"Coiled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rose leaves upon which all the graces smiled. But there was a canker at the heart of all this loveliness, the deadly breath of the Upas tree sometimes pierced its incense, the hidden head of a coiled asp now and then stirred the laces nestling at her breast. And the tiny asp that slept on her heart was Rumor, that she could not kill, yet whose sting meant death. And when it moved, her lips whitened with fear, but she soothed it back to the warmth of slumber and strewed lavish ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were furled and gasketed, awnings stretched, and sheets and tackles coiled harbour fashion, David Grief paced the deck and looked vainly for a flutter of life elsewhere than on the strange schooner. Once, beyond any doubt, he heard the distant crack of a rifle in the direction of the Big Rock. There were no further shots, and he ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... declined to have her hair braided, and had coiled it herself in a new way. She made ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... had an interview with President Grant my heart-history has been allowed to drag like a lazy funeral train. Before, all was bright and luminous, with beautiful aspirations; but from that time suspense has coiled around me, hope has flared up, blinked, and almost died out. I did not understand it then. It seemed to me that fickleness was in the heart ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Kelly, of Barwonleigh, in Victoria, states: "When riding past a bull-oak tree about twenty-five feet high, with either a magpie's or crow's nest on top. I noticed the nest looked very bulky, and had something red in it. On going nearer I saw a large fox coiled up ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... thing offensive in the young man's veiled, approving surveillance, Anna felt almost as if she were in flight from peril—some brand-new, delightful peril—as, now, she hurried out of range of it and sought her father where, by the after-hatch, he perched upon a great coiled cable staring, staring, staring out across the sea toward Germany, the land to which, a few days since, although his actual departure had been from English shores, his heart ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... sulky, went gloomily forward, coiled himself up under the forecastle deck, and was ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... don't seem to have been able to get air enough to breathe. And the closeness made me feel so drowsy that, to prevent myself from droppin' off to sleep, I've been obliged to keep on my feet, pacing fore and aft atween the main cabin skylight and the main riggin'. The watch have coiled theirselves away somewheres, and I don't doubt but what they're snatchin' a cat-nap—and I haven't troubled to disturb 'em, sir, for the lookout on the fo'c's'le is keepin' his ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the mad bondage of man, the creek finally returned to its ancient ways, all soiled and smirched from its toil, and coiled lazily among the broad flats and timbered spaces where the valley widened to its mouth. Here the "pay" ran out, and men were loth to loiter with the lure yet beyond. And here, as Li Wan paused to ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... alongside a little white buoy which floated on the water. The buoy was attached to a rope; that again to a chain. A mat was folded over the side of the boat and the chain drawn cautiously in and coiled without noise. Hillyard saw the two men who were hauling it in bend suddenly at their work and heave with ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... off her hat, and her hair was coiled close about her exquisite head. White and black, regular, significant, antique—like a cameo of some Greek woman, long dead. She stood by a little table, one hand on it, the other like some butterfly against ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... sudden movement of the horses the heifer was thrown. One of them dismounted, and at the command the horse backed up and kept the rope tight while the man went up to the prostrate beast and cut its throat. As soon as it had ceased struggling, they loosened their ropes and coiled them up: they came to us and pointed to the dead heifer in a way which ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... sweat glands, are situated in the subcutaneous areolar tissue, surrounded by a quantity of fat. They are small, round, reddish bodies, each of which consists of one or more fine tubes coiled into a ball, the free end of the tube being continued up through the true skin and cuticle, and opening on the surface. Each sweat gland is supplied with a cluster of capillary blood vessels which vary in size, being very large when perspiration ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... to set, we took a short stroll over to the adobe ruins. Inside the enclosure lay an enormous rattlesnake, coiled. It was the first one I had ever seen except in a cage, and I was fascinated by the horror of the round, grayish-looking heap, so near the color of the sand on which it lay. Some soldiers came and killed it. But ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... suddenly doubled her nose between her forelegs, and rolled herself into a tight ball, leaving all her long, prickly spikes outside. This was a very convenient way of avoiding danger, but the only drawback to it was that, while she was coiled up, she could see ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... cable needs attention, and perhaps the ship will have to stop for hours at a time until the fault is located. If the trouble is not in the tanks, the paying-out machinery must be metamorphosed into a picking-up apparatus, and the cable already laid will be coiled back into the hold until the fault appears, when it will be cut out and the two ends of cable spliced. After this splice grows quite cool, tests are taken, and if they prove satisfactory, we again resume our paying out, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... a deep-treed Mexican saddle, with housings of leather, grotesquely stamped: upon the pommel hung, neatly coiled, a ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... Therewith he coiled the tube of his narghileh carefully around the bowl thereof, and, rising with the same deliberation, threw upon his shoulders a white dust-cloak, then looked at me, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... twenty-foot, spring snake coiled inside the camera and ready to leap out like a jack-in-the-box when Dick squeezed the bulb. And there were others who knew and who urged Dick to get the camera and make ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... light she saw something coiled up in a corner, like a human form in the attitude of repose. It was the prisoner Egerton, fast asleep. Nature, worn out with suffering, was unconsciously enjoying for a season the bliss of oblivion. He heard not the intruders, until Marian gently touched him, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... perennius;" there were various semi-possibilities of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of spirit, a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flatheaded, variegated with dull bands, one of which partially encircled the neck like a collar,—an awful wretch to look upon, with murder ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... spiral filaments or tendrils, by means of which it can make fast to any point. When not in use, it can retract them, and stow them away in two sacs or pouches within the body, where they may be seen coiled up, through the transparent walls. The mouth is a simple opening at one pole of the globular body. No arms are needed. The beroe is spared the labour and uncertainty of the chase. As it dances gaily along, streams of water, bearing nutritive ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Junior, writes:—"I found the nest of this bird on the 2nd July at Kossoom. The nest was of the ordinary Bulbul type, but much larger, and like a very shallow saucer. The foundation was a single piece of some creeping orchid, 3 feet long, coiled round; then a lot of coils of fern, grass, and moss-roots. The nest was 4 inches in diameter on the inside, the walls 1/4 inch thick, and the cavity 1 inch deep. It was built 10 feet from the ground, in a bush in a very exposed ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... plug and turning a crank—for Buckville's central switchboard was many years behind the times—he unceremoniously lifted the operator's head-set from her coiled hair and fitted it upon his own head. Several times she spun the ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... and held there by the rigging, dashed with every roll from side to side, with all the hamper that belonged to it. The yard hung by a hair, and at every pitch, thumped against the cross-trees; while the sail streamed in ribbons, and the loose ropes coiled, and thrashed the air, like whip-lashes. "Stand from under!" and down came the rattling blocks, like so many shot. The yard, with a snap and a plunge, went hissing into the sea, disappeared, and shot its full length out again. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... knees. His breast did not heave. Near the chair on the floor, which was strewn with dried herbs, stood some flat bowls of dark liquid, which exhaled a powerful, almost suffocating, odour, the odour of musk. Around each bowl was coiled a small snake of brazen hue, with golden eyes that flashed from time to time; while directly facing Muzzio, two paces from him, rose the long figure of the Malay, wrapt in a mantle of many-coloured ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... her hand a wooden pail came through the gate of the palisade. She was bare-headed, but her wonderful dark-brown hair coiled in a shining mass was touched here and there with golden gleams where the sunshine fell upon it. Her face, browned somewhat, was yet very white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush of health. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at prayer, in green and white, kneeling at her faldstool like a painted lady on an altar tomb; he just saw the pure curve of her cheek, the coiled masses of her hair, which seemed to burn it. All the world with the lords thereof was at his feet, but this treasure which he had held and put away was denied him. By his own act she was denied. He had said Yea, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... difference of the two: 'Having entered into these three deities with this jiva-self, let me differentiate names and forms.' We therefore consider all non-sentient things to be special forms or arrangements of Brahman, as the coils are of a coiled-up ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... miles across the plains to hire a man with a team to haul them away. The teamster had much ado to drive his half-bridle-wise Indian ponies near enough to the university doorway to load his wagon. Before the threshold a huge rattlesnake lay coiled, already disputing any human claim to this kingdom ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the green barrier, and his first glance told him she was lying there still asleep; but the consciousness of another presence held him from going away. There, coiled on the ground with venomous fangs extended and eyes glittering like slimy jewels, was ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... he noticed that one was burly and clean-shaven, and wore some insignia across his shoulders. At the near side were the backs of two ladies, silken clad and slashed with crimson, their white jewelled necks visible under their coiled hair and tight square cut caps. And in the centre sat a pair, a man and a woman; and on these he fixed his eyes as the boat swept up not twenty yards away, for he knew ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... knew was nothing more than legendary lore, and in their memories there dimly floated a story of a land which grew darker and darker as one travelled towards the end of the earth and drew nearer to the place where a great serpent lay supine and coiled round the whole world. Ah! then the ancients must have referred to this, where the light is so ghastly, and the woods are endless, and are so still and solemn and grey; to this oppressive loneliness, amid so much life, which is so chilling to the poor distressed heart; and the horror ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... round the treasures in a cave, as Fafnir, like a Python, lay coiled over his hoard. So constant was this habit among the dragons that gold is called Worms' bed, Fafnir's couch, Worms' bed-fire. Even in India, the cobras ... are ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... same heat in the city's empty thoroughfares. Flowers rioted in the unkept gardens. The cicada's frying note fried hotter than ever. Dazzling thunder-heads towered in the upper blue and stood like snow mountains of a vaster world. The very snake coiled in the shade. The spiced air gathered no freshness from the furious, infrequent showers, the pavements burned the feet, and the blue "Yank" (whom there no one dared call so by word or look), so stoutly clad, so uncouthly misfitted, slept at noon face downward in the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... of his father hung at his left hip, his bow and his quiver of arrows were slung across his shoulders, while around his chest over one shoulder and beneath the opposite arm was coiled the long grass rope without which Tarzan would have felt quite as naked as would you should you be suddenly thrust upon a busy highway clad only in a union suit. A heavy war spear which he sometimes carried in one hand and again slung by a thong about his neck so that it hung down his back completed ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some time later the little gutter rat who, a few hours before, had brought the two thugs back to Balcom and Old Meg was coiled ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... his taste!" said M'Nicholl; "mine at present is certainly to turn in!" and suiting the action to the word, he coiled himself on the sofa, and in a few minutes his deep regular breathing showed his slumber to be ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... toward a point fifteen thousand miles off-planet and over the sunset line. The Space Scourge bore the device of a mailed fist clutching a comet by the head; it looked more like a whisk broom than a scourge. The Lamia bore a coiled snake with the head, arms and bust of a woman. Valkanhayn and Spasso were taking their time about screening back, and he began to wonder if they weren't maneuvering the Nemesis into a cross-fire position. He mentioned this to Harkaman and ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... deny their faith. Devised originally for more timorous and less conscientious infidels who were often disposed to skulk in obscure places and to renounce without really abandoning their errors, it was provided with a set of venomous familiars who glided through every chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside. The secret details of each household in the realm being therefore known to the holy office and to the monarch, no infidel or heretic could escape discovery. This invisible machinery was less requisite for the Netherlands. There was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... maintained a smiling front. They laid down poison for the rats, who died horribly in inaccessible places, making her wonder if they were not almost preferable alive. And then one night she discovered a small snake coiled in a corner ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... instantly the object of his visit—and instantly he whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon her head; there wasn't any need of rouge for color in the oval face; the dark eyes were soft and deep and glorious; and she sat there in a little white muslin frock as dainty as a ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... serpent head with wide slavering mouth and beady eyes swayed there directly behind her. Pendant, it was, on a scaly and slimy length of undulating body that coiled high above in the matted growths of the jungle. As he watched, rooted to the spot, the great head drew back and poised, vibrating, ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... of her form. One could not but suspect that age would burden her with a certain corpulence, but now she was graceful and alert. Her brown skin had an exquisite translucency and her eyes were magnificent. Her black hair, very thick and rich, was coiled round her head in a massive plait. When she smiled in a greeting that was charmingly natural, she showed teeth that were small, even, and white. She was certainly a most attractive creature. It was easy to see that the captain was madly in love with her. He could ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... have a clever father, a stealthy, cunning, merciless father, soft-winged, foul-eyed, hungry-taloned, flitting noiselessly in circles, that grew ever and ever narrower, sure, and unfaltering to the final triumphant swoop! Or no—Rather a coiled and quiescent father, horrible-eyed, lying in slimy rings at the foot of the tree, basilisk gaze fixed upward, while the enthralled bird fluttered hopelessly down, twig by twig, ever nearer ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... statue of the great goddess with head thrown back. The flame of the torch like a serpent of fire coiled and uncoiled like a living thing, and lit up the band of gold which circled her head, and shone on her mantle of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... pursued Oddity very quietly, "that Will Grange, my master, was going to London, to be married to the young woman whom he had spoken of as Mary. We travelled to the city together, I snugly sleeping, coiled up in his pocket." ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... and anyone wishing to sleep had to make himself a bed with his own horse-gear and toggery as best he could. The experience was nothing new to me, so I soon made myself a comfortable nest on the floor, and, pulling off my boots, coiled myself up like an opossum that knows nothing better and is friendly with fleas. My friends, however, were evidently bent on making a night of it, and had taken care to provide themselves with three or four bottles of rum. After ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... world was asleep, the Snake crept into the Prince's bedroom, and coiled round his neck. The Prince slept on, and when he awoke in the morning, he was surprised to find his neck encircled with the coils of a snake. He was afraid to stir, so there he remained, until the Prince's mother became anxious and went to see what was the matter. When she entered his room, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... a rattle-snake was coiled up inside that tunnel! A burro wouldn't smell it, and it could crawl out during the night and take a good straight ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... envious of her kind described as "heavenly." It was broad and wholesome and genuine. There was a flash of white, even teeth between warm red lips, a gleam of merriment in the half-closed eyes, a gay tilt to the bare, shapely head. Her dark hair was coiled neatly, and the ears were exposed. He liked her ears. He remembered them as he had seen them in the afternoon, fairly large, shapely and close to the head. No need for her to follow the prevailing fashion ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... hardly a lover. Like the speaker of Pauline he is preoccupied with an intense self-consciousness, the centre of his own imaginative creations, and claiming supremacy over these. He craves some means of impressing himself upon the world, some means of deploying the power that lies coiled within him, not through any gross passion for rule but in order that he may thus manifest himself to himself at the full. He is as far as possible removed from that type of the worshipping spirit exhibited in Aprile, and in the poet ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... in the hall-door as he went out—the first time such a thing had been done during our stay on the cape. Ugly coiled himself up on the horsehair sofa in the dining-room, and in half an hour more, I suppose, every soul in the old house ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... The rain had already drenched him, and after slipping down the muddy slope, he had frequently been obliged to grope his way upon all fours. So those dry leaves proved a boon such as he had not dared to hope for. They dried him somewhat, serving as a blanket in which he coiled himself after his wild race through the dank darkness. The rain still fell, but he now only felt it on his head, and, weary as he was, he gradually sank into deep slumber beneath the continuous drizzle. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the eggs with a coiled wire beater. They must be quite stiff when done. Add the sugar, a teaspoon at a time, while whisking. Or separate the yolks and whites, beating the yolks and sugar together and whisking the whites on a plate with a knife before adding to the ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... a Frauenzimmer haff we here!" retorted Golden Beard, losing his patience and catching her by the arm. "Go out und fix for us our ladder und keep it coiled on the rail und lean ofer it like you was looking at ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... carefully sliding a small block connected to the instruments up and down the coiled wire which formed the tuning apparatus, and brought the sending and receiving ends into harmony just as if they had been two musical instruments. When the right electric "chord" was struck he should be able to hear, just as in wireless he would be able to catch the message of an instrument ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... are heartily glad when reason returns to her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life, when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... rope is held coiled in the left hand, while the noose is circled above the head with the right, and thrown when the proper swing ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... happen to have an unusual amount of hair, make it count, even though the fashion be to wear but little. We recall the beautiful and unique Madame X. of Paris, blessed by the gods with hair like bronze, heavy, long, silken and straight. She wore it wrapped about her head and finally coiled into a French twist on the top, the effect closely resembling an old Roman helmet. This was design, not chance, and her well-modeled features were the sort to stand the severe coiffure, Madame's husband, always at her side that season on Lake Lucerne, was curator of the Louvre. We often wondered ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... bubble, and a dusky red streak in the water, was all that ensued. Presently, however, Juno's glossy black head emerged from the water; and, to my delight, began to make rapid progress toward me, and landed safely. The poor brute, wet and shivering, coiled herself up at my feet, with her bright hazel eyes fixed on mine with ineffable satisfaction. Poor Juno subsequently fell a victim to the Muggers, when her master was not at hand to succor her. I mention ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... fur rug over him," she requested; and her companion pulled it from under their feet, and laid it over the coiled-up legs ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... another. I helped the fire to the very vitals of the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice was over, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glow gave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across the charred sheets and vanished at the margins, and only the ashes of my inspiration remained. The ink was a lustrous black on the dull blackness of the burnt paper. I could still read this much of my indiscretion ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... many acquaintances with furtive folk. I like to see hawks sitting daunted in shallow holes, not daring to spread a feather, and doves in a row by the prickle-bushes, and shut-eyed cattle, turned tail to the wind in a patient doze. I like the smother of sand among the dunes, and finding small coiled snakes in open places, but I never like to come in a wind upon the silly sheep. The wind robs them of what wit they had, and they seem never to have learned the self-induced hypnotic stupor with which most wild things endure weather stress. I have never heard ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... eyes had life in them for a nation—large, and dark with a darkness ever deepening as I gazed. A whole night-heaven lay condensed in each pupil; all the stars were in its blackness, and flashed; while round it for a horizon lay coiled an iris of the eternal twilight. What any eye IS, God only knows: her eyes must have been coming direct out of his own! the still face might be a primeval perfection; the live eyes were a ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... men came by sea. Two hundred ships lay at anchor in the fiord, looking like strange swimming animals because of their high carved prows and bright paint. There were red and gold dragons with long necks and curved tails. Sea-horses reared out of the water. Green and gold snakes coiled up. Sea-hawks sat with spread wings ready to fly. And among all these curved necks stood up the tall, straight masts with the long yardarms swinging across ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... endangered as all of them were, in spite of the volcanic outburst of the startled North which answered the roar of the first gun at Sumter? Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that in the very bosom of the North itself there was a serpent, coiled but not sleeping, which only listened for the first word that made it safe to strike, to bury its fangs in the heart of Freedom, and blend its golden scales in close embrace with the deadly reptile of the cotton-fields. Who would not wish that he were wrong in such a suspicion? yet ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... great fiddle-head lost in their midst. And at the first jump Tresler shot a foot out of the saddle, lurched forward and then back, and finally came down where he had started from. And as he fell heavily into the saddle his hand struck against a coiled blanket strap behind the cantle, and he instinctively grabbed hold of it and clung to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... appearance in a kind of Hungarian or Polish costume; for the November weather was chilly, and unusually so that day. She wore a tightly fitting velvet gown, with sable-edged tunic, reaching to the knee; and her hair was loosely coiled beneath a large hat, also trimmed with ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... flinging out to Carmen as he paced back and forth in her parlor. It was very unlike him, this outburst, and Carmen knew that he would indulge in it to no one else, not even to Uncle Jerry. She was coiled up in a corner of the sofa, her eyes sparkling with admiration of his indignation and force. I confess that he had been irritated by the comments of the newspapers, and by the prodding of the lawyers in the suit then on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... herself dressing leisurely, enjoying to the fullest the feel of the rich goods. She shook her hair free, dried it as best she could, and took some pains to put it up nicely. It was long and glossy black, but not inclined to curl. It coiled about her head in ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... combined the human and bestial characteristics of the minotaur is most remarkable and a similar triumph is won in the hippogriff—the winged horse, with forefeet of claws and beaked nose, which leaps so swiftly over the coiled-shape of the dolphin-serpent, which serves for his pedestal—bearing upon his back the charming, nude figure of Angelica held in the mail-clad arms of Ariosto's hero. To this category seems to belong the "Ape riding a Gnu," the forms, however, being true to ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... would exchange for mine, the work and the gift of one of the most imaginative of American artists, the late Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad sunlight in a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name is coiled around him, with the motto, Gravis cantantibus umbra. I will not presume to translate this tag of an eclogue, and I only venture to mention such an uninteresting matter, that my indulgent readers may have a more vivid notion of what I call my library. Mr. Abbey's fine art is ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... prosecutor of his own children. I know of no creed believed by any tribe, not excepting the tribes where cannibalism is practiced, that is more heartless, more inhuman than this. To find that the creed is false is like being roused from a frightful dream, in which hundreds of serpents are coiled about you, in which their eyes, gleaming with hatred, are fixed on you, and finding the world bathed in sunshine and the songs of birds in your ears and ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... forth: its thinness hidden by no covering, but fully exposed to view, in all its shrunken ugliness. There were some who, lying on their backs with upturned faces and clenched hands, just visible in the leaden light, bore more the aspect of dead bodies than of living creatures; and there were others coiled up into strange and fantastic postures, such as might have been taken for the uneasy efforts of pain to gain some temporary relief, rather than the freaks of slumber. A few—and these were among the youngest ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... quickly)—Wait!— Wait till, like me, your hopes are blighted[178] till Sorrow and Shame are handmaids of your cabin— Famine and Poverty your guests at table; Despair your bed-fellow—then rise, but not From sleep, and judge! Should that day e'er arrive— 110 Should you see then the Serpent, who hath coiled Himself around all that is dear and noble Of you and yours, lie slumbering in your path, With but his folds between your steps and happiness, When he, who lives but to tear from you name, Lands, life itself, lies at your mercy, with Chance your conductor—midnight for your mantle— ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... went to bed; but what he thought next morning when Maria Nikolaevna knocked impatiently at his door with the coral handle of her riding-whip, when he saw her in the doorway, with the train of a dark-blue riding habit over her arm, with a man's small hat on her thickly coiled curls, with a veil thrown back over her shoulder, with a smile of invitation on her lips, in her eyes, over all her face—what he thought ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... cat, a creature with a perfect time sense, regarding him uneasily as if to remind him of their common convenience and to reproach him for not having prepared the couch. Durtal arranged the pillows and pulled back the coverlet, and the cat jumped to the foot of the bed but remained humped up, tail coiled beneath him, waiting till his master was stretched out at length before burrowing a little hollow to curl ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... dyeing is as follows: The bunches of tikug are coiled and placed in a can of hot dye, where they are boiled from two to ten minutes, or until the desired intensity has been secured. The more the straw is boiled, the more nearly permanent will be the color and the greater will be its intensity. Care must be taken to see that ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... Yesterday is dead, Now forever must it stay Coiled about your head, Tell me Whence the great Command Hitherward has sped. "Silly boy, as if ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... partners and made his way out of the ballroom. This was his first relaxation since landing in the North. It was well not to become a dull boy, he mused, and as he chewed his cigar he pictured with an odd thrill, quite unusual with him, that slender, gray-eyed girl, with her coiled mass of hair, her ivory shoulders, and merry smile. He saw her float past to the measure of a two-step, and caught himself resenting the thought of another man's enjoyment of the girl's ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... flickering in the candled dusk. Lawford turned his head and saw Sheila's coiled, beautiful ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... standing on the pier at Peter Churchtown intently watching what was going on beneath him on the deck of the Pretty Ruth, where our friend Will was busy at work over a brown fishing-line contained in two baskets, in one of which, coiled round and round, was the line with a hook at every six feet distance, and each hook stuck in the edge of the basket; in the other the line was being carefully coiled; but as Will took a hook from the edge of one basket, he deftly baited it with a bit of curiously tough gelatinous-looking half transparent ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... in marriage. See was his mother's favourite bedfellow, and she would not part with her. The King became angry, and to soothe him his mother told him that it was purely out of regard for him and his children that she refused to part with this young woman; that she had a "sampun," or the coiled figure of a snake in the hair on the back of her neck. No man, will purchase a horse with such a mark, or believe that any family can be safe in which a horse or mare with such a mark is kept. His ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... quickly spies any person approaching towards him, and winds his course out of the way into some thicket or concealed place. The greatest danger is, when we inadvertently trample upon him as he lies coiled among the long grass or thick bushes. On each side of his upper jaw he has two long fangs, which are hollow, and through which he injects the poison into the wound they make. When he penetrates a vein or nerve sudden death ensues, unless some effectual remedy be instantly applied. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... they form great caverns and caves, overhung with creepers, and so blocked up at the entrance, that it is difficult to find the way into them. The effect of the alternate darkness and light, amid twisted creepers, some like gigantic snakes, others neatly coiled in true man-of-war fashion, is very striking and fantastic. Every crevice is full of ferns and orchids and curious plants, while moths and butterflies flit about in every direction. Imagine, if you can, scarlet butterflies gaily spotted, yellow butterflies with orange edgings, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... good authority that a lady, who during her pregnancy was struck with the unpleasant view of leeches applied to a relative's foot, gave birth to a child with the mark of a leech coiled up in the act of suction on ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... owned by the same family. When I was a little girl a woman kept the shop. She was very tall, very thin, with quantities of black hair braided and wound round and round her head. She wore always a Paisley shawl of faded colors, and her hair coiled as it was made me think always of ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... Her complexion had lost by out-door life something of its delicacy, but had gained a freshness and firmness that no sunlight could impair. She had that wealth of hair which young girls find the most enviable point of beauty in each other. Hers reached below her knees, when loosened, or else lay coiled, in munificent braids of gold, full of sparkling lights and contrasted shadows, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... weird Druid held his mistletoe; There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright, The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low; And there the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... way, there was another sound. It proceeded from the cabin where our three friends lay sleeping on the sofas. The sound was that of snoring, and it issued from the wide-open mouth of Sam Sorrel, who lay sprawling on his back, with Tittles coiled up at his feet. ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... banjo, and it appeared that she must have said so to Francis in those first days. "He must have dashed home and made out lists every night!" she concluded as she dragged it out. It was unstrung, but new strings lay near it, coiled in their papers. And under the papers, so like them that he had forgotten to destroy ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... can tell it, Pierre Radisson had sprung upon him. The Frenchman's left arm had coiled the fellow round the waist. Our leader's pistol flashed a circle that drove the rabble back, and the ringleader went hurling head foremost through the main hatch with force like to flatten his skull to a gun-wad. There was a mighty scattering back ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... livelong evening something keeps getting wrong with that wretched pipe; mine host himself is continually rearranging the little pile of live coals on top of the dampened tobacco (the tobacco smoked in a nargileh is dampened, and live coals are placed on top), taking off the long coiled tube and blowing down it, or prying around in the tobacco receptacle with an awl-like instrument in his efforts to make it draw properly, but without making anything like a success; while his nargileh-boy is constantly hovering over it with a new supply of live coals. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... jumped overboard, with the desperate intention of swimming ashore. Just as they were about to give up the search, a noise was heard that seemed to come from a bureau in the ladies' cabin. Search was made, and there, coiled up in a narrow bureau-drawer, lay the leader of the band. He had been there two hours, and was helpless from cramp and exhaustion. He was placed in a cell at Fort Lafayette; but later, having been given the privilege of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... impossible to judge whether fairly solid soil or oozy murk lay before them. Often they went down to their waists. Sometimes the children fell and were dragged up again by the stronger. Now and then rattle snakes coiled and hissed, and the women killed them with sticks. Other serpents slipped away in the slime. Everybody was plastered with mud, and they became mere images ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his feet. A savage light of triumph blazed in his eyes. The enemy for whom he had long sought was delivered into his hands. He ran back to the bronco and untied the reata from the tientos. Deftly he coiled the rope and adjusted the loop to suit him. Again he stole to the rim rock and waited with the stealthy, deadly patience of the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... Any one of the fat cables that lurk under the floor in a {dinosaur pen}. Possibly so called because they display a ferocious life of their own when you try to lay them straight and flat after they have been coiled for some time. It is rumored within IBM that channel cables for the 370 are limited to 200 feet because beyond that length the boas get dangerous — and it is worth noting that one of the major cable makers uses the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... replied Wyatt in tones that he sought to make indifferent, "but a start. I nearly trod on a rattlesnake that lay coiled ready to strike, and I got away just ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... violence, continued throughout the day. An inmate of an alarming description took up its lodging in our tent during the last night, probably washed out of its hole by the rain: a large diamond snake was discovered coiled up among the flour bags, four or five feet from ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... toward a great land of sagebrush, of buttes humping their backs against the brilliant sky. Down the valley they rode, trotting, walking, galloping, till, turning westward, they mounted a sharp slope and came up above the plain. Below, in the heart of the long, narrow valley, the river coiled and wandered, divided and came together again into a swift stream, amongst aspen islands and willow swamps. Beyond this strange, lonely river-bed, the cottonwoods began, and, above them, the pine forests massed themselves and strode up the foothills ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... main strength up the rapids. The "skiff," as they whimsically termed the steamboat's great, clumsy tender—its official name of "sturgeon-head" was more descriptive—was brought alongside; and a half-mile of hawser, more or less, patiently coiled in the bottom. The end of this rope was made fast on board the steamer, and the skiff, pushing off, was poled and tracked up the rapids with heart-breaking labour, paying out the hawser over her stern as she went. The ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the body. The great impetus we had when we 15 reached the whale, carried us a long way past him, out of all danger from his struggles. No hindrance was experienced from the line by which we were connected with the whale, for it was loosely coiled in a space for the purpose in the boat's bow, to the extent of two hundred feet, and this was 20 cast overboard by the harpooner as soon as ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the two boys, creeping stealthily about the room, quickly huddled on their clothes. Then they went on tiptoe down the stairs, which creaked under their guilty footsteps as though they cried "Stop thief!" and on through the wide, silent hall, where Snuff the terrier, coiled on his mat, looked at them with an air of sleepy surprise, but ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... that room of the University was the birthplace of the Recording Telegraph," said Morse years later. On September 2, 1837, a successful experiment was made with seventeen hundred feet of copper wire coiled around the room, in the presence of Alfred Vail, a student, whose family owned the Speedwell Iron Works, at Morristown, New Jersey, and who at once took an interest in the invention and persuaded his father, Judge Stephen Vail, to advance money ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... the little boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay- sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches, oaks, most numerous;—many of them hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. Rocks scattered about,—Stonehenge-like monoliths. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... well uttered, the mast doubled up and coiled like a whip-lash, there was a report like the crack of doom, and half of the thing crashed short over the bows, dragging the heavy sail ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... another Indian of the party who had come up took from his bag a small piece of white wood, which resembled a root, and passed it gently near the head of the cobra, which the latter immediately inclined close to the ground; he then lifted the snake without hesitation, and coiled it into a circle at the bottom of his basket. The root by which he professed to be enabled to perform this operation with safety he called the Naya-thalee Kalinga (the root of the snake-plant), protected by which he professed his ability to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... as they would, they could never teach him to steer. To him the compass must have been a profound and awful whirligig. He never mastered its cardinal points, much less the checking and steadying of the ship on her course. He never did come to know whether ropes should be coiled from left to right or from right to left. It was mentally impossible for him to learn the easy muscular trick of throwing his weight on a rope in pulling and hauling. The simplest knots and turns were beyond his comprehension, while he was mortally afraid ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... stilled lightning her fair face. I saw her by the river, Her hair dressed with jasmine, Plaited like a coiled snake. O friend, I will tell you The secret of my heart. With her darting glances And gentle smiles She made me wild with love. Throwing and catching a ball of flowers, She showed me to the full Her youthful form. Uptilted breasts Peeped from her dress. Her ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... bright blue eyes that beamed with gaiety, glee, and good-humour, the effect of the most exuberant animal spirits. His head was covered with a singular profusion of light-brown hair, which he was obliged to wear coiled up under his hat. On entering church on a Sunday (where he was all his life a regular attender) he used, on lifting his hat, to raise his right hand to assist a graceful shake of his head in laying back his long hair, which ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... finger, and he now noticed the Mexican, a vaquero, who had been crouching so low that his figure blurred with the earth. Ned saw the coiled lariat hanging over his arm, and he knew that the man intended to capture Old Jack, a ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... about an hour, and the bustle and confusion necessarily attending an entrance into port had subsided. The sails were stowed, the decks were cleared up, and the ropes were coiled. A port watch was set. The crew had received their "liberty," and there was much wondering among them whether Esquimau eyes could speak a tender welcome. Nor had the Danish flag been forgotten. That swallow-tailed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the color rose in her cheeks, and her straw bonnet (which our contemporaries might look at with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket) fell a little backward. She would perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling required the meagreness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows, never surpassed by any ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... river below, coiled his forces around Vicksburg like a boa-constrictor, and held it in his grasp. After forty-seven days of endurance the city surrendered to him. Port Hudson, after the surrender of Vicksburg, gave up the unequal contest, and the Mississippi ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... her red-brown hair, and how gracefully one of its heavy ringlets coiled upon her slender, milk-white neck. She wore a gown of shimmering grey silk, and a scarlet rose, fresh-gathered, was pinned at her breast like a splash of blood. Always thereafter when he thought of her it was as he saw her at that moment, as never, I think, until that moment ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... With the pigtail coiled inside of the lost shoe, Mell ran on. She was passing a thicket of sassafras bushes, when a sound of crying met her ears. Instantly she stopped, and, parting the bushes with her hands, peered in. There they were, sitting in a little circle ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... to hear a gray bird sing clear and loud and sweet every strain that sang other birds, was to see and hear most joyous things. Lizards were innumerable; at edge of a marsh we met with tortoises; once we passed coiled around a tree a great serpent. It looked at us with beady eyes, but the Indians said it would not harm a man. A thousand, thousand butterflies spread their ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung, A broken music, weirdly incomplete: Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung, Lies coiled in dark defeat. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... some people, hopeless devotees of a pink and white fairness, had been known to call her plain. At this moment, she was looking her worst; the heavy, blue-black lines beneath her eyes were deepened by crying; her rough hair had been hastily coiled, unbrushed; and she was wearing a shabby red blouse that was pinned across in front, where a button was missing. There was nothing young or fresh about her; she looked her twenty-eight years, every ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the well-known cognizance of the Visconti, had already coiled itself around all those fair and clustering cities which were once the Lombard republics, and had poisoned their vigorous life. The Ezzelinos, Carraras, Gonzagas, Scalas, had crushed the spirit of liberty in the neighborhood of Venice. All this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... that Bab and Mollie should go with Ruth to Washington. Bab had grown taller and more slender in the past few months. Her brown braids are now always coiled about her graceful head. Her hair was parted in the middle, although a few little curls still escaped in the old, ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... around. It was Malvina greatly changed. Beneath her hair, dressed with stern simplicity, her forehead was furrowed with a dark, deep wrinkle; the corners of her pale mouth were drooping; on the back of her head a heavy roll of hair, coiled carelessly, dropped to her dress of black material, which was almost like the robe of a religious. She stood in the descending darkness, some steps from him. She had pronounced his name, but was unable to go further. Her white hand, resting on a small table, trembled; ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... accident occurred at Outwell on the 29th ult. A child, three years old, went to play in a donkey cart, in which a rope coiled and knotted had been placed to dry. The rope was doubled the greater part of the way; and, being knotted, was full of steps or meshes; in one of these the child got his head and unfortunately falling ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... down the slope of the mound, and nearly stepped on a large rattlesnake which lay coiled up beside a palmetto root. I looked at the snake as he lay there watching me, rattling angrily all the while, and then I looked at Jim's coat which hung on a branch near by, and at the doctored rifle in my hand, and the more I looked the more wicked thoughts came into ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... knowing the names of things and the places where they were to be found; but he made fair progress, and when he had tossed the gaskets into the cockpit was ordered forward to help hoist the mainsail. After that the anchor was hove in and the jib set. Then they coiled down the halyards and put everything in order before they ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... not a new rope, but was strong save in that one spot. Ann coiled it, and although it did not have the "feel" of the fine hemp, or the good hair rope that is part of the cowman's equipment, her hands and arm tingled to lassoo some ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... been reading the Rev. F. Robertson's sermon about St. Paul and the viper. It was late, and being rather sleepy he carried the book in one hand and a candle in the other into his dressing-room, and was just going to set the candle down, when his eye fell on a cobra, coiled up on the chair on which he was about to seat himself. No stick was at hand, but he smote the snake with the book. Struck in the right place, they are not difficult to kill. So "St. Paul and the Viper" put an end to the cobra. That the bite of this snake ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... saw-mill whirred at their feet. A swarm of bees filled the air! Priscilla, intent upon David, had not noticed the flat surface of the rock where the sun lay warm and bright. Warned by the strange sound, her terrified eyes saw the snake, coiled and ready to spring! She had a fleeting vision of a flat, cruel head, and a thousand diamond-shaped yellow dots as she grasped little David by the neckband and pulled him from the rocks to the corral. It was a rattlesnake! The brakeman's prophecy had come true! In spite ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... deep lounge half turned toward the fire a girl in white was lying fast asleep. It was Christine. Her dark hair was all gathered loosely back and coiled in a large knot low down against her fair throat, from which the white lace of her gown fell backward, leaving its beautiful pureness bare. There was a charming air of foreign taste and fashioning ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still. Far and near the view suggested the same dreary impressions of solitude and decay, and the glorious brightness of the summer sky overhead seemed only to deepen and harden the gloom and barrenness of the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... proceeded to fix a hide rope to the handles of the knives, and having made it fast about his body with a running noose, he coiled its length, which may have measured some thirty feet, round and round his middle, artfully concealing its bulk together with the knives beneath his cloak ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... on the kindness of their neighbours; it was old Shesheet who first told me about them, and I understood that he used often to send them food or firewood. When I visited her on another cold day in October, accompanied by my wife, we found her coiled up in her rags moaning with pain, and only a few dying embers to keep her warm. Little Willie was coiled up asleep in a sheepskin. While we stood, Willie roused up out of his nest, and came to see ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... stronger brother, determined to keep the whole treasure to himself; and not only that, but he threatened that unless Regin went off he would share his father's fate. Regin fled for his life, and his brother assumed the form of a dragon, in which shape he lay on the Glistening Heath, coiled round his store of gold and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... hands; then he passed the left knee through the right arm, so as to let the knee rest in the elbow; then he passed the right knee over the instep of the left foot, and letting go his left hand, he grasped his right foot with it. Thus he hung, suspended by his right hand, and coiled up like a ball. After hanging thus for a couple of minutes, he caught the bar by his other hand, and, uncoiling himself, brought his feet between his arms and allowed them to drop till they nearly touched the ground. Then he turned back the same way. Once more lifting himself up, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... handspike came down upon his head, and he dropped senseless; but the noise roused up the other, and I dealt him a blow more severe than the first. I then threw down my weapon, and, perceiving the deep-sea lead-line coiled up on the reel, I cut off sufficient, and in a short time had bound them both by the hands and feet. They groaned heavily, and I was afraid that I had killed them; but there was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Alpine rope was coiled across one of the strong shoulders clad in rough tweed, and that the great stout boots were strikingly trimmed with huge ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... happiness without aroused no responsive quiver in Collins's heart. It hung within him, a leaden weight coiled with bitterness and hate. His mind was a blazing furnace of furious resentment, emitting sparks of rage that kindled other fires in the storehouse of his emotions, until his temper seemed to reflect the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... coral—rugged, sea-stained and rotten. But the variety under notice takes a higher place in the deceptive art, for it seems to pose as an understudy to one of the most nimble and vicious habitants of the sea—the banded snake. It lies coiled and folded among the stones and coral of the reef, or partially hidden by brown seaweed, which heightens its momentary effect upon the nerves of the barefooted Beachcomber. Its length is from 4 ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... None, save in its latest refuge— Seek it only in the grave! Love may die, and hatred slumber, And their memory will decay, As the watered garden recks not Of the drought of yesterday; But the dream of power once broken, What shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies Coiled around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!— What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied As a wasted cripple's knee! ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... me just describe a curious print of the year 1837 which lies before me as I write. It is headed "The Contrast," and is divided into two panels. On your left hand is a young girl, simply dressed in mourning, with a pearl necklace and a gauzy shawl, and her hair coiled in plaits, something after the fashion of a crown. Under this portrait is "Victoria." On the other side of the picture is a hideous old man, with shaggy eyebrows and scowling gaze, wrapped in a military cloak with fur collar and black stock. Under this portrait is "Ernest" ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... we seem to be most in danger. Both sides of this apparent contradiction were lately verified in my experience. Passing from the greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so many in our retinue) looking with fixed attention at something, which lay on the threshold of a door, coiled up. I took but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when behold—a viper! the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... useful garment were neat, were even exquisite; but then, Aunt Raby was not gifted with a stylish cut. Prissie's hair was smoothly parted, but the thick plait on the back of the neck was by no means artistically coiled. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... and though I never cared for him in that way at all, and never could, I felt that he was a very good friend and that his constancy demanded some return on my part—my friendship and sympathy at least; but now I shiver whenever he is near me, just as I would were I to find a snake coiled close beside ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... said, "must have slid down the doubled rope which had been passed through the staple of the window, and then when the ground was reached have pulled it away, coiled it up, carried it to the lake, and thrown it in. Obviously that was the procedure and it accounts completely ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... before the deck was washed, the ropes coiled down, and everything ship-shape. By the time all was done, the low coast of Norfolk had sunk below the horizon, and the smack was far out at sea. There was more motion now, but the wind ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... stood up against the mist-veiled sky. The sunlight had turned to an ominous copper glow. And in that moment Olga was afraid, with that sick apprehension of evil that comes upon occasion even to the brave. She gave no sign of it, but it was coiled like a serpent about her ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... their wisest sage; that a third would strike lifeless to the dust their most stalwart champion; that tears and laughter, vigour and disease, madness and reason, wakefulness and sleep, existence and dissolution, were coiled up in those unregarded leaves,—would they not have held him a sorcerer or a liar? To half the virtues of the vegetable world mankind are yet in the darkness of the savages I have supposed. There are faculties within us with which certain herbs have affinity, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
