"Claw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brittle iron. Yet nature will not give us pure iron. She always gives it to us mixed with the stuff that weakens it—this dross and brimstone. Nature hands out no bonanzas, no lead-pipe cinches to mankind. Man must claw for everything he gets, and when he gets it, it is mixed with dirt. And if he wants it clean, he'll have to clean it with the labor of his hands. "Why can't we have a different system than this?" I heard a theorist complain. "I'll bite," I said. "Why can't we?" And I went ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... learning new phases of the "Christian Dispensation" at every turn in his road. Paris had held him fascinated for a long while, not only because he saw her doom written like that of Babylon in letters of fire, and Ruin, like a giant bird of prey hovering over her with beak and claw prepared to pick the very flesh from her bones,—but also because he had met Angela Sovrani, one of the most rarely- gifted types of womanhood he had ever seen. He recognised her genius at once, and marvelled at it. And still more did he marvel ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... place suddenly to crazy rage. With an outburst of bloodcurdling curses, he flung himself upon her. She thought to avoid him, but he was as quick as a cat and as wiry and strong as a terrier. Before she could leap aside, his claw-like hands were tangled in her coat and he was dragging ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... a rather claw-like little hand for Nan to shake, and the unexpectedly tense and energetic grip of it was somewhat surprising. She was a small, dark creature with bright, restless brown eyes set in a somewhat sallow face—its sallowness ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... by the lamp. He seized them and examined them carefully. This man was short and slight, was dressed in well-made cloth clothes; his hair was held in at the nape of the next in a modish manner with a black taffeta bow. His hands were clean, slender, and claw-like, and he wore the tricolour scarf of office round his waist which proclaimed him to be a member of one of the numerous Committees which tyrannised ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... broke from Jarrold. He clutched her shoulder with a great claw of a hand and drew her closer to him, his face ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... murderous guns. I cannot discern the origin of the pseudo-Oriental legend which declares that the "crow of the wilderness" (raven) taught Cain to bury his brother by slaying a brother crow, and scraping a grave for it with beak and claw. The murderous bird then perched upon a palm-tree, whose branches, before erect, have ever drooped, and croaked the truth into Adam's ear: hence it has ever been of evil augury to mankind. The hoopoe, which the French absurdly ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... it raised my "grit," and I never flinched a bit, And my nerves they got as strong as steel or brass; And when I fired again I was sure that I had hit, For I saw the skulking devil "claw ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... first heavy sea she sticks her nose into'll claw off half that scroll-work, and the next will finish it. If she's meant for a pleasure-ship give me my draft again, and I'll porture you a pretty, light piece of scroll-work, good cheap. If she's meant for the open—sea, pitch the draft into the fire. She can never ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... lay inert, following its wobbly course with half-shut eyes—then, lithe as a panther, he leaped up and took after it. There was a rush and a scramble against the wall, but just as he struck out his barbed claw a hand closed over the mouse and the little man on the bench whisked ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... also found bears by noticing small "signs." On one occasion he noticed a fresh scratch in the bark of a tree, evidently made by a bear's claw, and on the other he found a single black hair sticking to the bark of a tree, which told him that a bear had ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... in the camp a stage of planks, and performing thereon a rude mystery-play. The play thus improvised by a handful of troopers before this motley invading army: before the feudal cavalry of Burgundy, strange steel monsters, half bird, half reptile, with steel beaked and winged helmets and claw-like steel shoes, and jointed steel corselet and rustling steel mail coat; before the infantry of Gascony, rapid and rapacious with their tattered doublets and rag-bound feet; before the over-fed, immensely plumed, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... cut Harry's jacket-tail off, though, and when Effie had tried for some time she saw that this was so and gave it up. But with her help Harry managed to wriggle quietly out of his sleeves, so that the dragon had only an Eton jacket in his other claw. Then the children crept on tiptoe to a crack in the rocks and got in. It was much too narrow for the dragon to get in also, so they stayed in there and waited to make faces at the dragon when he felt rested enough to sit up and begin to think ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... degrees. It is found widely scattered among the barefoot mountain tribes of northern Luzon. The people say it is due to mountain climbing, and their explanation is probably correct, as the great toe is used much as is a claw in securing a footing on the slippery, steep trails during the rainy reason. Fa'-wing occurs quite as commonly with women as with men, and in Ambuklao, Benguet Province, I saw a boy of 8 or 9 years whose great toes were spread half as much as those ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... gat him in your thrall, An' brak him out o' house an' hall, While scabs and blotches did him gall Wi' bitter claw, An' lowsed his ill-tongued ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... of time! (Bows to the ground before his father.) Father, dear father, forgive me too,—fiend that I am! You told me from the first, when I took to bad ways, you said then, "If a claw is caught, the bird is lost!" I would not listen to your words, dog that I was, and it has turned out as you said! Forgive me, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... 21:39), and he dismisses the animals abruptly (1 Cor. 9:9); he has hardly an allusion to the familiar and homely aspects of Nature, so frequent and so pleasant in the speech of Jesus. He finds Nature, if not quite "red in tooth and claw", yet groaning together, subject to vanity, in bondage to corruption, travailing in pain, looking forward in a sort of desperate hope to a freedom not yet realized (Rom. 8:19-24). Nature is far less tragic for Jesus, far happier—perhaps because he knew nature ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... pointed, the muzzle furnished with long slender hairs; the fore, as well as hind legs, from the knees downward, almost naked, and ash-coloured; on the fore feet are five claws, and on the hind, four and a thumb without a claw; the tail, for about an inch and an half from the root, covered with hairs of the same length as those on the body, from thence to the end with long ones not unlike that of a squirrel. The specimen from which the above account was taken, is a ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... little bones Of my bosom; till a trance God sends in middle of that dance, And I behold the countenance Of Michael, and can feel no more The bitter east wind biting sore My naked feet; can see no more The crayfish on the leaden floor, That mock with feeler and grim claw. ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... the whole impressing a peculiar direction on the development of parts, and the law of Epigenesis necessitating a serial development,' insomuch that, 'every part being the effect of a pre-existing, and in turn the cause of a succeeding part,' the reason why, when a crab loses its claw, the member is reproduced, is that the group of cells remaining at the stump 'is the necessary condition of the genesis' of precisely that new group which the reproductive process imperatively requires to follow next in order, this second group equally the necessary condition ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... to be considering the matter. Strange as it may seem, the giant, though afraid of nothing human and brave when it came to a hand-to-claw argument with a wild animal, had a very great fear of the water and the unseen life within it. Even a little fresh-water crab in a brook was enough to send him shrieking to shore. So when Tom told of this ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... taken completely by surprise. He staggered against the side of the door, as thin claw-like fingers found his throat and tried to stop the vital air. The fingers closed on his ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... From chin to bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, more of them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scots could observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic of scratches, claw marks, and, as it seemed, the bites of some fierce ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... unnecessary trouble, but only enough off the end where the three eyelets are, to enable it to get at the inside. Having pierced the proper eye with one of its legs it rotates the nut round it until the hole is large enough to admit the point of its great claw, with which it continues the work. This remarkable creature also climbs the palm-trees, but not to gather nuts; that is certain, for its habits have been closely watched and it has been ascertained that it feeds only on fallen nuts. Possibly it climbs for exercise, or to obtain ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... pistol away with one paw, while he stuck the claws of the other into the flesh of his antagonist, and rolled with him on the ground. Glass managed to reach his knife, and plunged it several times into the bear, while the latter, with tooth and claw, tore his flesh. At last, blinded with blood and exhaustion, the knife fell from the trapper's hand, and he became insensible. His companion, who thought his turn would come next, did not even think of reloading his rifle, and fled ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... unheeding skill that brought the slim spruces flapping to earth. Men had to jump to save themselves from being crushed. The white chips flew in the gray twilight; and Bill Brennen wondered what imp's claw had marked the skipper under the eyes ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... the roughest wind or driving rain can tear them apart. Gray, coming in dirty and tired in the evening, after a long day's work in the hayfield or carting manure, was never too tired, nor for the matter of that too dirty, to take the baby, and let it dab its fat hands on his face, or claw at his grizzled whiskers or slobber open-mouthed kisses on ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... Northern forests are huge beasts, capable of smothering a strong man by falling on him and lying there—a death which has come to more than one daring hunter. The beast's favorite method of dealing with his foe is to claw him to death, or else hug him till his ribs are snapped ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... muggy night, when the foreground of one's perspective was blurred by the murk and when there just naturally was not any background at all. Down by the Richland House a strange white man wearing a hand-colored mustache and a tiger-claw watch charm hailed Red Hoss. This person desired to be carried entirely out of town, to the south yards of the P. T. & A. Railroad, where Powers Brothers' Carnival Company was detraining from its cars with intent to pitch camp in the suburb of Mechanicsville ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... sacrifice was unperfect, and so now we have need of another. All these things must they of necessity say, unless perchance they had rather say thus, that "all law and right is locked up in the treasury of the Pope's breast," and that, as once one of his soothing pages and claw-backs did not stick to say, "The Pope is able to dispense against the Apostles;" against a council, and against the canons and rules of the Apostles: and that he is not bound to stand neither to the examples, nor to the ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... get any farther, and I was thinking of coming down; but as I made a movement, biff!... The son of a sea-cook grabs me with one of his many legs by the coat and remains there hanging from me. The cussed critter was as heavy as lead; he was already reaching up after me with another claw when I remembered that I had in my vest pocket a toothpick that I had bought in Chicago, and that it had a knife attachment; I opened this, and in a moment slashed off the tail of my coat, and cataplun! ... down from a height of at least forty metres the lobster fell ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... of a single witness, [The kind of contradiction which is here alluded to, is that which arises from well ascertained final causes; for instance, the ruminating stomach of the hoofed animals, is in no case combined with the claw-shaped form of the extremities, frequent in many of the carniverous animals, and necessary to some of them for the purpose of seizing their prey] it can only be regarded as a deception, without the ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... wicked steel jaws flew together and caught Little Joe Otter by a claw of one toe. If it hadn't been for Jerry's push, he would have been caught by ...
— The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat • Thornton W. Burgess
... there was a deal o' shoutin', and old Sammy Strother, as were almost clemmed to death and doubled up with the rheumatics, would sing out, "Joyful! Joyful!" and 'at it were better to go up to heaven in a coal-basket than down to hell i' a coach an' six. And he would put his poor old claw on my shoulder, sayin', "Doesn't tha feel it, tha great lump? Doesn't tha feel it?" An' sometimes I thought I did, and then again I thought I didn't, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... great noise was heard outside the stable. The next moment a long arm, with a claw at the end of it, was poked through the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... Honour," exclaimed the man, warming with his faith, "have you never heerd, that the report of a cannon will make a lobster shake off his big, starboard claw?" ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to cry, but it was all useless, for the old witch made her do as she wished. So a nice meal was cooked for Hansel, but Gretel got nothing but a crab's claw. ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... well," he said, "if you must know, you must know. But if anything untoward happens you must blame your own curiosity. Listen. Listen." He lifted up a sharp, claw-nailed forefinger. "This is what the fates have written. Next Sunday afternoon at six o'clock you will be sitting on the second stile on the footpath that leads from the church to the lower road. At that moment a man will appear walking along the footpath." Mr. Scogan ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... have yourself,' says the dog, putting up his fore-claw along his nose, and winking at Jack; 'you have yourself, man—don't be faint-hearted: he'll bet the contents of this bag;' and with that the ould thief gave it another great big shake, to make the guineas jingle again. 'It's ten thousand guineas in hard goold; if he wins, you're to sarve him for ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... appearing before her, of our protector with his air of authority, of the policeman, who, contrary to instructions, introduced himself at the open door, Mrs Ragg rose with a wavering cry that was like a whine, from her seat. She sucked in her cheeks till they met, and with her claw-like hands grabbed her shabby frock where it ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... feeling seems to have survived in a more or less vague and unconscious form in mediaeval Europe. "In the tenth century," according to Dufour (Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. VI., p. 11), "shoes a la poulaine, with a claw or beak, pursued for more than four centuries by the anathemas of popes and the invectives of preachers, were always regarded by mediaeval casuists as the most abominable emblems of immodesty. At a first glance it is not easy to see why these shoes—terminating in a lion's claw, an eagle's ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... his eyes to the shivering leaves overhead, Beltane of a sudden espied a naked foot—a down-curving, claw-like thing, shrivelled and hideous, and, glancing higher yet, beheld a sight to blast the sun from heaven: now staring up at the contorted horror of this shrivelled thing that once had lived and laughed, Beltane let fall his staff and, being suddenly sick and faint, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... declare that there can be no such thing as a beautiful life unless it will accept superstition, I am against, tooth, claw, club, tongue and pen. Down with the Infamy! I prophesy a day when business and education will be synonymous—when commerce and college will join hands—when the preparation for life will be to ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... 'Polly's sore. Poor Polly! How I pity that poor girl!' Love-making usually succeeded a whipping in short order, and then she was at her best. She would turn her head to one side, cast the most laughably provoking glances, hold one claw before her face, perhaps, like a skeleton fan, and say: 'Don't come fooling round me. Go away, you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the voice of the flapper. "I found the darlingest old sideboard with claw-feet yesterday over on Fourth Avenue. He wants two hundred and eighty, but they're all robbers, and I just perfectly mean to make him come down five or ten dollars. Every little counts. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... of them could stir a step the savage alligator, who had escaped from the circus again, grabbed them, one in each claw, and then, holding them so that they couldn't get away, he sat up on the end of his big tail, and looked first at Susie and ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... the ground, coffers in which were kept the linen and wearing apparel, low beds inlaid with ivory and metal and provided with coverings and a thin mattress, copper or wooden stands to support lamps or vases, square stools on four legs united by crossbars, armchairs with lions' claw feet, resembling the Egyptian armchairs in outline, and making us ask if they were brought into Chaldaea by caravans, or made from models which had come from some other country. A few rare objects of artistic character might be found, which bore witness to a certain taste ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the leaves, in lateral, 2-3-flowered, slender-stemmed umbels; flowers about an inch broad, white when expanding, turning to pink; calyx 5-lobed, glandular; petals 5, obovate-oblong, contracting to a claw; stamens numerous; ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... still upon the cabin. What a mean, pokey, ugly little dirty hovel it was! The thatch was getting scraggy over the gables and sagging at the back. In the front it was sodden. A rainy brown streak reached down to the little window looking like the claw of a great bird upon the walls. He had been letting everything go to the bad. That might not signify in the past. ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... it," said the ranchman; "July and August is just the time we miss him on the range; and you can see for yourself that he is a little lame behind and has lost a claw of his left front foot. Now I know where he puts in his summers; but I did not suppose that the old reprobate would know enough to behave ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... Wilbur," he said, "that grabs a stick viciously with his claw an' won't let go even when he's hauled up out o' the water. You c'n buy the sorrel if you want to, but he won't be any use to you up in the forest. Broncho-bustin' is an amusement you c'n keep for your leisure hours. But I'm thinkin', son, from what I know of the work you'll have to do, that ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... be gone?" asked Laura, as she toyed with a lobster claw and glanced around the cafe, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... the convulsion the patient imagined she was being pursued by a black-faced figure with claw-like hands, of a peculiar shape ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... gold, caught before it had reached the first sluice-box, lay at the lower end of the "race." To separate the small quantity of grit that remained with the gold, the diggers held the rich little heaps claw-wise with their fingers, while the rippling water ran through them. Thus the gold was left pure, and with the blade of a sheath-knife, it was easily transferred to the big ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... goner, but I hit only the high places till you couldn't a-seen my trail for smoke. And the old devil snortin' along hot after me. Midway across, he reached for me, jest strikin' the heel of my moccasin with his claw. Tell you I was doin' some tall thinkin' jest then. I knew he had the wind of me and I could never make the brush, so I pulled my little lunch out of my pocket and ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... shook the cages, and tried to reach the bystanders, just out of reach behind the bar that kept us at a safe distance. One lady had a fright, for the wind blew the end of her shawl within reach of a tiger's great claw, and he clutched it, trying to drag her nearer. The shawl came off, and the poor lady ran away screaming, as if a whole family of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... post-Darwinian days, moreover, we are inclined to give way to certain morbid and sentimental exaggerations of sympathy, which do some injustice to the great Artificer whom we are for the moment assuming to be responsible for sentient life. Many of us are much concerned about "nature, red in tooth and claw." It is a sort of nightmare to us to think of the tremendous fecundity of swamp and jungle, warren and pond, and of the ruthless struggle for existence which has made earth, air, and sea one mighty battle-ground. In ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... 'clutcht' for a long time 'sticks strangely' in Crispinus' throat; it is only thrown up with the greatest difficulty. In Hamlet (act v. sc. i, in the second verse of the grave-digger's song) we hear, 'Hath claw'd me in his clutch. In the original song, which is here travestied, the words are, 'Hath ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... was fighting, he could not identify it with Ortiz himself. One of the hands unclosed from about the revolver and clawed at his throat. It seemed to abandon that effort and attacked Ortiz's face in a frenzy of rage, struggling to claw his eyes open. The other held the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... being shipped, the birds packed closely together, their wings held in place by a strip of thin paper. They must all be mounted—the insects quivering upon brass wire, the humming-birds with their feathers ruffled; they must be cleansed and polished, the beak in a bright red, claw repaired with a silk thread, dead eyes replaced with sparkling pearls, and the insect or the bird restored to an appearance of life and grace. The mother prepared the work under her daughter's direction; ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... happen in nightmares. And you fight the numbness and the blackness and you claw and convulse and you twist and turn and toss and then you ride the crests of frenzy and plunge into the troughs of panic and despair and you sweep round and round and sink down into nothingness until you break through to the freedom which comes ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... moment there came a knock at the door. It opened at his bidding, and a dirty-faced, ragged-frocked little girl shuffled into the room holding out a letter in her hard, grimy, claw-like hand. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... having mothered him from his birth, worked with him through the long night of agony; and who, when the end came, cut the faded cotton flowers from her hat to put in the tiny claw-like hand that had never touched a real blossom; and it was Nance's heart that broke ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... and through the great east room. Crowds of country people, some very funny. Fine music from the Marine band, off in a side place. I saw Mr. Lincoln, drest all in black, with white kid gloves and a claw-hammer coat, receiving, as in duty bound, shaking hands, looking very disconsolate, and as if he would give anything to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... with most of my complexion. Served me right for being without a gun. The team run away as soon as I fell off the seat and I was booked to walk home. I heard a squeal from the bushes, and here comes a funny little cuss. I liked the look of him from the jump-off, even if his mother did claw delirious delight out of me. He balanced himself on his stubby legs and looked me square in the eye, and he spit and fought as though he weighed a ton when I picked him up—never had any notion of running away. Well, that ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... which Laurel had thought of as a ship—away from the fireplace, now covered with a green slatted blind for the summer; and they drew forward two of the heavy chairs with shining claw feet that stood against the wall. Smiley's Geography, a book no larger than the shipmaster's hand, was found and opened to Hindoostan, or India within the Ganges. There was a dark surprising picture of Hindoos doing Penance under the Banyan ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... when cloaked in the mysterious gloom of a thunderstorm, is no time for confidences; besides, it is not conducive to sustained conversation to find a cold nose in your palm, a baby claw up your sleeve, or a monkey hand, like a bit of leather, thrust down your collar or into your ear. But after dinner that night, when Lady MacGregor had trailed her maligned "fluffiness" away to the drawing-room, and Nevill and Stephen had strolled with their cigarettes out into the ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the Gods The Potion of Lao-Tsze Abdallah the Adite Ananda the Miracle Worker The City of Philosophers The Demon Pope The Cupbearer The Wisdom of the Indians The Dumb Oracle Duke Virgil The Claw Alexander the Ratcatcher The Rewards of Industry Madam Lucifer The Talismans The Elixir of Life The Poet of Panopolis The Purple Head The Firefly Pan's Wand A Page from the Book of Folly The Bell of Saint Euschemon Bishop Addo and Bishop Gaddo The Philosopher and the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... themselves. Oh, they are wicked knaves! A Pale-face is a panther. When a-hungered, you can hear him whining in the bushes like a strayed infant; but when you come within his leap, beware of tooth and claw!" ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... with the fierceness of a tiger's claw: there had been a movement in the saloon entrance. Only by the fraction of a second was the finger on the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... the huge crags of the island and realized that our position had become desperate. We were on a dead lee shore, and we could gauge our approach to the unseen cliffs by the roar of the breakers against the sheer walls of rock. I ordered the double-reefed mainsail to be set in the hope that we might claw off, and this attempt increased the strain upon the boat. The 'James Caird' was bumping heavily, and the water was pouring in everywhere. Our thirst was forgotten in the realization of our imminent danger, as we baled unceasingly, and adjusted our weights from time to time; occasional ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... slid into a groan of despair, and felt a slackening of the rope that made him claw. Immediately the rope tightened again. Straining his eyes in an upward look along the steep slope, he stared a moment, then saw the knife, point first, slide over the verge of the bulge and down upon him. He tucked ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... straining her eyes to make out the form of her little one. Becoming accustomed to the gloom at last, she could discern him. She could see that he was moving about, and standing on his hind legs, and striving valiantly to claw his way up the perpendicular surface of smooth rock. She began to reach downwards first one big forepaw and then the other, testing the rock beneath her for some ledge or crack that might give her foothold by which to climb down to his aid. ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Mexican cougar, sometimes called the panther or American lion. This animal, endowed with marvellous agility and strength, will pounce from his lair on a deer, and even a buffalo, and easily with tooth and claw tear ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... above her taffrail curling horribly, but one did not want to look at them. The one man on deck had a line about him, and he looked ahead, watching her screwing round with hove-up bows as she climbed the seas. If he'd let her fall off or claw up, the next one would have made an end of her. He was knee deep half the time in icy brine, and his hands had split and opened with the frost, but the sweat dripped from him as he clung to the jarring wheel. One of those helmsmen—perhaps two—had ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... watery-eyed old man, rheumy and weathered well, then opened his mouth and spake such wisdom as he knew. He held up his forefinger like a claw, and used it as if describing signs and wonders ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... been humming with the orchestra, holding a lobster claw in one hand and wielding the little two-pronged fork with the other. She dropped claw, fork, and popular air to stare open-mouthed at Gabe. Then a slow, uncertain smile crept about her lips, although her eyes ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... fledgeling, With short hops and flights Had come fluttering towards them. Pakhom took it up 260 In his palm, held it gently Stretched out to the firelight, And looked at it, saying, "You are but a mite, Yet how sharp is your claw; If I breathed on you once You'd be blown to a distance, And if I should sneeze You would straightway be wafted Right into the flames. 270 One flick from my finger Would kill you entirely. Yet you are more powerful, More free ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... with wonder, with awe, with love, as we well may, to that being in whom we move. I abate no jot of those vaster hopes, yet I would pursue that ardent aspiration, content as to here and today. I do not believe in a nature red with tooth and claw. If indeed she appears so terrible to any it is because they themselves have armed her. Again, behind the anger of the Gods there is a love. Are the rocks barren? Lay thy brow against them and learn what memories they keep. Is the brown earth unbeautiful? Yet lie on the breast of the ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... in the claw Of a limb of the law You trust, or your health to a quack, O! 'Tis fifty to one They're both as soon gone As you'd puff out a ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Leader, "Now, then, tell of the other sinners; knowst thou any one under the pitch who is Italian?" And he, "I parted short while since from one who was a neighbor to it; would that with him I still were covered so that I might not fear claw or hook." And Libicocco said, "We have borne too much," and seized his arm with his grapple so that, tearing, he carried off a sinew of it. Draghignazzo, also, he wished to give him a clutch down at his legs, whereat their decurion turned round about ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... were her little twinkling eyes, and so was her nose—at least at the point. But there was no help for it. I made up my mind to the worst, and allowed her to help me to a bit of fowl. The landlord, and the two other guests supped on fried codlings. She herself fastened upon a lobster's claw. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... up the lid the thief tore off his claw-hammer coat and stuffed that down into the chest. In another instant he had forced his shoulders into the uniform coat, donned the cap and buckled on ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... of its wings was so thin and transparent that it seemed as if it must tear with the slightest exertion. The poor little animal gradually recovered itself, and showed its delicate and sharp teeth. Sumichrast took it up, and hung it by the claw at the end of its forearm, in order to show Lucien the way in which these creatures cling to the rough places which form their usual resting-place; but it suddenly let go its hold, and disappeared in the dark cave open ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... sort. It was evident that there was nothing like hostility in their minds. At the same time, the closer survey which I now made of them filled me with renewed horror; their meagre frames, small, watery, lack-lustre eyes, hollow, cavernous sockets, sunken cheeks, protruding teeth, claw-like fingers, and withered skins, all made them look more than ever like animated mummies, and I shrank from them involuntarily, as one shrinks from contact with ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... They dug graves with swords and spears, brought earth in their caps and the skirts of their garments, laid the Cossacks' bodies out decently, and covered them up in order that the ravens and eagles might not claw out their eyes. But binding the bodies of the Lyakhs, as they came to hand, to the tails of horses, they let these loose on the plain, pursuing them and beating them for some time. The infuriated horses flew over hill and hollow, through ditch and brook, dragging the bodies of the Poles, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... I caught in a little creek. There were thirteen, but there are only twelve now, for one fell out of the window. We keep them in a pan, and they fight each other a great deal. A good many have some of their claws bitten off, and in the morning I find a stray claw floating on the top of the water. The two smallest are named Budge and Toddy. I would like to know how ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the early provincial poets, of whom there were great numbers in the Nieuw Nederlandts, taking advantage of his mysterious exit, have fabled that, like Romulus, he was translated to the skies, and forms a very fiery little star somewhere on the left claw of the Crab; while others, equally fanciful, declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good King Arthur, who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of fairy-land, where he still exists in pristine worth and vigor, and ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... portions of the cheeks yet left smooth enough to show the texture of the skin, there were deep gashes that had once been the tattooing of her barbarian youth and beauty. Her hands were withered, much more than her face, and seemed skinny and claw-like. Her dress, which had once been plaid cotton gingham, was fearfully dirty and unskilfully patched with other material; and the frayed silk shawl thrown around her old shoulders might have been rescued from a rag-heap in the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... advent, gave him a questioning look. The other understood, and shook his head sadly to answer him No. And then he busied himself with the stricken man, as he growled out to my uncle: "I crossed the pond to Alexandria, but of your man—you know who—not a claw nor a feather. As to the Schopper brothers on the other hand. . . . But first let us try to get between this poor fellow and the grave. Hold on, Uhlwurm!" And he was about to lift the sick man in doors. Howbeit, I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Killed an immense fellow: when standing on his hind legs fighting with me and the dogs, he was a foot higher than myself. He ran at me, and nearly gave me a desperate dig with his claw, which tore my only good hunting-shirt miserably. Smashed his skull ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... outside; vermilion, or sometimes reddish orange, and spotted with madder brown within; 1 to 5, on separate peduncles, borne at the summit. Perianth of 6 distinct, spreading, spatulate segments, each narrowed into a claw, and with a nectar groove at its base; 6 stamens; 1 style, the club-shaped stigma 3-lobed. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, from a bulb composed of narrow, jointed, fleshy scales. Leaves: In whorls of 3's to 8's, lance-shaped, seated ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... apes," including the lemurs, are nearly all arboreal forms. Perhaps they were driven to this life by their more powerful competitors. The arboreal life developed the fingers and toes, and most of these end, not with a claw, but with a nail. The little group has much diversity of structure, and at present finds its home mainly in Madagascar; though in earlier times apparently occurring all over the globe. The brain is more highly developed than in the average mammal, but far inferior to that ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... general appearance of the garden. Paths should be kept clean, and all rubbish, weeds, dead plants, etc., removed to the compost heap, which should be in the least conspicuous part of the garden. Hoes, rakes, and claw-hand weeders should be used in cleaning up and cultivating the plots. The soil should be kept fine and loose on top ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... glass. In the sky soft-looking, tawny clouds came tumbling along like playful cats—or tigers. A moment later we saw that they were not playful, but angry; they stretched out claws, and snarled as they did so. One claw reached the tall chimneys of the schoolhouse, another tapped at the cupola, one was thrust through the wall ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... tree-pipit (Anthus arboreus), the meadow-pipit (Anthus pratensis), and the rock-pipit or sea-lark (Anthus obscurus) have each occupied a distinct place in nature to which they have become specially adapted, as indicated by the different form and size of the hind toe and claw in each species. So, the stone-chat (Saxicola rubicola), the whin-chat (S. rubetra), and the wheat-ear (S. oenanthe) are more or less divergent forms of one type, with modifications in the shape of the wing, feet, and bill adapting ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... come into his head from the sight of the specimen in the tumbler on the table, who had with great difficulty been drowned in aguardiente. Presently something moved in the hole, and the spectator below instantly became wide awake. Then came out a claw and a head, and finally the body and tail of a very fine scorpion, two inches and a half long. It was rather an awkward moment, for it was not safe to move suddenly, for fear of startling the creature, whose footing seemed anything but secure; and if he fell, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... Baby lay on the floor sucking his little claw-like fingers, and stirring feebly in the sun. Mrs. Nevill Tyson continued to gaze abstractedly at nothing. When Swinny came back after a judicious interval, he was still lying there, and she still sitting ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... pun on her own name, "Vineyard I was, and Vineyard I am. I was loved and no longer am. I know not for what reason the Vineyard has lost its season." Her husband, who heard this, replied, "Vineyard thou wast, and Vineyard thou art: the Vineyard lost its season, for the lion's claw." The king, who understood what he meant, answered, "I entered the Vineyard; I touched the leaves; but I swear by my crown that I have not tasted the fruit." Then the steward understood that his wife ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... take her arm as her feet touched the unprotected path, but the girl, though unnerved by the ordeal, shook off his big claw, and with her hands clasping mine I led her across the short but dangerous ledge of rock that led to the opening in the wall. I felt strong enough to fight a dozen devils like Leith at that moment. The trusting manner in which the dear girl had given her hands into ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... and cunning, with slanted rat's eyes. Ornate head-dress and stiffly inlaid robes denoted him to be the High Priest. He held a claw-like hand high. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... that dissolution of all authority, whether of State or Church, for which Rousseau had pined. He saw it result in the return of a portion of mankind to what we now believe to have been their primitive state, a state in which they were 'red in tooth and claw.' It was not that paradisaic state of love and innocence, which, curiously enough, both Rousseau and the theologians seem to have imagined was ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... hear the horrible clamour of the devils, and the despairing yells of the victims. The general effect is of one simultaneous convulsed movement, one seething turmoil. In detail, the horror is most dramatically rendered. The malignancy of the devils, their brutal fury as they claw their prey, tear at their throats, and wrench back their heads; the utter horror and anguish of the victims, the confusion, the uproar, are given with a convincing realistic force, which makes the scene ghastly and terrible. In most representations of Hell, and especially of Devils, human ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... turns and moves around in a circle, snapping his whip at each flourish, and calling the name of some animal. The players in the circle immediately imitate the animal, both as to its movements and cries. For instance, for a bear they claw or run on "all fours," or climb and at the same time growl; for a frog they may hop or swim and croak. The list may include the hopping kangaroo, the snarling and springing tiger, the humped and swaying ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... from want of food. Once, when despoiling his chop boxes, the corporal had contemptuously thrown him a half eaten tin of sardines and a cigarette. He let the cigarette lie. Nourishment he must have; and so after an inward struggle he had eaten it, having to claw out the fish like a monkey, while the big black and ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the way he saw a Crow which was caught by the claw in a snare which some wicked boy had set for him. The poor Crow sought in vain to release himself from this trap which caused him cruel sufferings. Henry ran to him, cut the cord which bound him and set him ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conversation among Christians, what would he say of the shameful backbiting which is heard whenever people meet, though but two individuals? Yes, what would be his judgment of those who in public preaching clinch and claw, attack and calumniate ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... ending in ism, which makes a formidable figure and awful sound in the eyes and ears of those who would be as much puzzled to explain the terms so bandied about, as the liberal and pious indulgers in such epithets. Against such I can defend myself, or, if necessary, I can attack in turn. "Claw for claw, as Conan said to Satan and the deevil take the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the young woodsman. "When a gopher goes down his hole, he simply draws in his flippers and slides, but when he wants to get out he has to claw his way up. You'll see the first hole has the sand pressed smooth at the entrance, while the sand in the other hole shows the mark of the flippers. That third hole is easy, too; you can see the coon tracks if you look close, and you will notice that the claws point ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... in the dusty eyes. The lips chant inaudibly. The warped shrunken body straightens like a tree. And he curses... With uplifted arms and perished fingers, Claw-like, clutching... So centuries ago The old men cursed Acosta, When they, prophetic, heard upon their sepulchres Those feet that may not halt nor turn aside ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... his sons, and they pay their father's debt, And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... "Well, child, don't claw hold of a body so! Well, at any rate, I'll just let Joe Adams know that we hain't nothing more to ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh from heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... his pallid, haggard face and, with a yellow, claw-like hand wiped the beads of clammy sweat from his forehead; while his deep-sunken eyes leered at her with ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... presence of the diamonds in the house of Mr. Shipman and Mr. Knopf? Firstly," he said, putting up an ugly claw-like finger, "Mr. Shipman, then Mr. Knopf, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... turn a caravansery's, wherein You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk, And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, You'd not have given away For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous You had that dark and disleaved afternoon Escaped on a roc's claw, Disguised like Sindbad—but in Christmas beef! And all the blissful while The schoolboy satchel at your hip Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers Of ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... man,' sings out O'Toole, comin' up. 'Go it, owld gal, give it to him. 'Tis a leddy-killer he is fer sure, 'pon me whurd, fer a fact. Claw him, bite him, even though he's as tough as nails. Yell him deaf, owld leddy. Do it fer his mether's sake, th' scand'lous owld rake he is. Get his year in yer teeth an' hold on, fer 'tis a leddy-killer ye have in yer hands at last. Whang his ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... told me, Captain, what voyage thou art about to undertake next," said the Goodman, sucking a lobster-claw with relish. ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... North, sealing up the fountains ... now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-cat strives in vain to pierce the frigid ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... stern. He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, "Ca ca, ca ira, les aristocrats a la lanterne!" They were the children of the mob that had sung that song. With a bow, the spokesman said: "Messieurs, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... and outdoor games alike to fairly burrow in the soil. The heap of beach sand and pebbles that was carted from the shore and left under an old shed for their amusement, has lost its charm. They go across the road and claw the fresh earth from an exposed bank, using fingers instead of their little rakes and spades, and decorate the moist brown "pies" they make ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... with age and leaves the older tubercles blunt or retuse), 18 to 25 mm. long and about as wide at base, the upper surface almost plane and smooth, except that it is more or less pulverulent and usually bears a small tomentose pulvillus (often evanescent later) just behind the claw-like tip: flowers rose-color: fruit elongated- oval and reddish. (Ill. Lem. Cact. t. 1.) ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... gold-headed cane in among your treasures, blind to the fact that you are clutching both arms around them, that no gleam of flashing gold may reveal their whereabouts to him. You draw yourself up in your shell, projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally as a sign of continued vitality; but the pachyderm does not withdraw, and you gradually lower into an indignation,—smothered, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... it. This terrible and mysterious assassin has at last been unveiled. The shroud of concealment has been torn away and there the dire monster stands—naked, remorseless and hideous. It is of small size, though it makes us all shrink with horror and disgust. It has six claw-like legs and no wings. It is, in fact, neither more nor less than the clothes louse, the Pediculus vestimenti. The filthy, crowded condition in which the prisoners were kept, and (let us well remember and reflect thereon) the personal want ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... fortune had been no kinder. "Blooming" into girlhood, she had been attacked by smallpox. Matazaemon was busy, and knew nothing of sick nursing. O'Naka was equally ignorant, though she was well intentioned. Of course the then serving wench knew no more than her mistress. O'Mino was allowed to claw her countenance and body, as the itching of the sores drove her nearly frantic. In fact, O'Naka in her charity aided her. The result was that she was most hideously pock-marked. Furthermore, the disease cost her an eye, leaving a cavity, a gaping and unsightly wound, comparable to the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... sir. I know a place, down in the Eastern States, that was called Scratch and Claw, and a very pretty ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... she must claw well to windward to escape us! What's your name, my lad—Tom Davis, if I'm ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... decided to seize the emergency and take the long chance of running out to windward of the Phoebe and the Cherub. He therefore cut the other cable, and the Essex plunged into the wind under single-reefed topsails to claw past the headland. Just as she was about to clear it, a whistling squall carried away the maintopmast. This accident was a grave disaster, for the disabled frigate was now unable either to regain a refuge in the bay or to win her way past ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... path. I tried to cry out, but was too exhausted. The bow plunged down, just missing me and sending a swash of water clear over my head. Then the long, black side of the vessel began slipping past, so near that I could have touched it with my hands. I tried to reach it, in a mad resolve to claw into the wood with my nails, but my arms were heavy and lifeless. Again I strove to call out, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... sire—a savage who's 'way up in the picture kyards, an' who's called 'Crooked Claw' because of his left hand bein' put out of line with a Ute arrow through it long ago—gives his consent to Bill j'inin' that sem'nary. Crooked Claw can't he'p himse'f; he's powerless; the Great Father in Washin'ton is backin' the play ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... a weird creature, which looked as if nature had begun an insect and then changed her mind and finished it off like a crab. This thing, with the ferocious claw-like nose and chin, was a female Rhinoceros beetle, so the owner explained. The male beetle appeared to be a harmless, mild concern of much smaller size, and with no warlike appendages whatever. I never saw any insect of the sterner sex labour under such crushing ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... rubbing his head and muttering, finally spoke. "Very well, you nasty young man, I'll sell my glass. Give me the coin!" and he stretched out a dirty claw. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man's jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man's leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man's business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... her suns burn to brand: Her seas yawn to engulf him: her rocks rise to crush: And the lion and leopard, allied, lurk to rush On their startled invader. In lone Malabar, Where the infinite forest spreads breathless and far, 'Mid the cruel of eye and the stealthy of claw (Striped and spotted destroyers!) he sees, pale with awe, On the menacing edge of a fiery sky, Grim Doorga, blue-limb'd and red-handed, go by, And the first thing he worships is Terror. Anon, Still impell'd by necessity hungrily ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Weaving a pattern about his legs, purring loudly, Sindbad was offering an unusually fervent welcome of his own. The Ranger went down on one knee, his hand out for Sindbad's inquiring sniff. Then the cat butted that dark palm, batted at it playfully with claw-sheathed paw. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... age, with his stealing steps, Hath claw'd me in his clutch, And hath shipp'd me into the land, As if ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... turned into an armed camp of plotting enemies, who, while they work, grumble, and who, while they receive their wages, scheme for the overthrow of the entire concern! His mills, instead of being shelters for his brothers and sisters, are nests of scratching eagles—ready to rend and claw! ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... very seat of his composure. And the worst was to come yet! He was glad the trouble in the 'tween-deck had been discovered in time. If the ship had to go after all, then, at least, she wouldn't be going to the bottom with a lot of people in her fighting teeth and claw. That would have been odious. And in that feeling there was a humane intention and a vague sense ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... cries one, "Sure never lived beneath the sun; A lizard's body, lean and long; A fish's head; a serpent's tongue; 10 Its foot with triple claw disjoined; And what a length of tail behind! How slow its pace! And then its hue!— Who ever ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... his own brutality. She had become suddenly a much older woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips were bloodlessly hard, there was an unknown furrow along her forehead, and she glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing |
