"Crouched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notes ring upon the air, Tenterden is behind them, and they are bowling along the highway into the open country beyond. A wonderful country this, familiar and yet wholly new; a nightmare world where ghosts and goblins flit under a dying moon; where hedge and tree become monsters crouched to spring, or lift knotted arms to smite; while in the gloom of woods beyond, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... mother lifts her new-born babe for its father's kiss. A gleaner harvests the grain. Over all is a gentle solemnity. In "Autumn," probably the most admired of the four, against the background of a fruit-bearing tree, a superb nymph bears proudly the full jar of wine or oil. On one side a crouched figure gathers a richly-laden garland of the vine; on the other, a youthful, kneeling female figure plays with a lusty child. Even this period of completion is marked by the general pensive beauty. It is emphasized ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... among the Indians of Vancouver island, of a strange spirit that dwells among the mountains and spends most of his time eating the fat members of the Quackahl tribe. Hammasoloe took the part of the spirit and crouched down as if ready to spring on his prey. The sticks beat hard on the plank, and the ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Villiers had crouched on the ground, half terrified, while his wife towered over him, magnificent in her anger. At the end, however, he recovered himself a ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... of approaching horses rang through the stillness of the night, and Oonah and Nance ran out and crouched in the potato tops in the garden. Four drunken vagabonds broke into the cottage, and, seeing Andy in the dim light clinging to his mother, they dragged him away and lifted him on a horse, and galloped off ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... calmly nor did the tone of deference ever depart from his speech. He stood in the dim light which came in a straight shaft down through the opening above, his splendid person in full view of the Caesar who still crouched in the shadow. The power of his individuality imposed itself upon the miserable coward who threatened him. Caligula—tyrant and half crazy though he was—had sufficient shrewdness in his tortuous brain to recognise the truth of what the praefect had told him. Had this man ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... on he was several times addressed, but always with the same result. When after dark food and wine were served out, he seized the portion offered to him, and hurrying away crouched under the shelter of a gun, and devoured it as if fearing it would be taken from ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... half-stifled scream as Aunt Charlotte turned for a second, and the next moment she was out of sight. Sammy danced on the road, and yelled after her till he was hoarse, then he came back to where the children were crouched ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... came out and seating myself on the bench with my back against the wall, waited for something to happen. My dogs seemed to have comprehended the gravity of my mission, and crouched close to my feet, cocking their ears at the ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... he could in his blind passion strike her or otherwise vent his rage, a revolver was clapped to his face through the window, and, with a look of surprise and terror, his valor oozing from him, he crouched back on the cushions. At the same time the carriage door was thrown open, and Edward Mauville, the patroon, stood ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... winter only; Cold and ice and frost Only, driven by the ice-wind, lonely, In a world of strangers, in the welter Of the puddles and the spiteful wind and sleet, Blinded by the spitting hailstones, lost In a bitter unfamiliar street, I found a doorway, crouched there for just shelter, Crouched and fought in vain for breath, Cursed the cold and wished for death; Crouched there, gathered somehow warmth to sleep; Slept and dreamed ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... about me; yet could make to see nothing; and so did stare, eager and anxious, afar into the upper blackness of the Night, where did shine that Final Light of the Tower of Observation; and the same while crouched, and holding the Diskos, and making to glance across my shoulders, and to watch for the message, and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... thrice over the old woman. In doing this her figure seemed to dilate, and her countenance underwent a marked and fearful change. All her beauty vanished, her eyes blazed, and terror sat on her wrinkled brow. The hag, on the contrary, crouched lower down, and seemed to dwindle less than her ordinary size. Writhing as from heavy blows, and with a mixture of malice and fear in her countenance, she cried, "Were I to speak, you would not ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... outwards, beef-bones lay on the road before the door, and, within, the widow, black, begrimed and very drunk, lay inverted on the clay of the floor, her head beneath the three legs of the chopping block, so that she was as if in a pillory, but too fuddled to do more than wave her legs. A prentice who crouched, with a broken head, in a corner of the filthy room, said that a man from Lincolnshire, all in Lincoln green, with a red beard, had wrought this ruin of beef-bones that he had cast through the windows, and had then comforted the screaming widow with much strong drink from a black bottle. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... in search of his Master, found them and would have killed them, only he thought it was not right to kill women. So he changed himself into an eagle and carried away their clothes to his nest. This so frightened the women that they crouched in the pool and did not dare to ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... when she stepped on it, and she was afraid to risk a movement, so she crouched and made herself small. The air was thick and pungent, freezing draughts played upon her through the cracks of the door, and her foot tingled, but she did not move. After a while she saw two luminous disks which halted, glared, and approached, and ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... by these kind words, Herman forgot his instructions: forgot everything but the thrill of the race. He drove his heels into Zanzibar's sides and crouched low in the saddle. The cold dawn wind cut like a knife. After a time there came a wail ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... centre of which a man in a grey uniform was beginning a Salome dance. Watching this person with a cold and suspicious eye, stood another uniformed man, holding poised above his shoulder a sturdy club. Two Masked Marvels crouched behind him in attitudes of watchful waiting. On wooden seats all around sat a vast multitude of shirt-sleeved spectators, and the ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... bow rose, I stood up, and, looking over the bulwark, tried to see either sky or water, but tried in vain, save when the lightning revealed them both. When the bow fell, I crouched under the bulwark and let the sea comb over me. How long I remained at this weird post, I do not know; but I was driven from it in such terror as I hope never to ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... collar of his coat and dragged him into the seat, panting and gasping, and rubbing the sand from his mouth and nostrils. Clay turned the carriage at a right angle through the heavy sand, and still standing with Hope crouched at his knees, he raced back to the woods into the face of the firing, with the boys behind him answering it from each side of the carriage, so that the horses leaped forward in a frenzy of terror, and dashing ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... soon told. Exhausted to the point of emaciation, the French Canadian—what was left of him, that is—fumbled among the ashes, trying to make a fire. His body crouched there, the weak fingers obeying feebly the instinctive habit of a lifetime with twigs and matches. But there was no longer any mind to direct the simple operation. The mind had fled beyond recall. And with it, too, had fled memory. Not ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... pelt our peoples melt In covert to abide; Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill Our Jungle Barons glide. Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain, That draw the new-yoked plough; Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red Above ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Episodes, common to life, were taking place in every direction. Here two martial manikins paid court to a pretty sly-faced female, who smiled on each alternately, but gave her hand to be kissed to a third manikin, an ugly little scoundrel, who crouched behind her back. There a pair of friendly dolls walked arm in arm, apparently on the best terms, while, all the time, one was watching his opportunity to stab ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... iteration. The newspapers were full of it. When Dare turned to them in desperation he saw it written in large letters across the sham columns. There was nothing but that anywhere. It was the news of the day. Sick at heart, and giddy from want of food, he sat crouched up in the corner of his empty carriage, and vaguely wished the train would journey on for ever and ever, nervously dreading the time when he should have to get out and collect his ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... forward, and then the beast turned, facing his tormentor, and crouched low. There, in a huge setting of bone and muscle strangely fitted to its fierceness, with eyes of fire and feet of deadly stealth, its back arched like a drawn bow, the wild heart of the son of Herod ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... Mathias crouched down, and crept under the bed, just in time, as the pert young lady skipped into ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... conscious that Jim had wildly thrown his hatchet at a cow buffalo pressing close upon his flanks. As they swept down into another gully he saw him raise his fateful gun with utter desperation. Clarence crouched low on his horse's outstretched neck. There was a blinding flash, a single stunning report of both barrels; Jim reeled in one way half out of the saddle, while the smoking gun seemed to leap in another over ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... imagined how near she was already to the unprotected edge of the rocky shaft down which Alan had fallen. She had seen it during their explorations, but had quite forgotten its existence. Nevertheless, she stooped to listen, and the dog crouched at her side. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the rock, just long enough to reach from one to the other when 20 held by a man at each end. The only hope of safety lay in working a desperate passage along this rope to the land. The spray was already beating over those who were crouched on the rock, but not a man moved till called by name by Captain Baker, and then it is recorded that not 25 one, so summoned, stirred till he had used his best entreaties to the captain to take his place; but the captain had ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... contestants drew lots from an urn for the place nearest the lower turning goal,—no trifling advantage. A favouring god gave Moerocles the first; Lycon was second; Glaucon only third. As the three crouched before the rope with hands dug into the sand, waiting the fateful signal, Glaucon was conscious that a strange blond man of noble mien and Oriental dress was sitting close by the starting line and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... crouched there, with our hearts beating horribly; for it seemed that the next moment we should hear a dull, heavy crash; but instead, there came the sharp fall of a dead branch, and at the same moment there were voices at ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... Charley would be calling out as he rowed along. A sudden premonition of danger seized me. The Marin Islands are lonely places; chance visitors in the dead of night are hardly to be expected. What if it were Yellow Handkerchief? The sound made by the rowlocks grew more distinct. I crouched in the sand and listened intently. The boat, which I judged a small skiff from the quick stroke of the oars, was landing in the mud about fifty yards up the beach. I heard a raspy, hacking cough, and my heart stood still. It was Yellow Handkerchief. Not to be robbed of his ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... terrible blasts would come over and through the house, making the ribs crack so that you would think the roof would be taken away at wanst. The fire was now getting low, and Sally had no more turf in the house; so that the childher crouched closer and closer about it, their poor hungry-looking pale faces made paler with fear that the house might come down upon them, or be stripped, and their father from home—and with worse fear that something might happen ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Granger crouched near the door. He neither liked Bet's manner nor her words. She knew a great deal more than he had the least idea of. Mother Bunch having overheard him and Dent as they laid their plans together in the Star and Garter was an awkward ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... slowly about the mustang, scrutinizing him very carefully, he brought himself within a yard or two of where Sut Simpson crouched. The latter waited until he was the nearest, when he stepped forward, with his drawn knife in hand, and, placing himself directly in front of the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... gaudy coloured silk and hung with festoons of roses, wherein sat a heavily-built, brutish- looking man royally robed and crowned, and wearing jewels In such profusion as to seem literally clothed in flashing points of light. Beautiful women were gathered round him,—boys with musical instruments crouched at his feet—attendants stood on every hand to minister to his slightest call or signal,—and all eyes were fixed upon him as upon some worshipped god of a nation's idolatry. I felt and knew that I was looking upon the 'shadow-presentment' ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... pistol from his holster and cocked it. Roland, sabre in hand, was charging, crouched on his horse's neck. When they were twenty paces apart, Cadoudal slowly raised his hand in Roland's direction. At ten paces ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... from the eyes of people. Tired and footsore, drenched to the skin and chilled through, he finally reached home. He was trembling, he was crying, but he did not know it, and had he known, he could not have told why. He did not change his clothes, but crouched down in a corner and hid his face in his hands. He dreaded seeing any one or hearing any person speak his name. He felt painfully conscious of a new self, which he thought must ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... at night when the provost's pass admitted him to a small wooden prison. One candle dimly lighted the hut, where a manacled man crouched by a failing fire. The soldier on guard passed out as the clergyman entered. When the door closed behind ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... fire beside which the old man crouched and shivered, he took a blazing brand and using it to light his way entered the lodge from which the former had emerged. It seemed empty of everything save that in one corner, on a heap of dried grasses, there lay an old wrinkled hag, who stared at him with keen beady eyes, and then set up a shrill ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... lunch of sandwiches under the lee of a reedstack, I observed that numerous flights of wildfowl on passing from one branch of the river to another crossed a low, marshy corner of the island, so that presently I made my way there and crouched down amongst the rushes behind a dyke, having a small lagoon immediately at my back. Mallard, widgeon and many other kinds of fowl came over in such quick succession that for two hours I was kept fully occupied, and it was highly gratifying to hear a heavy splash in the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... it seemed to me for hours. The waning day-light faded and became dusk; the dusk thickened into dark; the fire burned red and dull; and still I crouched there in the chimney-corner. I had no heart to read, work, or fan the logs into a blaze. I just watched the clock, and waited. When the room became so dark that I could see the hands no longer, I counted ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... noted the flash of the great, lithe body as the beast sprang into the air. Startled for the moment by the on-rush and savage baying of the dog, the panther had leaped into a low-branching cedar. The tree shook to its very tip, and to the ends of its great limbs. There the panther crouched upon a limb, its eyes balefully glaring down upon the ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... from number one; his first journey evidently tired him. He found the world hard and disappointing, so he simply stayed where he dropped in the middle of the path, and refused to move, though I touched him as a gentle reminder of the duty he owed to his parents and his family. He sat crouched upon the gravel and looked at me with calm black eye, showing no fear and certainly no intention of moving, even indulging in ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... departed through the house of Odysseus, and on her fell a cloud of consuming grief; so that she might no more endure to seat her on a chair, whereof there were many in the house, but there she crouched on the threshold of her well-builded chamber, wailing piteously, and her handmaids round her made low moan, as many as were in the house with her, young and old. And Penelope spake among ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... lie slept a child. She was turning away, with a cold feeling round her heart—she had always fancied, doubtless without any reason, that Mother Bunch would keep the little attic vacant for her. She crouched down on the landing, waiting until the merriment should cease downstairs before she ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... in under the bushes taking a nap," said Polly, and they crouched to look under the shrubbery. An ear-piercing screech made them spring to their feet, and there, flying down the road, was Gyp, tearing along as if in fright, but what could so have startled wild, ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... with him to the refuge made by the three horses and there we remained. The horses stood perfectly still throughout the blizzard, which lasted only an hour at most, and the steam they exuded from their bodies kept us quite warm as we crouched under them. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... he loved to lie near the fire, hind legs crouched under him, fore legs stretched out in front, head raised, and eyes blinking dreamily at the flames. Sometimes he thought of Judge Miller's big house in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley, and of the cement swimming-tank, and Ysabel, the Mexican hairless, and Toots, the Japanese ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... rug before the flickering fire the stricken wife crouched, wringing her hands, which looked ghostly in their whiteness. A candle burning dimly on a table increased the light of the fire; and by their united rays he saw, with a thrill of horror, that her loosened hair, which ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... because no man knows more than I do of the manner and cause of Agatha Webb's death. This you will believe when I tell you that I was the person Miss Page followed into Mrs. Webb's house and whom she heard descend the stairs during the moment she crouched behind the figure of ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... others also had got some distance away from me, and I was left pretty much alone. So I went forth on a little, looking about me, and sure enough under one of the pillars of the cloister beneath the market-house (the great green pillar, if thou mindest it), lay crouched a huge yellow lion, on the carcase of a goat, which he had knocked down, but would not fall to eating of amidst ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... twelve or thirteen years who had followed them, concealed themselves in the bushes. Whether they had been seen by the Indians or not, they had no way of knowing, but their only hope of safety now lay in absolute stillness. They crouched down together and ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... over his shoulder. Taking off his battered helmet, he threw it at the beast, hitting her on the head. She growled, then seized the helmet, playing with it for a moment as a kitten does with a ball of wool, and next instant, finding it unsatisfying, uttered a short and savage roar, ran forward, and crouched to spring, lashing her tail. I could not fire, because a bullet that would hit her must first pass ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... washstand, Dick quickly picked up the water pitcher. He returned to his window just as Tom crouched under the store window with a bottle in his left hand and his felt hat ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... afraid—"'Pollution'—'beast'? Ha! The woman's thought rises after all to the surface in her hate. For this you shall pay. Just wait." He left the room in haste, to betake himself at once to the apartments of the okugata. O'Kiku crouched on the tatami, her eyes wide open, fastened on the texture of the straw surface, saw nothing but this new and terrible position. She could not die; she could not live; and yet the tiger was at the gate, ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... his castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood; The hound all o'er was smeared with gore; His lips, his fangs, ran blood. Llewelyn gazed with fierce surprise; Unused such looks to meet, His favorite checked his joyful guise, And crouched, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... resolved to postpone the attempt till another night. At any rate, he would wait for the first gleam of day, when it would still not be impossible to escape. His great strength enabled him to climb up again to his window; still, he was almost exhausted by the time he gained the sill, where he crouched on the lookout, exactly like a cat on the parapet of a gutter. Before long, by the pale light of dawn, he perceived as he waved the rope that there was a little interval of a hundred feet between the lowest knot and the pointed ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... moment as if they must weigh eternally on the spirit of the unhappy nation. When, lo! there appears the strongest man in the history of Rome, Lucullus, and drags Italy out of the despondency in which it crouched, leads it into the ways of the world, and persuades it that the best means of forgetting the losses and ruin undergone in the civil wars, is to recuperate on the riches of the cowardly Orientals. As little by little the treasures of Mithridates, conquered by ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... would to comfort himself the hours before he could have tidings from the operating room dragged with torturing slowness. Bob, crouched in a chair in the corner of the room, dared not speak to his father. Never had he seen him so unnerved. There was no need to question the seriousness of the moment; it brooded in the tenseness of the atmosphere, in the speed with ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... months ago, more or less. The German observer, crouched up in the platform behind the trunk of a tree, or in a chimney with a loose brick in it—in a part of the world where the country cottages, peeping over the dog-rose hedges, have more broken bricks in them than whole ones—saw down a distant lane several men in strange hats. The telescope ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... reading. The critics, as we are told in this stanza, had at first 'fled' from Byron's arrow; afterwards they 'fawned on his proud feet.' In order to do this, they must have paused in their flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they must have crouched down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman, in his edition of Shelley, pointed this out.) With the words 'as they go' the image was not self-consistent: for the critics could not be 'going,' or walking away, at the same time when they were fawning on the poet's feet. This last remark assumes that the ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... prevalence of this vice, society in America appears to be in a state of constant warfare—Indian warfare, as every one is crouched, concealed, watching for an opportunity to scalp the reputation of his neighbour! They exist in fear and trembling, afraid to speak, afraid to act, or follow their own will, for in America there is no free will. When I have asked why they do not this or that, the reply has invariably ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a lighted lantern they pushed forward into the very bow of the vessel, where a small space—three cornered—was walled in. Inside was a form crouched in a corner. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... inmate scurry out and then be lost to sight in the gloom. But with the royal pyramid and its ultimate fate I had little concern; I did not even care then whether Phorenice was trapped, or whether she came out sound and fit for further mischief. I crouched by the granite throne which stood in the middle of that splendid square, and heard its stones grate together like the ends of a broken bone as it rocked ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Then she crouched down in a heap behind them, threw the cloth or veil she carried over her head, and in some way that they did not see, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... went and peered, and could descry 545 No cause for her distressful cry; But yet for her dear lady's sake I stooped, methought, the dove to take, When lo! I saw a bright green snake Coiled around its wings and neck. 550 Green as the herbs on which it couched, Close by the dove's its head it crouched; And with the dove it heaves and stirs, Swelling its neck as she swelled hers! I woke; it was the midnight hour, 555 The clock was echoing in the tower; But though my slumber was gone by, This dream it would not pass away— It ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fascinating. My two babes, collaborating with four small Sullivans, had by child magic, which is the only true magic, transformed this box into a splendid express train. The train now sped across country at such terrific speed that the small Sullivan at the throttle, an artist and a realist, crouched low, with eyes strained upon the track-head, with one hand tightly holding ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... banks were occupied for a distance of several miles by small parties of sharpshooters concealed in high dhurra, or behind an ant-hill, or crouched in high grass or bush, or in anything that would serve as a protection, it would be impossible for the Baris to approach by the favourite river-bed, without being exposed to a deadly fire from the long ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... crouched in conventional attitude by the roadside. His distress was plain; the prostrate body of a man evidence of some unusual condition. A samurai left the passing train and came up to investigate. "Ah! Robbery and murder: follow behind to the tsujiban. It is their affair." With moans and groans ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Whitey rose, and returned to where Monty was tethered, and he was not ashamed of the fact that he stumbled as he walked. But Injun still crouched out behind the boulder. There was no quivering of his nerves. The only fear he might have had was that if he returned he would be sent to the rear; and he was too wily to take a chance. So most of what followed was seen by Injun, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... his neck and trembles at his breast— As once did she who gave it—he hath set His resolute spirit to its work, and well His great soul answers to the threatning dread, Those voices from the mansions of the dead! Upon the earth, like stone, He crouched in silence; and his keen ear, prone, Kissed the cold ground in watchfulness, not fear! But soon he rose in fright, For, as the sounds grew near, He feels the accents never were of earth: They have a wilder birth Than in the council of his enemies, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... would get out in spite of him, he gave that spring out of the water, and he stood in the mouth of the cave, and he said that he would have revenge for the sight of his eye. I had but to stay there crouched the length of the night, holding in my breath in such a way that he might not feel where I was. When he felt the birds calling in the morning, and knew that the day was, he said, 'Art thou sleeping? Awake, and let out my lot of ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... inches deep. Of course, we suffered intensely from cold, the thermometer dropping to 26 deg. at 8 P.M., when a south-east wind began to blow furiously. Rain fell, mixed with sleet, for a time, and was followed by a heavy snow-storm. We lay crouched up on the top of our baggage, so as not to lie on the frozen water. When we woke in the morning our tent had half collapsed, owing to the weight of snow upon it. During the day the temperature went up and ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... is softened into poetry by distance. A half-veiled woman, bearing a bundle of herbs upon her head, is driving her goats before her. An irregular line of asses or of laden camels emerges from one hollow of the undulating road only to disappear within another. A group of peasants, crouched upon the shore, in the ancient posture of knees to chin, patiently awaits the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Its features were a boy's, and the tousled hair had a natural wave. While it crouched for warmth I felt the shock of seeing a creature about my own age grinning back at me, fishy eyed and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I saw it, just abreast of the mainmast, crouched down in the shadow of the weather rail, sneaking off forward very slowly. This time I took a good long sight before I let go. Did you ever happen to see black-powder smoke in the moonlight? It puffed out perfectly round, like a big, pale balloon, this did, and for ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... without being taken prisoner seemed impossible. As the two men fled before their foes they came to a little river crossed by a wooden bridge. It was their last hope. Instead of crossing the bridge they crept beneath it, and crouched close to the water. On came the pursuers. They made no pause. Their horses thundered across the bridge and galloped away and away, while beneath the fugitives waited breathlessly. Then when all was quiet again they crept back to the shelter of ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... three little sticks and a long creeper and I tied it up like a roll of tobacco. Once my wounds dressed, I sought for my servant, for I could not see him. I called him, there was no answer. My dogs were crouched at my feet; they appeared so innocent, the cunning creatures! and looked at me as they wagged their tails as if nothing was wrong. Finally I arose, and what should I see at twenty paces distance but the remains of my servant. ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... extended twenty feet beyond the irregular shore. The Edith went first, headed upstream, at a slight angle nearly touching the wall, dropping a few inches between each restraining stroke of the oars. Bert crouched on the bow, ready to spring with the rope, as soon as Emery passed the wall and headed her in below the wall. Jumping to the shore, he took a snub around a boulder and kept her from being dragged into the rapid. Then they both caught the Defiance ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... gay, handsome, imperious young Lord de Montfort, whose proud head and gallant bearing he had looked at with a younger brother's imitative deference. What did he see but a wreck of a man, sitting crouched on the wretched bed, the left arm a mere stump, a bandage where the bright sarcastic eyes used to flash forth their dark fire, deep scars on all the small portion of the face that was visible through the over-grown masses of hair and beard, so plentifully sprinkled with white, that it would have ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... island. He would insist walking over the arched rock. "It is a fearful and dizzy height." When on the top he stumbled. My heart was in my throat; I thought he would have been hurled to the rocks below and dashed to a thousand pieces; but, like a true sailor, he crouched down, as if on a yardarm, and again arose and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... We sat down on the cliff, and looked around carefully. Presently F—— said, in a breathless whisper of intense delight, "I see him." In vain I looked and looked, but nothing could my stupid eyes discover. "Lie down," said F—— to me, just as if I had been a dog. I crouched as low as possible, whilst F——settled himself comfortably flat on his stomach, and prepared to take a careful aim at the opposite ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Ten yards out in the stream Tommy Ashe's red canoe drifted, and Tommy sat in the stern, his wet paddle poised as if he had halted it midway of a stroke, his body bent forward, tense as that of a beast crouched ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spring it had roared; now it only purred. But all the while I felt in it a dreadful economy of force, just as I have since felt it in the presence of a great lean jungle-cat at the zoo. Here was a thing that crouched and purred—a mewing but terrific thing. Give it an obstacle to overcome—fling it something to devour; and lo! the crushing impact ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... drops directly into the window. I crouched down out of sight, and the next moment ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... north-east to Catterpillar Valley in which our batteries had spent a bitter punishing time during the third week of July 1916. The hut contained four wire beds and a five-foot shaft in one corner, where a solitary telephonist crouched uncomfortably at his task. The hut was so cramped for space that one had to shift the table—a map-board laid upon a couple of boxes—in order to ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... at lightning, but now, perhaps because her whole being was overwrought and strung, she started and crouched down with a sense of awe strangely unlike ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Innerarity said, was out, but would certainly be in in a few minutes, and she was persuaded to take a chair against the half-hidden door at the bottom of the shop with the little borrowed maid crouched at ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... far less suspicious than when they are near to civilization. If these honkers suspected anything at all now, they did no more than occasionally lift their heads and crane their long necks around. They could see nothing, because their pursuers were all crouched low beneath ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... edge of the flat stone under the seat, was crouched—with a writing-table near to him, a bundle of papers on his knees, and a sheet of parchment on the bundle—a secretary, in a round wig, with a pen in his hand, in the attitude of a ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... all the same we obliterated ourselves as much as possible, though hardly daring to move or breathe. Not an arm's length away, their nearness oppressed us and the waves of heat which reeked from their toiling bodies sickened us. But there we crouched in our light dresses, easily seen if one had chanced to look, and separated only by an iron fence with sparse, fluttering vines from a mass of tired, quarrelsome, desperate men. Why! any of them might have run us through in a flash ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... among the tamarracks, Leverett ventured to rise to his knees. As he crouched there, peering after Quintana, a man came swiftly out of the forest behind him ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... His hands were strong and the fingers short and pressed out with much practise. He was very particular about hand position when playing. As a conductor he made many movements, and is said to have crouched below the desk in soft passages; in Crescendos he would gradually lift himself up until at the loudest parts he would rise to his full height with arms extended, even springing into the air, as though ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... still, with a terrible composure, crouched in my hiding-place, my teeth clenched, and prepared to struggle like a tigress for my life when discovered. I thought his next measure would be to light a match. I saw a lantern, I fancied, on the window-sill. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled into his shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling the stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... names of the ringleaders. But confident, apparently, of its ability to throttle the intended insurrection, it allowed two days to pass and the 16th of June, without making any arrests. Cat-like it crouched ready to spring, while it followed the unconscious movements of the principal conspirators. For Vesey and his principal officers were at that time, ignorant of the second betrayal, and therefore of the fact that they were from the 14th of June at the mercy of the police. On ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... It was a being, apparently a human being, crouched down in its narrow cage, feeding. I saw the body stooping over a quantity of coarse-looking, piled-up substance that was evidently food. It was like a man huddled up. There it squatted, happy and contented, with the minimum of air, light, and space, dully satisfied with its prisoned cage behind the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... on furtively, his head and shoulders bent. At times one could almost say he crouched as he pushed forward with long strides; now and then he even looked over his shoulder. Sweat rolled from him, he lost his hat, and the matted mane of thick yellow hair swept over his forehead and shaded his small, twinkling eyes. At times, with a vague, nearly automatic gesture, he reached his ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on the wing, and at last poised itself unusually steadily for an insect of its class. Below it, on the window sill, near the wall, with head erect, and its little basilisk eyes upturned towards the lovely fly, crouched a chameleon lizard, its beautiful body, when I first looked at it, was a bright sea-green. It moved into the sunshine, a little away from the shade of the laurel bush, which grew on the side it first appeared on, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... greatly interested to know what was inside them. Things did not interest her as they used; in some imperceptible way she had aged; some of the elasticity and youth was gone, perhaps because hope was gone. It had been dying all the summer, ever since the day when she crouched behind the chopping-block; but gently and gradually, as the year dies, with some beauties unknown in early days and little recurrent spurts of hope and youth, like the flowers that bloom into winter's lap. But it was dead now; there had come to her, as it were, a sudden frost, and, as befalls ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... are dying of hunger.[102] Girard, the priest who had withdrawn to this island rather than break his oath to the English, writes: "Many of them cannot protect themselves day or night from the severity of the cold. Most of the children are entirely naked; and when I go into a house they are all crouched in the ashes, close to the fire. They run off and hide themselves, without shoes, stockings, or shirts. They are not all reduced to this extremity but nearly all are in want."[103] Mortality among them was great, and would have been greater but ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... gold shot from the silver East, A gush of new perfume spread through the grove, The Rose drooped lower, and the impatient birds, Loosed from restraint, sang in a strain refined Of dulcet clearness, such as those young bowers Had never heard before. The beast crouched down Upon the velvet turf, the serpent's crown Flashed richer splendor, and the angel-guard Whose fearful sword gleamed by the Tree of Life, His very plumes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... college-learned men, and of women who had held themselves with a fine dignity and mild reserve in the village society, the sole heiress of what seemed a goodly property to the simple needs of the day, appealed to his reason as well as his heart. He remained until near midnight, while the old black woman crouched with the patience of a watching animal outside the door, and he wooed Dorothy Fair with ardor and delight, although her softly affectionate kisses were to Madelon Hautville's as the fall of snow-flakes to drops of warm honey. And although after ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... began to scoop the dirt by handfuls. Then he disengaged a corner of a buffalo robe; and then I saw hair catch among his fingers: yet a moment more, and the moon shone on something white. A while Secundra crouched upon his knees, scraping with delicate fingers, breathing with puffed lips; and when he moved aside, I beheld the face of the Master wholly disengaged. It was deadly white, the eyes closed, the ears and nostrils plugged, the cheeks fallen, the nose sharp as if in death; but for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Frank let out this shout. It was caused by seeing the ranchman leap from the back of his own horse and rapidly run back toward the spot where Jerry crouched, apparently too winded to get to his feet ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... upon her feet and was crouched there. Wide awake, she waited for a moment to make sure that she was not mad, or that she was not asleep or in a half-dream. In the pause, she felt the Thing draw up towards her knees, dragging its body along with tiger-like closeness, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beating of the blood in his ears, Jones heard an irregular, insistent scuffing sound. He crouched in silence while the captain crept up to a ledge and cautiously peered over, then went forward in response to the other's urgent beckoning. They looked down into a rock-basin of wild and curious beauty. To this day Average Jones remembers the luminous grace and splendor ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Besides, he had to look at the clock every few minutes, and whenever a man in a uniform appeared with a megaphone and announced the impending departure of a train Tom had heart disease, seized both bags and crouched ready for instant flight until he was assured that the word "Brimfield" was not among the list of stations enunciated through the trumpet. It was after he had sunk back with a sigh of relief on finding that a train for "Pittsburgh, Chicago and the West" ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there, and joined ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... of a sudden, May be killed, unknown to her mate, One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest, Nor returned that afternoon, nor the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... Seaton crouched over the amplifier, his jaw set and every muscle taut, his eyes leaping from one meter to another, his right hand slowly turning up the potentiometer which was driving more and ever more of the searing, torturing output of his super-power tube into that stubborn ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... crouched low behind the door, for brave as he was he did not wish these fearful creatures to see him. But soon, with a chorus of wild yells, the Phantom Cats disappeared as quickly as they had come, and all was quiet ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... had gone. Then she crouched, staring with wide, unseeing eyes into the outside dark. The man would go right away; she would not have even him to mitigate the horrible condition of aloneness ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Myrtle was crouched in the back seat, weeping; and Leslie, cool and brave in the front seat, was trembling from head to foot. This was a new road to her; at least, she had never been more than two or three miles on it, and she did not know where she would bring up. She began to wonder how long her gasoline ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... weeks. One night, when no sound broke the stillness of the house, Flore, who chanced to wake up, heard the regular breathing of human lungs outside her door, and was frightened to discover Jean-Jacques, crouched like a dog on ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... capital of one of the columns, twenty feet above the floor, a splendid leopard was crouched. He still looked surly from the blow ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... noise frightened Dan as none of his previous experiences had done. Shivering from fear as much as from cold, he crouched down beside a huge boulder in the edge of the tangle of brush that covered the bottom of the ravine. His heart pounded wildly. He was in the clutches of an unreasoning fear that some terrible Thing had seen him, and was about to seek him out. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... made a number of fictitious starts, for the sake of being overtaken again, and we made a regular game of it. At last, when he and Ally had run away, instead of running after them, we came into the garden, shut the gate, and crouched down on the ground. Presently we heard them come back and say to each other with some alarm, "Why, the gate's shut, and they're all gone!" Ally began in a dismayed way to cry out, but the Phenomenon shouting, "Open the gate!" sent an ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... had been tossed aside crouched for a spring. He launched himself forward with the awkward force of a bear. The suitcase described a whirling arc of a circle with the arm of its owner as the radius. The bag and the head of the miner came into swift impact. Like a bullock which has been ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... apex of a triangle of boys, who were ready to rush down the field the instant the ball was put into play. Dick Percy crouched behind him with extended ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... tree to tree, keeping in sight of the huntsmen, and singing all the time; while the other went and found that the bear was in his glen, crouched down in terror ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... some place of concealment, when like a demon from the earth a horseman, scarlet in war-paint appeared not a hundred yards away. Brandishing his battle-axe, he came towards me at furious speed. With weapons in hand I crouched as his horse approached; and the fool mistook my action for fear. White teeth glistened and he shrieked with derisive laughter. I knew that sound. Back came memory of Le Grand Diable standing among the shadows of a forest camp-fire, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... his back to the wall, searching the room with wide, fearful eyes. His fists were clenched. His chest rose and fell heavily with his labored breathing. His face worked with emotion. With trembling limbs and twitching muscles, he crouched like some ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... any effective resistance she had lashed him well with the riding cravache about the shoulders, hands, back and face. He wrenched himself free and crouched ready for a counter attack. But the Belgian servants intervened and tripped him up; and the German soldier—the ex-waiter from the Savoy—said that Madame was by nature so kind that there must be some good reason ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... slave woman crouched down in the middle of her bed, with the blankets drawn over her like a tent, and her eyes looking out into the darkness, waiting for the morning, and yet shrinking with terror whenever a gleam of light appeared. At last, when the morning broke, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... decided to risk it. On the side of the bank nearest our front line the ground sloped at a more abrupt angle, the distance from the trench to the outpost being about sixty yards. Rushing over the top of the parapet, I got to the edge of the grass road and crouched down. The water up to my knees, I made my way carefully along. Twice I stumbled over dead bodies. At last I reached the outpost safely, but during the last few yards I must have raised myself a little too high, for the next minute several bullets splashed ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... words left his mouth the great brute crouched to the ground. Then suddenly he sprang from it like a bird, and like a bird he travelled through the ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... fence; wondering all the while that I had never noticed the place when passing it in daylight. At last, a quarter of a mile from the road, a white house loomed before me, with the light in a front window. I opened the gate of the flower garden, and was soon crouched under the window, taking stock of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... come, Gamma-gata!" said Katipah, and she crouched and kissed the heron-wings that bound his feet; then she stood up and let ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... of dog," said Ramrod, "that prisoner with the black whiskers sabes English. Did you notice him paying strict attention to Smoky's little talk? He reminds me of a fellow that crouched behind his horse at the fight we had on the head of the Arroyo Colorado and plugged me in the shoulder. What, you never heard of it? That's so, Cushion hasn't been with us but a few months. Well, it was in '82, down ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams |
