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More "Forked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not understand the natives' words, but their actions were easy enough to read, and all followed their example, the doctor and I getting up into the same tree, one which forked very low down, and we were just in safety when we heard a cry, and saw that Jack Penny was in difficulties. He too had climbed part of the way into a tree, when he had slipped, and in spite of all his efforts he could not at ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... lie down under the trees and begin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to them, and she sang to them, and they writhed ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... that her two daughters, aged sixteen and seventeen, had been lost from the party for two days. They were in the cart with the curate who had stopped to water his horse, thus losing his place in line. When they had reached the spot where the road forked, which direction had he taken? What had become of them? She pinned her name and route on the refectory wall, begging me to give it to them if they ever inquired for her. To my knowledge they ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... ridge a half-mile above the junction of the brooks. George built a big fire—much bigger than usual. At the back he placed the largest green log he could find. Just in front of the fire, and at each side, he fixed a forked stake, and on these rested a cross pole. From the centre of the pole he suspended a piece of stout twine, which reached nearly to the ground, and tied the lower ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front, and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten by Polar bears? ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... by delicate buskins of black leather, decked with the silver sigma, in its old crescent shape, the proud initial of the high term senator. A golden bracelet, fashioned like a large serpent, exquisitely carved with horrent scales and forked tail, was twined about the wrist of his right arm, with a huge carbuncle set in the head, and two rare diamonds for eyes. A dozen rings gemmed with the clearest brilliants sparkled upon his white and tapering ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... favour of the hunchback of Notre Dame. He had but stood at the window, and at once had been elected. The square nose, the horseshoe shaped mouth, the one eye, overhung by a bushy red eyebrow, the forked chin, and the strange expression of amazement, malice, and melancholy—who had seen such ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... :forked: /adj./ [Unix; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... from it; how can he ask those for money who have none? It is like forcing blood out of a stone. He is not the man to do it. Silvestro lives at hand; he hears the rattle of the hail that burns the grapes up to a cinder—the terrible din of the thunder before the forked lightning strikes the cattle; he sees with his own eyes the griping want of bread in the savage winter-time; his own eyes behold the little lambs, dead of hunger, lying by the road-side. Worse still, he sees other lambs—human lambs ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... were sacrificed in his efforts to capture or to kill this fierce wild beast. Sometimes the animal was caught in a trap which was nothing less than a hut of logs with a single entrance. In the roof of the hut heavy beams would be placed on a forked stick. The bait—a young lamb or kid—would be tied beneath the beams. The moment the bait was touched, down would come the ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of hail was falling,—each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... had been watching the fight with amazement, was still standing motionless when the stag bounded up to him, and before he had time to escape forked him up with its great antlers, and set off at full gallop over hedges and ditches, hill and dale, through wood and water. The tailor could do nothing but hold on tight with both hands to the stag's horns and resign himself to his fate. ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... one glass of forked lightning, poor Duncan was in a terrible state of excitement when the cemetery was approached. He kept his head averted, and clutched the reins so nervously that the vehicle was in imminent ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... there is more than one woman we see in society smiling about from house to house, pleasant and sentimental and formosa superne enough; but I fancy a fish's tail is flapping under her fine flounces, and a forked fin at ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and axes sounded ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Though here is a great symbol, that of the ancients—the serpent—being wisdom. This one is of different significance. See how its long body has taken up space. The tail is three-forked and downward, the head being turned around, sharpened like a shepherd's crook, lower than the body. Deception—intrigue—house of sickness—see the crosses and losses? The one tossing such a cup has been assailed in various ways. Look now well to the above ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... his contest with the devil. Wherefore the faithful ought not to cross themselves when the thunder peals, lest the evil one should take refuge from the heavenly weapons behind the protecting cross. The Bulgarians say that forked lightning is the lance of Ilya who is chasing the Lamia fiend: summer lightning is due to the sheen of that lance, or to the fire issuing from the nostrils of his celestial steeds. The white clouds of summer are ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... centre of this set, as Robert Shallow was the butt of it. The latter had few personal attractions. According to Falstaff's portrait of him, he looked like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. When he was naked he was for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: he was so forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible: he was the very genius of famine; and a certain section of his friends called him mandrake: he came ever in the rearward ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... already got two forked twigs as a support for his spit, and, taking the ramrod from the gun, thrust it through the meat. He had ceased putting on fresh wood the moment he saw the others come from the forest. The fire soon sank down to a mass of glowing embers, over which he put the meat, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... landscape seems black and ominous; before him, the sleeping city spreads its panorama, broken and sombre, beneath heavy clouds; the fretted towers on the massive prison frown dimly through the mist to the right, from which a low marshy expanse dwindles into the dark horizon. And ever and anon the forked lightning courses its way through the heavens, now tinging the sombre scene with mellow light, then ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... they were nearly half a mile in front when we had last seen them. They rode side by side, and Alexander seemed to have plenty to say, for he talked incessantly in his pleasant, easy voice, and Hermione listened to him. They came to a place where the road forked to the right and left. Neither of them were very familiar with the forest, and, without stopping to think, they followed the lane which looked the straighter and broader of the two, but which in reality led by winding ways to a distant part of the woods. When John Carvel ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... longer than the small flower itself, nodding from leaf-axils. Perianth bill-shaped, of 6 spreading segments; stamens 6, 2-horned; style spreading into 3 branches, stigmatic on inner side. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high, simple or forked. Leaves: Thin, alternate, green on both sides, many nerved, tapering at end, rounded at base, where they are seated on stem. Fruit: A round, red, many-seeded berry. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - North America east and west, southward ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... and fry to a crisp. Fill the oven one-third or one-half full of branch water, then take the stale corn bread, the more moldy the better, rub into fine crumbs, mix and bring the whole to a boil, gently stirring with a forked stick. When cold, eat with fingers and to prevent waste or to avoid carrying it on the march, eat the four days' rations at one sitting. This dish will aid in getting clear of all gestion of meat, and prevent bread from getting old. A pot of "cush" is a dish "fit for a king," ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... rapid. Our friends were waiting for us. Soon we saw above the valley that lay before us, clouds of smoke and the white puffs of bursting shells. As yet we could distinguish little of the sound of battle, but those small fleecy clouds which appeared so suddenly, flashing forked lightning, told us of work ahead. It was five o'clock when the Sixth corps arrived on the battle-field, having made an unprecedented march of thirty-four miles! We halted in reserve, not to rest, but to wait a few moments until our place should be assigned us ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... pigskin? Surely a male biped need not dwell In a prejudiced pedantic prig's skin, Not to like that prospect passing well. CARLYLE, who scoffed at Man, had deemed it caddish To picture Woman as "a mere forked radish." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... almost north as did all the little water-courses hereabouts, and for a long while I followed it, until at last, to my great relief, it divided; and I followed the branch that ran northeast. Again this branch forked; I took the eastern course until, on the right bank, I saw long, naked beds of rock stretching into low ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... he has the forked tongue of the serpent, and like all the pale-faces, he is the enemy of ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... they went slowly. Some young men were sent far ahead to scout. The second day, they came back to the main body, and said they had found a camping place just deserted, and that there the trail forked. The poor man then went ahead, and at the forks he found a willow twig stuck in the ground, pointing to the left hand trail. When the others came up, he said to them: "Take care of my horse now, and travel slowly. I will go ahead on foot and find ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... making for the pass, the other making for the right, where Pilot Peak loomed close at hand. There was some reason why the trail forked, and as we surveyed we caught the glint ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... who was lying down drives his muzzle forward, and draws in his ears through his skull, as the snail doth his horns. And his tongue, which erst was united and fit for speech, cleaves itself, and the forked one of the other closes up; and the smoke stops. The soul that had become a brute fled hissing along the valley, and behind him the other speaking spits. Then he turned upon him his new shoulders, and said to the other,[2] "I will ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... hotel. He is a portly man of forty-five, but rather soldierly than fat. His hair, pompadour, is reddish blond, beginning to turn gray, like his mustache and large full beard; the latter somewhat "Henry IV." and slightly forked at bottom. His dress produces the effect rather of carelessness than of extreme fashion. He wears a travelling-suit of gray, neat enough but not freshly pressed, the trousers showing no crease, the coat cut in "walking-coat style," ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... Muddha Arran is literally "the bread stick," a term in opposition to the scowdher. It is a forked stick with three legs, that stands opposite the fire, and supports the cake, which is placed on the edge until it is gradually baked. The Scowdher is, for the most part, ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... hell yawned for him, he was ready and eager to meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, nooses, and forked iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in through the bars upon the floor of his cage. He snarled and struck at the curling ropes, and for ten minutes was a grand and impossible wild creature, lacking in nothing save the wit and the patience ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... with a forked stick, with one prong for the beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... As they descended And now were in mid-air, there came the sound Of the bell striking midnight, and forthwith In a moment, like a serpent winged with fire, There rose from wall to wall a sheet of flame, Which in one instant mounted to the roof With forked red tongues. Then every casement teemed With strange armed men, who leapt into the flames And perished. Those who, maimed and burnt, escaped, Ere they could gain their feet, a little band Of citizens, who sprang ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... was almost as difficult as finding water. They had to be imported from some remote section of the West. The witches, as we called them, went over various parts of the reservation, probing, poking, with their forked sticks. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... "make up the half-dozen!" They all formerly did business in a ship called the "Morning Star," and whenever the ex-pirate number five is in pecuniary distress, he bawls out into the ear of ci-devant pirate number six, the words "Morning Star!" and a purse of hush-money is forked out in a trice. In this manner Gipsy George accumulates, by the end of the piece, a large property; for six or eight purses, all ready filled for each occasion, thus pass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... all over with thongs made of the hide of some animal and place it reclining on the back at full length, either in the branches of some tree or on a scaffold made for the purpose. These scaffolds are about eight feet high and made by planting four forked sticks firmly in the ground, one at each corner and then placing others across on top, so as to form a floor on which the body is securely fastened. Sometimes more than one body is placed on the same scaffold, though generally a separate one is made for each occasion. These Indians ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... trees were immediately felled, and in a short time Fernando, looking out from the covered wagon, perceived a clear space of ground of but few rods in circumference. Stakes, forked at the top, were driven into the ground, on which the father placed logs, and the chinks between these were stopped with clay. An enclosure was thus hastily thrown up to protect the family from the weather, and the wife and children were removed to this improvised ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... hungry, roaring waves, buffeted by winds. In the inky east two vast clouds, sailing contrary ways, met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder muttered. Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the forked stream of fire running along the black sky, shewed us the appalling piles of clouds, now met and obliterated by the heaving waves. Great God! And we alone—we three— alone—alone—sole dwellers on the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... day of September, the priests made an altar, supported by the paddles of the canoes laid on forked sticks. Dollier said mass; La Salle and his followers received the sacrament, as did also those of his late colleagues; and thus they parted,—the Sulpitians and their party descending the Grand River ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... room was lit up by a vivid forked flash and the crash of the thunder came instantly. The storm was immediately overhead. Peg closed her eyes, as she did when a child, while her ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... of the carrefour, the serpent catcher showed them two vipers in a low flat box. They darted their forked tongues against the wire netting, and the large green snake, which he took out of a bag, curled round his arm, seeking to escape. In questioning him they learnt that the snakes were on their way to the laboratory ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... at Simon Basset's, Squire Eben Merritt's wife came across lots to the Edwardses' house. A little red shawl over her shoulders stood out triangularly to the gusts of spring wind; a forked end of red ribbon on her bonnet fluttered sharply. Abigail Merritt moved with nervous impetus across the fields, like an erratic thread of separate purpose through an even web. All the red of the spring landscape was in the swift ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... observations of Uranus in 1889-90 with the potent instrument on Mount Hamilton. Shadings, it is true, were almost always, though faintly, seen; but they appeared under an anomalous, possibly an illusory aspect. They consisted, not of parallel, but of forked bands.[1131] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... arch, whose extremes bore W. 20 degrees S., and N. 50 degrees E.; altitude of upper limb of arch 20 degrees, of the lower 8 degrees. The beams crossed the zenith, and converged towards S. 15 degrees E. The extremity of the largest was forked, and extended to 25 degrees above the horizon in the S.E. by S. quarter. The extremity of the centre one bore S. 50 degrees E., and was 45 degrees above the horizon. The western beams approached nearest the southern horizon. All ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... slept beneath the canoe, which was turned half over, with its upper gunwale resting on a couple of short, but stout, forked sticks; and, acting upon Donald's insistent advice, they kept watch by turn, two hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his two hours of watchfulness were passed in a nervous tremble and ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to represent nouns."—Jamieson's Rhet., p 83. "The speculative relied no farther on their own judgment, but to choose a leader, whom they implicitly followed."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. xxv. "Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."—Beaut. of Shak., p. 266. "A Parenthesis is a clause introduced into the body of a sentence obliquely, and which may be omitted without injuring the grammatical construction."—Murray's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hunters that are employed by European traders shoot the elephant with enormous guns, or rifles, which are generally rested upon a forked stick driven into the ground. In this manner they approach to about 50 yards' distance, and fire, if possible simultaneously, two shots behind the shoulder. If these shots are well placed, the elephant, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... coiled the great, slimy folds of a hideous monster of that prehistoric deep—a mighty serpent of the sea, with fanged jaws, and darting forked tongue, with bulging eyes, and bony protuberances upon head and snout that formed short, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... manner. Some, and those of the largest size, are rigged, so as to tack about. These have a short but pretty stout mast, which steps on a kind of roller that is fixed to the deck near the fore-part. It is made to lean or incline very much forward; the head is forked; on the two points of which the yard rests, as on two pivots, by means of two strong cleats of wood secured to each side of the yard, at about one-third its length from the tack or heel, which, when under sail, is confined down between ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... killed yet," replied Louis, as he moved forward from the waist with the forked stick in his hand. "He is handsome, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... leader in an orange tree more desirable than the much-forked tree so commonly seen! Can a single-leader tree be made from the nursery trees which have already formed their heads, by cutting off the heads below so that only a straight stick without any ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... The captain forked out a quantity of crisp bacon upon a tin plate and filled a big granite cup with fragrant coffee, for Charlie West, and from his saddle-bags brought out a bag of hardtack. Helping himself also, both fell to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... swept past the cove that the sailors had hoped to enter, and bore down with terrible speed toward the rocky coast beyond. The sails had been furled, but the wind and the water needed no aid. The rain came, a blinding deluge; the forked bolts seemed to have set the air on fire; the crash of the thunder and the roar of the wind and the water ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... he went to the forest and cut two forked poles, which he took to the hill and placed upright, and he balanced the sword of Angus across the top. Then he rose lightly over and came down safely over it. 'Is there any man among you who can do that?' asked he of the men who had ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... men whose blindness was responsible for the possibility of mutiny were only made blinder by the evidence of coming trouble. With a dozen courses open to them, any one of which might have saved the situation, they deliberately chose a thirteenth—two-forked toboggan-slide into destruction. To prove their misjudged confidence in the native army, they actually disbanded the irregulars led by Byng the Brigadier—removed the European soldiers wherever possible from ammunition-magazine guard-duty, replacing them with native companies—and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Hercules; yet the Judge who seems cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with forked lightnings without and volcanic fires within. The pure in heart see him as the face of all-clasping Love. Give him thy heart and he will give thee love, effulgent love, like the affection of mother or lover or friend, only dearer than either. Give him thy ways, and he will overarch ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... dry Texas northers; and fantastic yarns about them, along with a cowboy's story of a herd of Longhorns drifting to death in front of one of them, come home to me and illuminate those northers like forked lightning playing along the top of black clouds ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... had passed the numerous logs that lay across the path, when yet one more appeared between me and the standing trees. It had been one of the tallest victims of the tornado; and now lay transversely to the line of the track, which cut it about midway. On nearing this obstacle, I saw that the trace forked into two—one going around the tops of the decaying branches, while the other took the direction of the roots; which, with the soil still adhering to them, formed a rounded buttress-like wall of full ten feet in diameter. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... make you remember the Witch-hazel; its forked twig was used—nay, still is used—as a magic rod to show where there is running water underground; that is, where it is possible to find water by sinking a well. Its nuts are explosive, and go off with a snap, shooting the seeds that are inside, ten or twenty feet away, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... road forked; one branch narrowed to a grassy cattle path and presently ended at a pair of bars. Inside the bars was a stone barn; beside the barn a house of the century before last—a low, square stone house, half stripped of its ancient stucco skin, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... mental self-possession as soon as she was on a level with a meaning she had not yet inspected; but she had to submit to his lead, distinctly perceiving where its drift divided to the forked currents of what might be in his mind and what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a moment's hesitation, for the whistling wind burst, ever and anon, like thunder-claps among the trees, and, tearing them from their roots, hurled them with violence to the ground. Rain cut across the land in sheets, and lightning played like forked serpents in the air; while, high above the roar of the hissing tempest, the thunder crashed, and burst, and rolled in ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... keep away from her. You see I needed money awful bad fer baby. He don't take to livin' awful good. He cries a lot an' I bed to hev thin's fer 'im, so I threatened him ef he didn't do sompin' I'd go tell her; an' he up an' forked over, but not till I promised. But now they say the papers is tellin' he's to marry her to-night, an' I gotta stop it somehow. I got my rights an' baby's to look after, promise er no promise, Ken I ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... his discovery, he led them back along the scent for a hundred yards or so up the field, where it suddenly forked off behind some gorse-bushes, and made straight for the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... though with a hand contemptuous in its strength, forbearing only by reason of its own whimsy. Now and again the cohorts of the clouds just hinted at parting, letting through a pale radiance from the western sky, where lingered the departing day. This light, as did the illuminating glare of the forked flames above, disclosed the while helmets of the trooping waters, rushing on with thunderous unison of tread; and the rattling thunder-shocks, intermittent, though coming steadily nearer, served but to emphasize these foot strokes of the waves. The heavens above and the waters under the earth—these ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... interminable time which measured three hours on her watch, she came to an abrupt descent into a creek bed, down the middle of which the creek itself was flowing swiftly. Here the road forked, a rough, little-used trail keeping on up the creek, the better travelled road crossing and climbing the farther bank. Lorraine scarcely hesitated before she chose the main ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... straight at the old gentleman's excited face, and seeing nothing but it in all the bright infinity of sunshine. Were they, indeed, about to find the treasure chest? He felt the sun very hot upon his shoulders, and he heard the harsh, insistent jarring of a tern that hovered and circled with forked tail and sharp white wings in the sunlight just above their heads; but all the time he stood staring into the good old ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... with comfits. Some cried; some swore; and the tropes and figures of Billingsgate were used without reserve in all their native zest and flavour; nor were those flowers of rhetoric unattended with significant gesticulation. Some snapped their fingers; some forked them out; some clapped their hands, and some their back-sides; at length, they fairly proceeded to pulling caps, and every thing seemed to presage a general battle; when Holder ordered his horns to sound a charge, with a view ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the Almighty Father, offended that any mortal should rise to the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian lake." —AEneid, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... saw people on business. What did she want to do to him? He was prepared by this time for a scene of jealousy, since he was sure he had learned to read her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance of a cold woman a forked flame in her was liable on occasion to break out. She was very still, but from time to time she would fire off a pistol. As soon as he had closed the door she said without ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... guest, and there was nothing to amuse the boys. Time dragged so heavily that Phil begged Stuart to bring his little rubber-gun—gumbo-shooter he called it. It was a wide rubber band fastened at each end to the tips of a forked stick shaped like a big Y. They used buckshot to shoot with, nipping up a shot in the middle of the band with thumb and finger, and drawing it back as far as ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the junction at which the branch line to Warborne forked off. Here it was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back or she could go on. They wandered outside the station doorway into the gloom of the road, and there agreed ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... is ready; the baptized Jews have forged arms and woven ropes; the masses clamor for immediate orders. Speak but the word now, and the electric sparks will fly, the millions flash into forked lightnings, kindle into flame, and consume ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop him is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch them each time with a forked hazel twig." ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of the hill the road forked into two branches, that which led to the right continuing parallel with the loch, whilst the other diverged over the hill towards Auchtermuchty, a town some fifteen miles distant. The stout pony unhesitatingly took ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... multiplicity of short legs. The legs on the rear portions of the bodies terminated in sucker-like disks on which they stood on the surface of the planet. The upper part of the body was raised from the ground and the legs terminated in forked appendages like hands. Stiff, coarse hair, brown in color, protruded from between brilliant green scales, edged with crimson. The heads were huge and misshapen and consisted mostly of eyes with a multitude of facets and huge jaws which worked incessantly as though the slugs were continually ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... man, with reddish gold hair and long forked beard, dressed in purple with gold adornments; and his shield is bronze edged with gold; he bears ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... beards! spade-shaped, hammer-shaped, dagger-shaped, triangular, square, peaked, round, hemispherical, and forked. But chief among them all, was old Ushant's, the ancient Captain of the Forecastle. Of a Gothic venerableness, it fell upon his breast ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... gone a long time. The shallow river, full of rapids and shoals, curved and forked and steadily shrank. But although Sacagawea eagerly peered, and murmured to ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... range an object so picturesque. I forthwith strapped on my knapsack, buckled my belt, and strode out for the Koenigs-See, which lay not far beyond. I walked briskly for a mile or two, stimulated by the abounding oxygen of the highland air, but presently found myself where the road forked and there was nothing to indicate which was my right path. The solitude seemed complete, but as I stood hesitating, I was relieved by the appearance of a pedestrian who emerged from a by-way. As I framed an inquiry ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... exposure. We must therefore regard it as a mere after-thought, that a little softens the rudeness, but adds nothing to the weight, of that exquisite woman's reason aforesaid. And so exit Clotilda and enter Bertram, who "stands without looking at her," that is, with his lower limbs forked, his arms akimbo, his side to the lady's front, the whole figure resembling an inverted Y. He is soon however roused from the state surly to the state frantick, and then follow raving, yelling, cursing, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... These were launched across the stream with the assistance of two people, and a rope on the further side; the roots of the trees were firmly fastened with ropes to the roots of the trees on each side of the river. Along the upper side of these trees they planted a range of upright forked sticks, cut correctly to the lengths on the sounding pole. These upright forks supported two other trees tied as the first, but which were not, like the first, permitted to sink into the water, but were kept about a foot above the surface ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... with several ropes, and was supported on forked poles, varying in length, to correspond with the inequalities of the ground, and was so contrived as to enclose any space, by crossing hills, valleys or streams, and encircling woods, or whatever might present itself; smaller nets for stopping ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... yellow-brown pointed dome rising above the blurred horizon. It was the Mahdi's Tomb, standing in the very heart of Omdurman. From the high ground the field-glass disclosed rows and rows of mud houses, making a dark patch on the brown of the plain. To the left the river, steel-grey in the morning light, forked into two channels, and on the tongue of land between them the gleam of a white building showed among the trees. Before us were the ruins of Khartoum and the confluence of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... side rise, snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. In its caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the strong winds, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... water. In this he was disappointed; so taking a sparing pull at his water-bottle, he crawled under one of them, seeking its shade. There was a slight rustle, and a snake rose on its tail, and darted at him with its forked tongue, but, just ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... mine, each camel being loaded with two pieces, and the negroes break these down into smaller pieces, for the convenience of carrying them on their heads, and muster a large number of footmen for this yearly traffic. These porters have each a long forked stick in their hands; and, when tired, they rest their loads on these sticks. They proceed in this manner till they arrive on the banks of a certain water, but whether fresh or salt my informer could not say, yet I am of opinion that it must be a river, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... act as my escort on my tour of the French lines. He proved to be a charming companion. He was a magnificent figure of a man six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard, embroidered in gold with a design of forked lightning, which is the prerogative of the staff. A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy furs awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde. It was a sumptuous car, upholstered in green corded silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying on ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... once; they had taken the brightness out of his childhood; from between them had sprung the visions that had clung about him and made night horrible. Adder-like thoughts had lifted their heads, had shot out forked tongues at him, asking mockingly strange, trivial questions that he could ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... a huge black specimen with bright yellow stripes. Bland's frenzied yell seemed not to have excited it at all, for now the sleek fellow had arched its body neatly and was calmly licking its sides with a long forked tongue. After a moment it halted the operation long enough to rub its jaw against a bar of its cage, and gave vent ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... night of her stormy mind the forked-lightning inspiration of what the real revenge would be. To take his letter—write him another back, and yet others, fool him to the top of his bent, and presently tell him, tossing at his feet a sheaf of billets. "And serve you glad—and no more than your deservings! Who put ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to feed a thousand Todos Santos; and raised, too, with tools like that," he continued, pointing to a primitive plow that lay on the wayside, formed by a single forked root. A passing ox-cart, whose creaking wheels were made of a solid circle of wood, apparently sawn from an ordinary log, again plunged him into cogitation. Here and there little areas of the rudest cultivation broke into a luxuriousness of orange, lime, and fig trees. The joyous ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... chicken, made the little seven-year-old girls take their five-year-old brothers up in their arms for protection, and finally we climbed a long hill. At the top stretched an endless plain. The road forked; presently it branched; anon it grew into twigs of white dust on the gray levels of the background. The local physician of Eagle Pass was of our party, and he was said to know where a certain tank was to be found, some thirty ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... one moment there would be an immense illumination, and the opaque cloud would become vivid gold. Again, across its blackness a dozen fiery rills of light would burn their way in zigzag channels, and not infrequently a forked bolt would blaze earthward. Accompanying these vivid and central effects were constant illuminations of sheet lightning all round the horizon, and the night promised to be a carnival of thunder-showers throughout the land. The extreme heat continued, and was rendered far more oppressive ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... contest of the elements, nature appearing to condense the heat within its narrowest possible limits, as if purposely to increase its fierceness. The effects were awful; for entire buildings would seem to dissolve at their touch, as the forked flames enveloped ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 'Will that forked tongue cease hissing!' he shouted, in the agony of a strong man convulsed both to render and conceal the terrible, shameful, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inert, watched the snaky mass, squirming in hideous folds almost on the recumbent body. Then, aroused to the horror of their nearness, he seized a torch and made at the slimy heap. The fire conquered them. They slid off the ground, with forked tongues darting out in impotent malice. But others, squirming through the water, wriggled up; and the boy, maddened by the danger, stood his ground, torch in hand, defending ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the mazy windings of the wall, Bill Brown sat in the forked top of a tree and studied out the ground-plan of the city. He was imprinting landmarks in his memory for future reference, and trying—with a brain that ached from the apparent hopelessness of the task—to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... to find two trees standing about seven feet apart with convenient branches down low enough to support the horizontal top cross pole when laid in the crotches. Lacking the proper trees, the second method is to get two strong, straight, forked poles of green wood and drive them down into the ground deep enough to make them stand firm and upright by themselves the required distance apart. The third way is to reinforce the uprights by shorter forked stakes driven firmly into the ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... from perdition, and I will go on to denounce the same meanness and hypocrisy with a hundred-fold more stress and vehemency in words across which no slime has ever trailed, and through which no infernal fires have shot their forked tongues,—words pure, innocent, all-impressive, God-honored, Anglo-Saxon,—in which Milton sang, and Bunyan ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... animal of this species, which I have heard the natives of this part of the coast describe, often exceeding 30 feet in length, and of an enormous size; it is variegated with spots, and the head is covered with scales; the tongue is fleshy and forked, but its bite is not poisonous; it is to be found in the recesses of caves and thickets, from whence it suddenly darts upon its victim, whether man or beast: it frequently chooses a tree, from which it reconnoitres the passing objects, supporting itself by the tail, which it twists round ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... old trail which he followed a long way till it forked. Right in the fork of the trail, he saw a young bird. Its feathers were not half grown and of course it could not fly. Little Luke knew that it must have fallen out of the nest by accident. So he ran after the frightened little bird and picked it up very ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... prospect of the fashionable throng which was to invade his shabby precincts. When, however, Mrs Thornton made up her mind to carry out a plan, she was not easily damped; and aided by Mollie and the younger members of her brood, she weeded, and forked, and clipped at the over-grown garden, until it really began to ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... from the phial over the letters, and they glowed the colour of blood and flashed with a report, and it was as if a fiery forked-tongue had darted before them and spake the words written, and they were, 'This is the crown of him who bath achieved his aim and resteth here.' Thereupon, she stuck the needle in the door, and he pulled the thread, and the door drew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... every boy and girl knows about the nuts and blossoms, the twigs and the hedges, the roots and the leaf of the common hazel bush, and everybody has heard of the witch hazel. In old days they made use of the forked branches of the hazel as a divining rod. With this, they believed that they could divine, or find out the presence of treasures of gold and silver, deep down in the earth, and hidden from ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... the dairyman pulled up and looked around. It was a spot at which the highway forked; the left arm, the more important, led on through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to Idmouth and the coast. Nothing was visible on the white track to London; but on the other there appeared the back of ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... in the Aru Islands and some parts of New Guinea, but are snared in a very ingenious manner. A large climbing Arum bears a red reticulated fruit, of which the birds are very fond. The hunters fasten this fruit on a stout forked stick, and provide themselves with a fine but strong cord. They then seep out some tree in the forest on which these birds are accustomed to perch, and climbing up it fasten the stick to a branch and arrange the cord in a noose ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... move. Mechanically her eyes took in the little hut, crude, but rainproof at least—branches heaped across two forked limbs for a roof; the trunk of a big tree for the rear wall; branches thrust upright into the ground for the sides—the whole a little triangular shaped affair. The fire blazed in front just within shelter at the entrance; and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel with military precautions; for the least you had to apprehend was to awake next morning without money or baggage, or necessary raiment, a lone forked radish in a bed; and if the worst befell, you would instantly and mysteriously disappear from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tears run red! A lying man and a pitiless Shall be lord of me, a heart full-flown With scorn of righteousness: O heart of a beast where law is none, Where all things change so that lust be fed, The oath and the deed, the right and the wrong, Even the hate of the forked tongue: Even the hate turns and is cold, False as the love ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... not been long kindled, and crackled as it blazed. You could easily have told the strong red flame to be that of the shell-bark hickory—the best firewood—though dry sticks of some lighter wood had been used to kindle it. On each side of the fire a forked stick was stuck into the ground, with the forks at the top; and on these rested a fresh cut sapling, placed horizontally to serve as a crane. A two-gallon camp-kettle of sheet-iron was suspended upon it and over the fire, and the water in the kettle was just beginning ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... carts came in steady lines, creaking under endless loads, from those fields which, two years later, lay scorched with drought, and over which famine brooded. The peasant girls tossed the grain, with forked boughs, to the threshing-machine, tended by other girls. The village boys had a fine frolic dragging the straw away in bundles laid artfully on the ends of two long poles fastened shaft-wise to the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... a piece of bread on a forked stick and held it out to the blaze. He did the same with the other half of the sandwich. Then they partook of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... and dark—all alight with the joy of life; sparkling with fun and mischief; blazing forked lightnings at some offence, fancied as often as not; big with entreaty that none could refuse; more rarely—in those days—deep with sober thought; but always—shining, sparkling, blazing, entreating—the most wonderful and fascinating eyes in the world to the boy ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... up he gets, and to his father goes, To whose glad ears he doth his vows disclose. The nuptials are resolv'd with utmost power; And he at night would swim to Hero's tower, From whence he meant to Sestos' forked bay To bring her covertly, where ships must stay, Sent by his father, throughly rigg'd and mann'd, To waft her safely to Abydos' strand. There leave we him; and with fresh wing pursue Astonish'd Hero, whose most wished view I thus long have forborne, because ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... whuffled in the chimney, and sent spurts of sweet-scented smoke to mingle with the fuller flavour of Graeme's tobacco. The walls were bare plaster, discoloured with age and careless usage. The chairs were common kitchen chairs, and the table a plain deal one. But the driftwood burned with flames whose forked tongues sang silently but eloquently of wanderings under many skies, of rainbow isles in sunny seas, of vivid golden days and the black wonders of tropic nights, of storms and calms, and all the untold mysteries of ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... straw. My window-panes were made of oiled deer hide. Thinking that perhaps I might need to plow in the coming season, I made me a plow like those around me, which might have come from Mexico or Egypt—a forked limb bound with rawhide. Wood and hide, were, indeed, our only materials. If a wagon wheel showed signs of disintegration, we lashed it together with rawhide. When the settlers of the last year sought to carry wheat to ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... would, and, I tell you, she is a respectable woman—a woman of virtue. The Baron has forked out handsomely." ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... something like a goose swimming; and when he is upright he looks like an ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not beautiful, and their long under lip gives them an exceedingly "gallus"—[Excuse the slang, no other word will describe it]—expression. They have immense, flat, forked cushions of feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular about their diet. They would eat a tombstone if they could bite it. A thistle grows about here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; if one touches you, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the other was to attempt to build the wall in the manner called for by the specifications, which required the concrete to be carried up in layers as the conduits were laid. In this latter method, it was proposed to bond the concrete together with the forked bonds, the details of which are shown by Fig. 15, A, but, as it might have been impractical to use these if the wall had been built in sections, provision was made in the contract to place expanded metal, as shown by Fig. 15, B, if this was thought advisable. The ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... he would start for the city, hugging the edge of the campus and afterward cutting across the adjoining estate to meet the car line where it forked into the main road. Many another boy had done the same and not been caught; why not he? It was, to be sure, against the rules to leave the school grounds without permission, but one must take a chance now and then. Did not half the spice ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... slowly. Some young men were sent far ahead to scout. The second day, they came back to the main body, and said they had found a camping place just deserted, and that there the trail forked. The poor man then went ahead, and at the forks he found a willow twig stuck in the ground, pointing to the left hand trail. When the others came up, he said to them: "Take care of my horse now, and travel slowly. I will go ahead ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... forked tongue—and dost thou hiss If ever thou art bored with Ocean's play? And is it the correct hypothesis That thou of gills or lungs dost ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... almost half the bigness of its body, which is usual in the foetus of most Creatures. It had two small black eyes aa, and two small long joynted and brisled horns bb. The hinder part of its body seem'd to consist of nine scales, and the last ended in a forked tayl, much like that of a Cutio, or Wood louse, out of which grew two long hairs; they ran to and fro very swiftly, and were much of the bigness of a common Mite, but some of them less: The longest of them seem'd not the hundredth part ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... of their angry King, In hideous forms and shapes, tofore unseen, That fear, death, terror and amazement bring, With ugly paws some trample on the green, Some gnaw the snakes that on their shoulders hing, And some their forked tails stretch forth on high, And tear the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... change; masses of clouds accumulated, but were again dispersed. The next day the weather was again threatening; thunder pealed in the distant mountains, and the forked lightning flew in every direction; but the rain, if any, was expended on the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... withdrew its chosen ministers from the false and guilt-making centre of Self. It converted the wrath into a form and an organ of love, and on the passing storm-cloud impressed the fair rainbow of promise to all generations. Put the lust of Self in the forked lightning, and would it not be a Spirit of Moloch? But God maketh the lightnings His ministers, fire and hail, vapours and stormy ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this idea of stuffing a scaly monster with condemned sinners. Eight centuries ago!—the peasant of the Aveyron and of Finistere still look upon these Dantesque sculptures with genuine awe. Those who blame the monks for giving the devil a forked tail and a pair of horns, and otherwise exhausting their invention in the endeavour to materialize the terrors of hell, are strangely unphilosophic. The mass of humanity with whom the monks had to deal had the minds of children ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... another. The people rushed from their huts; for many of their homes were on fire. The white men, who called themselves Livingstone's children, were seizing women and children, and binding them with strong cords of leather. Around the necks of the men they fastened great Y-shaped sticks, riveting the forked ends together with iron. "We have been deceived," cried the natives. "The visitors were not Livingstone's children. They were slave-raiders. O! why did we ever trust them? If the white master were here, he would save us. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... was responsible for the possibility of mutiny were only made blinder by the evidence of coming trouble. With a dozen courses open to them, any one of which might have saved the situation, they deliberately chose a thirteenth—two-forked toboggan-slide into destruction. To prove their misjudged confidence in the native army, they actually disbanded the irregulars led by Byng the Brigadier—removed the European soldiers wherever possible from ammunition-magazine guard-duty, replacing ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... LIGHTNING.—Forked lightning seen in a zig-zag up the side of the cup shows bad weather conditions; if near the figure of a man or woman, it may possibly indicate death from lightning or electrical mechanism; if seen at the bottom of the cup and with a clear space indicating water, it would mean bad storms abroad ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... structures, showed here and there small patches of its blue robe, patches which became narrower and narrower, more and more indistinct. And again did Helene raise her eyes, and over yonder the stream forked amidst a jumble of houses; the bridges on either side of the island of La Cite were like mere films stretching from one bank to the other; while the golden towers of Notre-Dame sprang up like boundary-marks of the horizon, beyond ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... way the road forked, but I do not remember whether that was near Shaphambury or near the end of my walk. The hesitation between two rutted unmade roads alone ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... dost defy; but, holy Mary, holy angels, what a death! Canst thou endure to have thy tender flesh pierced with splintered sticks; thine eyes torn from the sockets; the flames greedily dashing over thy head, and licking up, as with the forked tongues of serpents, thy blood, hissing as it drops upon the glowing brands? And this for the poor satisfaction of being with me; for thou canst not afford protection, should the Indians attempt outrage. Alas! ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... whirling down ten out of the dozen of those brown lightning balls. Again I rejoice, beyond all count or measure, over the first leporine murder committed by myself, the same furthered by means of a rest on a forked tree. It seems to me I groan secretly again at the weight of that great gun before the night has come. I almost wince again at the pulling off of those copper-toed boots at night, there by the kitchen stove, after the chase is done. But, ah! how happy I am again, holding up for the gaze ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... deeming kittens worth a Poet's care. But presently a loud and furious hiss Caused me to stop, and to exclaim, 'What's this?' When lo! upon the threshold met my view, With head erect, and eyes of fiery hue, A viper, long as Count de Grasse's queue. Forth from his head his forked tongue he throws, Darting it full against a kitten's nose; Who having never seen, in field or house, The like, sat still and silent as a mouse: Only projecting, with attention due, Her whisker'd face, she asked him, 'Who are ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... become old, and he dribbled at the mouth, and his spittle fell on the ground. One day Isis took some of the spittle and kneaded up dust in it, and made this paste into the form of a serpent with a forked tongue, so that if it struck anyone the person struck would find it impossible to escape death. This figure she placed on the path on which Ra walked as he came into heaven after his daily survey of the Two Lands (i.e. Egypt). Soon after this Ra rose up, and attended by his gods he came into ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... their tribes, make sheds all round the fire, leaving a horseshoe-shaped space in front sufficient for the cattle to stand in. The fire gives confidence to the oxen, so the men are always careful to keep them in sight of it. The sheds are formed by planting two stout forked poles in an inclined direction, and placing another over these in a horizontal position. A number of branches are then stuck in the ground in the direction to which the poles are inclined, the twigs drawn down to the horizontal ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... reached the rail fence, she found some difficulty in climbing it, since her legs had grown rheumatic with the cold weather; but by letting the basket down first on a forked stick, she managed to ease herself gently over to the opposite side. Here she rested, while she carefully brushed away the dried pollen from the golden-rod, which was staining her dress. Then regaining her strength after a minute, she pushed on under the oak trees, where the ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... to the genus Dremotherium, or Amphitragulus, from the middle Tertiary of France, were of small size and had four toes, canine teeth and no antlers. Their successors seem to have borne simple forked antlers or horns, probably covered with hair, and permanently fixed on the skull. Very similar animals existed in contemporaneous and later deposits in North America. From this point the course of progress is tolerably clear as to ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... Who, as we find in sullen writs, And cross-grain'd works of modern wits, 650 With vanity, opinion, want, The wonder of the ignorant, The praises of the author, penn'd B' himself, or wit-insuring friend; The itch of picture in the front, 655 With bays and wicked rhyme upon't; All that is left o' th' forked hill, To make men scribble without skill; Canst make a poet spite of fate, And teach all people to translate, 660 Tho' out of languages in which They understand no part of speech; Assist me but this once, I 'mplore, And I ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... mostly with the latter, taken from a dove found upon the island. The one end was bordered with eight pieces, each about the size and shape of a horse-shoe, having their edges fringed with black feathers. The other end was forked, and the points were of different lengths. The feathers were in square compartments, ranged in two rows, and otherwise so disposed, as to produce a pleasing effect. They had been first pasted or fixed upon some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... in seeking out the spot where the man who had charge of the two animals had gone from his right path. It was very natural for him to have done so, for the road forked here, and he pursued that which seemed the most beaten way. Down here he had journeyed for hours, and when at last he had come to the conclusion that he had gone wrong, instead of turning back he had calmly accepted his ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... threatening storm broke suddenly on that dark place of the earth; and it seemed to Oriana's troubled spirit that the wrath of heaven was poured upon her benighted race. Peal after peal resounded in quick succession, and reverberated from the distant kills; while flashes of forked lightning followed one another rapidly, and dispelled, for a moment, the unnatural darkness. The young Indian clung trembling and terrified to her companion, and hid her face on his shoulder, to shut out the fearful scene, while Henrich spoke ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... brought sandwiches, stuffed eggs, cakes, and fruit, so that, with the extras, the picnic was "truly elegant," as Babe put it. They sang songs while they waited for the coffee to boil, and toasted Babe's marshmallows, two at a time, on forked sticks, voting Babe a trump to ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... For morning mist, and gently-falling dew; For summer rains, for winter ice and snow; For whispering wind and purifying storm; For the reft clouds that show the tender blue; For the forked flash and long tumultuous roll; For mighty rains that wash the dim earth clean; For the sweet promise of the seven-fold bow; For the soft sunshine, and the still calm night; For dimpled laughter of soft summer seas; ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... pointed dome rising above the blurred horizon. It was the Mahdi's Tomb, standing in the very heart of Omdurman. From the high ground the field-glass disclosed rows and rows of mud houses, making a dark patch on the brown of the plain. To the left the river, steel-grey in the morning light, forked into two channels, and on the tongue of land between them the gleam of a white building showed among the trees. Before us were the ruins of Khartoum and the confluence of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... sometimes awaits them! It is usually night before the creatures come out of the sea to enjoy a snooze on the beach. The men did not remain idle, however. They dragged the boat a considerable distance from the water, and then turned it keel up, supporting one gunwale on several forked sticks, so that a convenient shelter was provided. This look-out house was still further improved by having a soft carpet of leaves ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... to his legs while he spoke, and with the aid of these he rapidly mounted the elm tree to where the boughs forked, put his hand into a hollow, and drew out a wooden box, which he ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... swiftly out of the grey moonlight. At its foot another road forked to the right; instead of facing the hill that led to home and stable, the mare swung into the side road, with one wheel up on the grass, and the cushions slipping from the seat, and Rupert, just saving the situation with ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... and their pettinesses; next, the Regent's friends, the cream of the rows, possessed with the spirit of opposition and corruption, ignorant and clever, bold and lazy, and far better calculated to harass than to conduct a government; lastly, below them, were pitch-forked in, pell-mell, councillors of State, masters of requests, members of Parliament, well-informed and industrious gentlemen, fated henceforth to crawl about at the bottom of the committees, and, without the spur of glory or emulation, to repair the blunders which must be expected from the incapacity ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that question may be answered, there remains the fact that the thunderbolt was a symbol of the power of Zeus, and its figure uniformly accompanied the effigy of the god. Ovid speaks of Zeus as of one whose hand is armed with three-forked fires,— ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... a string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror. I then saw a stream of red light steal from the base of the column and dart like forked lightning to the beads, which instantly shone a luminous red. The native now picked them up, and, putting them round his neck, clapped the palms of his hands vigorously together, uttering as he did so a succession of shrill cries, that gradually became more ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... were getting supper, Joe commenced curing the moose-hide, on which I had sat a good part of the voyage, he having already cut most of the hair off with his knife at the Caucomgomoc. He set up two stout forked poles on the bank, seven or eight feet high, and as much asunder east and west, and having cut slits eight or ten inches long, and the same distance apart, close to the edge, on the sides of the hide, he threaded poles through them, and then, placing one of the poles on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... height, and size, and such like things, We care far less than other kings; But station, learning, no pretence, Can make us with our power dispense. The warrior must not here look big, The lawyer doffs his forked wig, The portly merchant rich and free, Forgets his pride and bends the knee; The doctor gives his terrors scope, And, like a patient, whines for hope; In short the wise have childish fits, And fools and madmen find their wits. ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... blare of trumpets and roll of drums, while everywhere the eye rested upon blue lines and long columns of marching troops. I formed one of a little gray squad moving slowly southward—a mere fragment of the fighting men of the Confederacy, making their way homeward as best they might. As the roads forked I left them, for here our paths diverged, and it chanced I was the only one ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... that day, Athanasia? How the little gamins, Creole throughout, came half shyly near the log, fishing, and exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the silent couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom. The gamins ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... (afterwards Captain) Rodger's anchor (fig. 1). This marked a great departure from the form of previous anchors. The arms, de, df were formed in one piece, and were pivoted at the crown d on a bolt passing through the forked shank ab. The points or pees e, f, to the palms g were blunt. This anchor had an excellent reputation amongst nautical men of that period, and by the committee on anchors, appointed by the admiralty in 1852, it was placed second only to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he says, "a tall, powerful fellow of a good shape, if we except that his arms were too long and that his feet and hands were of an uncomely bigness. In face he was swarthy, with black hair and a black forked beard; his nose was big and very high in the bridge, and his eyes sunk deep under beetling eyebrows were very pale-coloured and very cruel and sinister. He had—and this I have ever remarked to be the sign of great virility in a man—a big, deep, rough voice, better suited to, and no doubt oftener ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... and I am both willing and glad, chief, to receive you in the character in which you give me to understand you have now come. A warrior of Wyandotte's high name is too proud to carry a forked tongue in his mouth, and I shall hear nothing but truth. Tell me, then, all you know about this party at the mill; what has brought it here, how you came to meet my son, and what will be the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... had cleared away the shells and scraps, they asked their greedy guest where he came from, when Blackie told them he was a great traveller, and had seen many wonderful things; that he had once lived on a forked pine at the head of the Waterfall, but being tired of a dull life, he had gone out on his travels to see the world; that he had been down the lake, and along the river shore, where there were great places ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... reforms of to-day go back to some reform of yesterday. Man's art goes back to Athens and Thebes. Man's laws go back to Blackstone and Justinian. Man's reapers and plows go back to the savage scratching the ground with his forked stick, drawn by the wild bullock. The heroes of liberty march forward in a solid column. Lincoln grasps the hand of Washington. Washington received his weapons at the hands of Hampden and Cromwell. The great Puritans lock hands ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the draw the trail forked, and Stratton took the left-hand branch. The grazing hereabouts was poor, and at this time of year particularly the Shoe-Bar cattle were more likely to be confined to the richer fenced-in pastures belonging to the ranch. The scenery thus presenting no points of interest, Buck's thoughts ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... ther with a forked berd, In mottelee, and highe on hors he sat, And on his hed a ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... in which that metaphor of the forked road will make the position plain. Medieval society was not the right place; it was only the right turning. It was only the right road; or perhaps only the beginning of the right road. The medieval age was very far from being the age in which everything went right. It would be nearer the truth I ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... the sunlight, went spinning down, became a dot, its screaming faded. Then something synchronized within it, and it was gone—in a burst of weird, bluish light, whose fangs forked upwards for a second, their unearthly flash dimming even the sunlight, and then ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... and therefore the most common, consists simply of two forked sticks driven into the ground so they stand about 8 feet apart and 4 feet high. A horizontal piece is laid in the two forks, then some strips of bamboo are inclined against this crosspiece, the other ends resting on the ground. Some cross strips are tied with bejuco to these bamboos ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... imaginable. At one moment there would be an immense illumination, and the opaque cloud would become vivid gold. Again, across its blackness a dozen fiery rills of light would burn their way in zigzag channels, and not infrequently a forked bolt would blaze earthward. Accompanying these vivid and central effects were constant illuminations of sheet lightning all round the horizon, and the night promised to be a carnival of thunder-showers throughout the land. The extreme heat continued, and was rendered far more ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... looking down upon them, huger than a rock in the sea, or an alp with forked summits. A certain horrible majesty augmented the terrors of his aspect. His eyes reddened; his poisonous look hung in the air like a comet; the mouth, as it opened in the midst of clouds of beard, seemed an abyss of darkness and blood; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... sound of my voice, they came on again, drawing closer every minute. They were of all sizes, some of great length, black and venomous-looking. One monstrous reptile of the constrictor species continued to watch me from an adjacent rock upon which it lay, its forked tongue darting in and out of its mouth. I felt that my reason was leaving me. Endurance has its limits—I could bear no more. Death or madness ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... application, and gives him possession with the following ceremonies:—The gaveller cuts a stick, and, asking the party how many verns or partners he has, cuts a notch for every partner, and one for the King. A turf is then cut, and the stick forked down by two other sticks, the turf put over it, and the party galing the work is then considered to be put in full possession. The free miner, having thus obtained possession, is compelled to proceed ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... alone at the three-forked road of divorce, complacency, or separation, sank down and waited in dull misery for help or solution, as do most of the poor wayfarers who come upon such a break in their path of matrimony. She imagined Cheever with Zada and wondered what peculiar incantations Zada used to hold him so long. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... between a burning forest and a burning rost. {40} The intervening space was not, at the most, more than fifty paces broad, and was completely enveloped in smoke. I could hear the cracking of the fire, and through the dense vapour perceive thick, forked columns of flame shoot upwards towards the sky, while now and then loud reports, like those of a cannon, announced the fall of the large trees. On seeing my guide enter this fiery gulf, I was, I must confess, rather frightened; but I felt assured, on reflecting, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... and a number of young people at once entered. They were in the gayest of moods, and surrounding Jean and Dane, they led them out of the house. Down to the shore they hurried, where the big bonfire was blazing merrily, and great forked flames were ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... rather indicate a disposition to take away my gun—which I certainly should never have relinquished without a struggle—and so I forked out the dibs, in order to keep the piece! I'm quite positive, however, that the vagabond over-charged me, and I kicked, as was quite natural, you know, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... Achelous have recourse to his magic arts. Transforming himself into a serpent he escaped from the hero. He twisted his body into winding folds, and darted out his forked tongue with ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... and gold, crossed by rapid flashes of pale yellow and white lightning, which momentarily obliterated their rich colours. To the south was a great bank of black thunder-cloud crested with crimson, reft to its deepest darkness by successive flashes of forked lightning. Immediately overhead a narrow curtain of leaden clouds was driven hither and thither by uncertain winds; while below, the prairie and all its varied life lay bathed in the warmth and light of the departing sun, throwing into bold ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... shall get on twice as fast if you leave me the place to myself." So, knowing that she meant what she said, Thomas went out and set to work in the garden, for, of course, that must be made trim, too, for the little five-year-old grandchild. He forked over the earth in all the beds, tied up to a stick every daffodil that did not stand perfectly upright by itself, trimmed the sweetbriar hedge, and swept ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... friar, too, we see,—a mendicant, yet merry and full of dalliances, beloved by the common women, to whom he gave easy absolution; a jolly vagabond, who knew all the taverns, and who carried on his portly person pins and songs and relics to sell or to give away. And there was the merchant, with forked beard and Flemish beaver hat and neatly clasped boots, bragging of his gains and selling French crowns, but on the whole a worthy man. The Oxford clerk or scholar is one of the company, silent and sententious, as lean as the horse on which he rode, with thread-bare ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... on's are sophisticated: thou art the thing itself, unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... sic. See comment under "osmaterium".}: in Collembola the spring or saltatory appendage borne by the fourth abdominal segment: in Orthoptera, a pair of backwardly directed appendages which overlie in a more or less forked position the ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... a goot-nadured veller, (De peggars all knowed him at sight,) So he forked out each groschen und heller, Dill he fix de finances aright. Boot shoost ash de liddle man vent, he, (Der Ritter,) ashtonished cried "Dang!" For id vasn't von thaler boot tventy, He'd passed on ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... tent was the first thing to come within his vision. The fire was built against this face of a rock in front of this, and over the fire hovered a man dragging out beds of coals with a forked stick. Almost at the same moment a second man appeared from the tent, bearing two huge skillets in one hand and a big pot in the other. At a glance Philip knew that they were preparing to cook a meal, and that it was for many instead of two. Wildly he searched the firelit spaces ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... ordonnance colors, quartered crosswise, violet and dead leaf, with a sprinkling of golden fleurs-de-lis, left the white-colored flag, with its fleur-de-lised cross, to dominate over the whole. Musketeers at the wings, with their forked sticks and their muskets on their shoulders; pikemen in the center, with their lances, fourteen feet in length, marched gaily toward the transports, which carried them in detail to the ships. The regiments of Picardy, Navarre, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... very early to prepare the show, and when it was ready enjoyed it hugely, for the fresh wind made the pennons cut strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkey crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... sah," staring about into what to me was impenetrable darkness. "Yo' see de forked tree dar ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... demonstration we executed under the tree would have frightened even an African lion. Tom hesitated, showed his white fangs, returned to his first perch, and from there climbed as far as he could. The forked branch on which he ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Saw advanced the frightful flat head until the forked tongue played immediately before Jack's eyes, and the grip on the head was now slightly loosened, and the cobra opened wide its horrid jaws and disclosed its poison fangs, and made convulsive efforts to reach and strike the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... god of seas in place, Clayming that sea-coast citie as his right, And strikes the rockes with his three-forked mace; Whenceforth issues a warlike steed in sight, 316 The signe by which he chalengeth the place; That all the gods which saw his wondrous might Did surely deeme the victorie his due: But seldom seene, foreiudgement ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... caravan, had settled down into an oozy pond. The pagazis crossed a hastily-constructed bridge, thrown up a long time ago by some Washensi Samaritans. It was an extraordinary affair; rugged tree limbs resting on very unsteady forked piles, and it had evidently tested the patience of many a loaded Mnyamwezi, as it did those porters of our caravan. Our weaker animals were unloaded, the puddle between Bagamoyo and Genera having taught us prudence. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... have bit into me have been dry Texas northers; and fantastic yarns about them, along with a cowboy's story of a herd of Longhorns drifting to death in front of one of them, come home to me and illuminate those northers like forked lightning playing along the top of black clouds ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... a good display of fire-works; in the still night air of the Sabbath the fiery snakes and red serpents, blue fires and green, darting flames and forked lights, reminded our artists of a large painting over the Maggiore Gate of the town, where a lot of the condemned are expiring in a very vermilion-colored Inferno—condemned, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... stalked off into the darkness, silently circling the camp until he found a good-sized knoll with smooth sides. Working by touch he pulled the little pegs from their bag and planted them in rows, carefully laying the leather strings in their forked tops. The ends of the strings were fastened to delicately balanced steel bells that tinkled at the slightest touch. Thus protected he lay down in the center of his warning spiderweb and spent a restless night, half awake, waiting ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... the angular crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning; and, far beyond, and far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... autumn, three months after the night of the murder; Mantua had looked beautiful in her golden mantle of sunshine and silver veil of mist; there was a white, light fog on the water meadows and the lakes, and under it the willows waved and the tall reeds rustled; whilst the dark towers, the forked battlements, the vast Lombard walls, seemed to float on it like sombre vessels ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Satanic, demon-looking face of a Gipsy with the violet-powder of imagery only temporally hides from view the repulsive aspect of his features. The first storm of persecution brings him out again in his true colour. The forked light of imagination thrown across the heavens on a dark night is not the best to reveal the character of a Gipsy and set him upon the highways for usefulness and heaven. The dramatist has strutted the Gipsy across the stage in various characters in his endeavour ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... through the roof so that we were wet through as we crouched upon our angareps (stretchers), but the legs of our bedstead stood in more than six inches of water. Being as wet as I could be, I resolved to enjoy the scene outside the tent; it was curious in the extreme. Flash after flash of sharp forked lightning played upon the surface of a boundless lake; there was not a foot of land visible, but the numerous dark bushes projecting from the surface of the water destroyed the illusion of depth that the scene would otherwise ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... base a deed: But more to aggravate the heavy cares Of my perplexed mind, must only I, Must I alone be made the messenger, That must deliver to her princely ears Such dismal news, as when I shall disclose, I know it cannot but abridge her days? As when the thunder and three-forked fire, Rent through the clouds by Jove's almighty power, Breaks up the bosom of our mother earth, And burns her heart, before the heat be felt. In this distress, whom should I most bewail, My woe, that must be made the messenger Of these ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... invincible equilibrium and authority in his own world, which was a considerable establishment back of the dining-room, including a most delectable little creature even smaller than Deenah, but quite as important, and sharing all light and shadow by his side. Deenah had a look of forked lightning and a mellow voice. The more angry he became, the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... of the chimney, like the deep diapason of an organ, is softly murmurous with the flurry of the swifts in their afternoon or vesper flight. There is a robin's nest close by one window, a vireo's nest on a forked dogwood within touch of the porch, and continual reminders of similar snuggeries of indigo-bird, chat, and oriole within close limits, to say nothing of an ants' nest not far off, whose proximity is soon manifest ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... which are not only highly complicated, but have given rise to various conjectures. Thus, although it is easy to understand the reasons which led our ancestors, in their childlike ignorance, to speak of the lightning as a worm, serpent, trident, arrow, or forked wand, yet the contrary is the case when we inquire why it was occasionally symbolised as a flower or leaf, or when, as Mr. Fiske[2] remarks, "we seek to ascertain why certain trees, such as the ash, hazel, white thorn, and mistletoe, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... going home. The old warriors have gone home. They were thick as the flowers of the field, thick as the stars of the night. My boys are gone home—they were swift as the hawks in the air. Benjamin is left to the Umatillas. He is no butcher-bird; no forked tongue—he will remember the shade of his father. My heart is in his heart. I am going ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... moisture began presently to ooze rather than fall. Gradually the wind increased, and soon with sudden fierce gusts shook the pine- trees into shuddering anxiety,—the red slit in the sky closed, and a gleam of forked lightning leaped athwart the driving darkness. An appalling crash of thunder followed almost instantaneously, its deep boom vibrating in sullenly grand echoes on all sides of the Pass, and then—with a swirling, hissing rush of rain—the unbound hurricane burst forth alive and furious. ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... horsemen were clattering after the murderer, headed by Hale, Logan, and the Infant of the Guard. Where the road forked, a woman with a child in her arms said she had seen a tall, black-eyed man with a black moustache gallop up the right fork. She no more knew who he was than any of the pursuers. Three miles up that fork they came upon a red-headed man leading his ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... trees were near the cabin the boys might have carried the sap to their fire-place for boiling, but as this would necessitate the carrying of a great deal of wood, they hung their largest kettle on a pole laid across two forked sticks driven in the ground for that purpose, just at the top of the hill near the ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... laws were given to man— by the pillar of fire or the gushing rock, or by the rushing of mighty winds. And it is still through the elements that the Almighty speaks to man, to warn, to terrify, to chasten; to raise him up to wonder, to praise, and adore. The forked and blinding lightning which, with the rapidity of thought, dissolves the union between the body and the soul; the pealing thunder, announcing that the bolt has sped; the fierce tornado, sweeping away everything in its career, like a besom of wrath; the howling storm; the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tail feathers in many birds appear to be entirely,—even cumbrously, decorative; as in the peacock, and birds of paradise. But I am confident that it is not so in the swallow, and that the forked tail, so defined in form and strong in plume, has indeed important functions in guiding the flight; yet notice how surrounded one is on all sides with pitfalls for the theorists. The forked tail reminds ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... the experience of a tropical thunderstorm, after having been well warned by the sinking of the barometer through the whole of the day, the 27th of April. 'At 7.30 the breeze came up, and the big drops began, when suddenly a bright forked flash so sustained that it held its place before our eyes like an immense white-hot crooked wire, seemed to fall on the deck, and be splintered there. But one moment and the tremendous crack of the thunder was alive and around us, making the masts ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lone Pilgrim in the dusky night, Seeking, through unknown paths, his doubtful way, While thick nocturnal vapours veil his sight From yawning chasms, that 'neath his footsteps lay; Sudden before him gleams the forked light! Dispels the gloom, yet fills him with dismay. His trembling steps he then retraces back, And seeks again the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... cattle from the peasants has stirred me up. I am ready with all my heart and all my strength to follow your lead and do whatever you think best. I have thought it over for a long time, and this is my opinion: it is no use to reckon upon the rich. It is too late. Every wealthy man has by now forked out as many thousands as he is destined to. Our one resource now is the middle-class man who subscribes by the rouble and the half-rouble. Those who in September were talking about private initiative will by now have found themselves a niche in various boards and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... heaps of ashes, In the dryness of the ashes, There a tender germ he planted, Tender germ, of oak an acorn Whence the beauteous plant sprang upward, And the sapling grew and flourished, As from earth a strawberry rises, And it forked in both directions. 80 Then the branches wide extended, And the leaves were thickly scattered, And the summit rose to heaven, And its leaves ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... our race's elder branch, His family-arms the same as ours. Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, Of kindred, if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... THE shepherd's brow fronting forked lightning, owns The horror and the havoc and the glory Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story Of just, majestical, and giant groans. But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones; ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... and there were no inhabitants to be seen; but all about were signs of occupation. A well-blackened billy hung from the ridge-pole. Close to the tent was a heap of dry sticks, and a little farther away the ashes of a fire still smouldered, and over them a blackened bough, supported by two forked sticks, showed that the billy had many times been boiled there. The little camp was all very neat and tidy. "It looks quite home-like," ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the Demon, for they struggled and strove together from the seventh hour in the morning to the sunset in the evening, and during that time the sky was clouded over as black as night, and the lightning forked and shot, and the thunder roared and bellowed, and the earth ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... place by a notched piece of bone. The breech-pin was gone, and a piece of stone fixed in the stock filled its place. The breech of the stock was but little larger than the other part, and seemed very awkwardly contrived. A forked stick is carried to form a rest, that ensures the accuracy of aim. Powder and lead are so expensive that great economy is shown in their use. I was told these natives were excellent marksmen, and rarely missed a shot. When within proper distance of their game they place ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Last year we found a nest (and brought it home) lined with the floss of willow-catkin, stuck all over with lichens, deep enough to secure the two pure round pearls from being thrown out, strongly fastened to the forked branch,—a home so snug, so warm, so soft!—a home "contrived for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Amorites or Libyans. The bodies in these tombs are not mummified, but are contracted, though laid in an opposite direction from those discovered at Medum. The graves are open, square pits, roofed over with beams of wood. This ancient race used forked hunting-lances for chasing the gazelle, and their beautiful flints were found to be like those belonging to an excellent collection already existing in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. They also ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... splendour of the electrical phenomena displayed during this paroxysmal outburst. One who, at the time, was forty miles distant speaks of the great vapour-cloud looking "like an immense wall or blood-red curtain with edges of all shades of yellow, and bursts of forked lightning at times rushing like large serpents through the air." Another says that "Krakatoa appeared to be alight with flickering flames rising behind a dense black cloud." A third recorded that "the lightning struck the mainmast conductor five or six times," ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... together and left unguarded all the gold, diamonds, and rubies of the East; but when you came near you saw that this treasure was only a gathering of goldfish in glass globes—yellow, white, and red fish, with from three to five forked tails apiece and eyes that bulged far beyond their heads. There were wooden pans full of tiny ruby fish, and little children with nets dabbled and shrieked in chase of some special beauty, and the frightened ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... repository of all odds and ends, the shed back of the barn, and selected a number of boards left over when the fence was built; with these and some nails he made a trough to carry the water down the hill, placing them one end upon another in forked stakes, and after two days of hard work was delighted to find that his trough was easily filled with ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in three years. Every company of foot was composed two-thirds of "musketeers" and one-third of "pikemen," the pike of Connecticut being two feet shorter than the rod-pike of England. Some of the lighter muskets were fired with a simple match, but the greater number were supported by "rests," forked at the top and stuck into the ground. They were fired by "match-locks," the "cock" being that part which held the burning match aloft before it was applied to the powder in the pan. Hence "to go off half cocked" originally meant that the burning fuse dropped into the powder pan before it was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... tent, soldier fashion. We must drive down four forked stakes; then put poles on the forks, and cover the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... fire till the upper side of the bannock is slightly browned, when it is turned and replaced till the other side is browned. As soon as the bannock is stiff enough to stand on its edge it is taken out of the pan to make room for more, and placed before a rock near the fire, or on a pair of forked sticks until it has had time, as nearly as can be calculated, to cook halfway through. Then it is turned again and allowed to cook from the other side. In this process the possibilities in the way of burning hands and face, and of dropping the bannocks into the fire and ashes ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... endless woe 'Midst eternal fires in the shades below! There lances and glances each long-pronged fork,[A] As through the wild flames it is quick at work, Till the red blood squirts and seethes and sings, As through the red flame each squirtlet springs, The flames lap round her like forked levin; The priests send up their prayers to heaven; But what these prayers are to do when there, It is likely they could not themselves declare Yet all this while, in her agony, She made no murmur, she uttered no cry, As if she would show by a silent ban Her scorn of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... wing, purple and tipped with gold, shot up against the pale green sky. That cloud-world was a pageant in itself, as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the mountains would have been. Deep down through the hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was driving; and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a distant world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, and leaving the darkness blacker behind them as the storm blurred out the landscape forty miles away. Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was clear and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... what you'll spot next time?" observed Bluff. "You nailed an old fellow that you tell us is Aaron Dennison himself. I hope the next crack won't give us a picture of the Old Nick himself, horns, split hoofs, forked ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... But the south wind had conquered for a time, and now the two blasts were contending in the clouds above and on the waters of the distant great lake below. The rain fell in torrents, like hail upon the shingled roof; the blue-forked lightning flashed viciously, followed instantaneously by peals of thunder that rattled every casement, and made the dishes dance on the breakfast table. The doctor had been with his patient; and as the clergymen were ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... foot A (fig. 7.), is placed on a table, or other firm support, and the pillar B. screwed into it; the body of the camera, C, C is laid into the double forked bearing D. D. The instrument is now properly adjusted by means of the set screws, e, e, e, in the brass foot, or it may be raised, lowered, or moved, by the telescope stand, and when correct, fixed by the screw b. The ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... to his wife and children. Hitherto, the stores of food had been eked out by mussels and wild celery, but there was now no one to search for them. Gardiner, wishing to save Maidment the journeys to and fro, determined to try to reach the Speedwell, and Maidment cut two forked sticks to serve as crutches, but the Captain found himself too weak for the walk, and had to return. This was on the 30th of August. On Sunday, the 31st, there is no record in the diary, but the markers stand in his Prayer-book at the Psalms for the day and the Collect ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his own,—Death or Victory, the word on both sides; when suddenly, the heavens grew black, and there broke out a terrific storm of thunder and hail, appalling to the human mind,—universe swallowed wholly in black night; only the momentary forked-blazes, the thunder-pealing as of Ragnarok, and the battering hail-torrents, hailstones about the size of an egg. Thor with his hammer evidently acting; but in behalf of whom? The Jomsburgers in the hideous darkness, broken ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... outside of the hands, had two parallel lines running along the hand and an oblique line connecting them. The men were not tattooed. Two of them carried crosses, with Slavonic inscriptions, at the neck, others carried in the same way forked pieces of wood. Whether these latter are to be considered as their gods or as amulets I ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... sufficiently wide to permit a man to glide through. The uprights are made fast by transverse beams, to which they are lashed securely by ratans and flexible climbing plants, or as they are called "jungle ropes," and the whole is steadied by means of forked supports, which grasp the tie beams, and prevent the work from being driven outward by the rush of ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... are arranged, and also the method of attaching the horizontal tie-pieces. The construction of these inclosures is frail, and the danger of pushing the stakes over by pressure from within is guarded against by employing forked braces that abut against horizontal pieces tied on 4 or 5 feet from the ground. Reference to Pl. LXXIV ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... few miles when we came to a point where the roads forked. On one he sent a regiment, with Freeman's battery, with instructions to reach the river ahead of the Federals and hold the ford at all hazards until the main body could come up. This done, we swung into the road that had been taken by the Federals and went forward ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... my grip? Oh yes, I remember." And he pranced away upstairs to the studio to pack the tools of his craft. His wife, who was looking out linen and hosiery and all the things a woman firmly believes a man can never remember for himself, and without which he is a mere shivering forked radish, found time to order me to bed, but was drawn away immediately into an argument concerning the climate in the south. My friend, evidently viewing underwear, remarked that he was going south, not north to Labrador, and where was his seersucker suit. He was informed that his ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the sedge! Strip bare a circle to the land!" That done, he hastened to its edge, And grasped a rifle in his hand: Dried weeds he held beside the pan, Which kindled at a flash the mass! "Now fire fight fire!" he said, as ran The forked flames among ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... point, where they made a camp, and from which they explored during the winter (in snowshoes) the Wisconsin country and collected information regarding the Mississippi and its great western affluent the Missouri. The Mississippi, they declared, led to Mexico, while the other great forked river in the far west was a pathway, perhaps, to ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... house, whose sloping garden ran down to the railway line and river, a large room had been built out apart. Pierson stood where the avenue forked, enjoying the sound of the waltz, and the cool whipping of the breeze in the sycamores and birches. A man of fifty, with a sense of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully from nostalgia during a long ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... land and sea as a long, oblong sort of box, the centre of which was Egypt. The sky stretched over it like an iron ceiling, the part toward the earth being sprinkled with lamps hung from strong cables lighted by night and extinguished by day. Four forked trunks of trees upheld the sky roof. But lest some storm should overthrow these tree trunks there were four lofty peaks connected by chains of mountains. The southern peak was known as the "Horn of the Earth," the eastern, the "Mountain of Birth," the western, the "Region of Life," the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... cat astonished me from the first. I have no reason to believe she had ever seen a snake before, yet by a sort of instinct she seemed to know exactly what she was doing. As the Dryad raised its head, with glittering eyes and forked tongue, Stoffles crouched with both front paws in the air, sparring as I had seen her do sometimes with a large moth. The first round passed so swiftly that mortal eye could hardly see with distinctness ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... and from some of the roots the little yam had been taken, but on others it remained. The surface, naturally soft, thus appeared as bare as a fallow field. I found a pole about 20 feet long, with a forked end, set upright by having one end planted in the ground and fixed by many sticks and pieces of old stumps from the river. As the natives erect similar poles on the banks of the Darling to stretch their nets on for taking ducks it is probable that the heaps of grass ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... light'ning bring With threatening, forked glare; And there the hallowed rainbow fling ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... on to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the junction at which the branch line to Warborne forked off. Here it was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back or she could go on. They wandered outside the station doorway into the gloom of the road, and there ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Over the clear sun-spangled stream drooped the loveliest of ferns, whose fronds were like the most delicate lace; while by way of contrast other ferns clung to the boles of trees, that were dark-green and forked like the horns of some huge stag; great masses and clusters, six or seven feet long, hung here and there pendent from the ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
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