aide snoring on the sofa, to the trumpet vines ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... again came forward and gave out the competitors for the next contest, steer-roping and tying. Lanky Smith arose and, coiling his rope carefully, disappeared into the crowd. The fun was not so great in this, but when he returned to his outfit with the phenomenal time of six minutes and eight seconds for his string of ten steers, with twenty-two seconds for one of them, they gave him vociferous greeting. Three of ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... moments we saw the covers lifted from the boats and the crews allotted to them standing by and coiling up the ropes which were to lower them by the pulley ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... time in hauling in and coiling his jigger line, in adjusting his oars, and in pulling away toward the derelict with all the strength his strong arms ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Indian cabinet which stood near, and seizing a little box of incense-powder which had been brought from China by his brother, he shook a few grains of it into the fire. A pale, fragrant film rose slowly in coiling wreaths and clouds and hid the last moments of the burning of the letters. When the incense smoke cleared away, nothing could be seen on the hearth but the bright hickory coals in their ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... music again changing with the metre.] Give up the scene, give up, ye sordid rocks, The last of Arnold in his English home, Which in your bosom lives for evermore, A deathless picture; England cast it out Not being English, and it shivered on, Coiling about the world, till it was caught And locked into your rocky fastnesses Where it lives ever; and your mountain ribs ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... forward, followed by his son and the Newfoundland dog, who appeared to consider himself as one of the most useful personages on board. After coiling down the ropes, and sweeping the decks, they went into the cabin to make their ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the sun were now spreading, smokelike and greyish-yellow, over the silver river. Above the river's calm bed a muslin texture of mist was coiling. Against the nebulous heavens the blue of the forest was rearing itself amid the fragrant, pungent fumes from the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Hiawatha: "Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather, Megissogwon, the Magician, Manito of Wealth and Wampum, Guarded by his fiery serpents, Guarded by the black pitch-water. You can see his fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Coiling, playing in the water; You can see the black pitch-water Stretching far away beyond them, To the purple clouds of sunset! "He it was who slew my father, By his wicked wiles and cunning, When he from the moon descended, When he came on earth to seek me. He, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Busily coiling the rope, Tad paid no attention to the taunt; he hung the rope on his saddle horn and then ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... bought anything pretty, a bow or a pair of buttons, her parents confiscated the purchase and drank what they could get for it. She had nothing of her own, excepting her allowance of blows, before coiling herself up between the rags of a sheet, where she shivered under her little black skirt, which she stretched out by way of a blanket. No, that cursed life could not continue; she was not going to leave her skin in it. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... it!" He exclaimed, coiling his skin-rope. The next instant there came a loud thwack, which told that the boy's shaft had found its mark. Instantly there was a hoarse bellow and then a wild splashing in the water. Bruce was at the top of a pressure ridge, ready for action. Barney ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... he asked at length, amazed at his own temerity, and because he knew instinctively the answer in advance. It rose through these layers of coiling memory in ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... sank into the snow; the entire body of the carriage groaned with creaks; the animals were slipping, puffing, steaming, and the driver's gigantic whip was cracking continuously, flying in every direction, coiling up and unrolling itself like a thin snake, and suddenly lashing some rounded back, which then stretched out under ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man's own lustrous coiling black hair. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... with gray hair, and a queenly way of carrying the head? Have you any remembrance of a woman like that? Do you remember a hot, red fire, streams of water gushing over it, a ladder, a crowd, and great pipes coiling like a tangle of huge snakes along a street full of people? I do—and this no one has ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... falling tide when all was done. And we did so, after a good meal, as well as we could, while the wains yet brought stones, and arrows and darts in sheaves to the bridge. But forward in our ships the men were coiling the great cables that should, we hoped, bring the bridge and stones alike down harmlessly ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... pale-faced, delicate-looking boy in the class, who blundered a good deal. Every time he did so the cruel serpent of leather went at him, coiling round his legs with a sudden, hissing swash. This made him cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he still attempted to go on, and still the instrument ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... little laugh, turned her back, and went on coiling at her hair. And again that horrid feeling that he must knock his head against something rose in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... than it seems at first sight; through it meanders the river, coiling and uncoiling, hidden here and there by jungle growths, and seeking final outlet through a cleft in the wall not unlike a crack in the side of a painted bowl. The place seems to have been fashioned as a dwelling for dryads and hamadryads, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... their parts should have the fatal result of precipitating one or both into the fall. He remained, therefore, behind them, silent and motionless,—looking, as they looked, at the terrific scene below. From that point, Njedegorze was as a huge boiling caldron, from which arose twisted wreaths and coiling lengths of white vapor, faintly colored with gold and silvery blue. Dispersing in air, these mists took all manner of fantastic forms,—ghostly arms seemed to wave and beckon, ghostly hands to unite in prayer,—and fluttering creatures in gossamer draperies of green and crimson, appeared ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... have, on the one side, the winds of prosperity and health, on the other, of ruin and sickness. Understand that, once, deeply,—any who have ever known the weariness of vain desires, the pitiful, unconquerable, coiling and recoiling famine and thirst of heart,—and you will know what was in the sound of the Harpy Celaeno's shriek from her rock; and why, in the seventh circle of the "Inferno," the Harpies make their nests in the warped branches ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... knew him better than I did." Juli had a fidgety little way of coiling the links of the chain around her wrists and it made ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... little heed, for he was impatiently awaiting the series of plants which most bewitched him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivorous plants; the Antilles Fly-Trap, with its shaggy border, secreting a digestive liquid, armed with crooked prickles coiling around each other, forming a grating about the imprisoned insect; the Drosera of the peat-bogs, provided with glandular hair; the Sarracena and the Cephalothus, opening greedy horns capable of digesting ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... then? Are you sure of that?—sure, that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends for ever? Will any answer that they ARE sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go? Be it ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... to cultivate too much intimacy with them. So we tried to turn out of our path into a tangle of bushes; and there, instead of one, we found four snakes. We turned on the other side, and there were two more. In short, everywhere we looked, the dry leaves were rustling and coiling with them; and we were in despair. In vain we said that they were harmless as kittens, and tried to persuade ourselves that their little bright eyes were pretty, and that their serpentine movements were in the exact line ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Bludson took Ralph aft and introduced him to the second mate, Mr. Duff, a slim, active, pleasant looking young man of four and twenty, who was superintending the coiling of a spare cable in a ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
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