"Cobra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very cruel. If a person scratches me with a poisoned dagger so gently that I do not feel the scratch, he has achieved a painless vivisection; but if I presently die in torment I am not likely to consider that his humility is amply vindicated by his gentleness. A cobra's bite hurts so little that the creature is almost, legally speaking, a vivisector who inflicts no pain. By giving his victims chloroform before biting them he could comply ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... a moment, but one fleeting moment, given to the lover to see the danger menacing the woman whom he loved. His heart was icy, but his hand was quick. There, a few feet only from the horribly fascinated girl, a cobra di capdlo rising and swaying in angry undulations. The huge snake was angrily hissing with a huge distended puffed hood swelling menacingly over the dirty brown body. "Standfast!" yelled ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... on a window, one half of which has been left open. Even a pike continued during three months to dash and bruise itself against the glass sides of an aquarium, in the vain attempt to seize minnows on the opposite side. {34} A cobra-snake was seen by Mr. Layard {35} to act much more wisely than either the pike or the Sphex; it had swallowed a toad lying within a hole, and could not withdraw its head; the toad was disgorged, and began to crawl away; it was again swallowed and again ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... know the wild dogs; wild roses are very nice. But nobody ever thinks of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one thinks first of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... won't know Bungloore. It's all that and more. An egg dropped by a vulture, sat upon and addled by the Department. But I knew the house and walked boldly in. A lion walked out of one door as I came in at another. We did this two or three times—and found it amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as I passed, and respectfully removed ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched the lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing the cobra's hate-song that ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the shore and bore coconuts in their top branches. Men red as copper galloped over the immense green prairies and threw their arrows at the buffaloes, who turned against them with their sharp horns. An enormous cobra which had crept up the stem of a tall palm tree threw itself on to a little llama that was grazing at the foot. Knaps! it was all over with the ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it would have carried a cobra's venom. They probably could have made such protein-poisons, too; but they had never used them against men, no doubt because something that could spread and infect others ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... fairyland. On the top of one of those ponderous laminations tilted edgewise is the king of the gnomes of the new glen. We call him Pharaoh. How archly he looks out over his wide domain! His kingly cap is adorned with a cobra ready to strike, yet out on his ample breast floats a most royal but un-Pharonic beard. This is one of the ways the quondam haughty hills have of providing entertainment for the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... secret, and took him to the corner of the house, and showed him a little box in which was coiled a tiny snake, like the hair spring of a watch. She passed her hands over it, and it grew in size, till at last it became a huge cobra, with hood erected. The husband, terrified, begged his wife to lay the spirit. She passed her hands down its body, and it gradually shrank ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... own goodness and his own injuries. No sermon could teach more than that hateful book; if it is read aright, it will supply men or women with an armoury of warnings, and enable them to start away from the semblance of self-deception as they would from a rearing cobra when the hood is up, and the murderous head flattened ready to strike. Thackeray worked on the same theme in his story of little Stubbs. Lyndon is the Lucifer of rascals; Stubbs—well, Stubbs beggars the English vocabulary; ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the other's expression. There was to be no throwing in of the towel for Joe Mauser. At the first sign of such a move, the other would dart in, cobra-quick, and deal the finishing blow. The death blow. Rakoczi was fully capable of such speed. The man ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... scorn which impressed Harry, but which he did not wholly admire. Travers seemed to him to have the quiet deadliness of the cobra. There was something about him that repelled. The men released him. He straightened his long black coat, smoothed the full ruffles of his shirt and walked away, as ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the doctor and professor such natural history objects as presented themselves were examined—lizards among the rocks, a few snakes, harmless, and the poison-bearing cobra; but away from the river, birds were rare, save those of prey, and as to animals they were heard more than seen. A gazelle or two, little and graceful, bounded across the track, but it was at night that the howling of the jackals and the long, hideous snarling of hyaenas taught the travellers ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... her shoulders up, as if at the sight of a cobra in her path. "Why is Eddie coming to lunch? ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... a tame green one, who lived under the door-step, and would come out and play with me on sunny days. These snakes I found very interesting, only they got under their blankets and wouldn't come out, and I wasn't allowed to poke them; so I missed seeing several of the most curious. An ugly cobra laid and blinked at me through the glass, looking quite as dangerous as he was. There were big and little snakes,—black, brown, and speckled, lively and lazy, pretty and plain ones,—but I liked the great ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... a direct blow, I suppose," said the white-faced Jack, who had good reason to be terrified over the occurrence, for the rattlesnake, although ranking below the cobra in the virulence of its venom, is the most deadly serpent in America, and the veteran hunter fears it more than the most savage ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... weapon, and fled away with the gun. The offended blacks had discovered the guilty pair on the outskirts of Breeza Downs, and Oola's husband, with a company of braves, had attacked their gunya. Then—to quote Oola—'that feller husband throw spear at Wombo—hit Oola long-a COBRA (head) with NULLA NULLA. Him close-up carry off Oola. My word! Wombo catch him PHO PHO. Plenty quick husband belonging to me TUMBLE DOWN.' ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of the Colonel, my brother," the Squire replied. "He brought him over from India with him. The man had been some years in his service, and was very attached to him, and had saved his life more than once, he told me. On one occasion he caught a cobra by the neck as it was about to strike my brother's hand as he sat at table; he carried it out into the compound, as George called it, but which means, he told me, garden, and there let it escape. Another time he caught a Thug, which means a sort of robber who kills his victims ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... but hitherto I had always put them down as fabulous creatures transformed into and worshipped as local gods. Also this particular specimen was, I presume, of a new variety, since, according to Ragnall, it both struck like the cobra or the adder, and crushed like the boa-constrictor. It is possible, however, that he was mistaken on this point; I do not know, since I had no time, or indeed inclination, to examine its head for the poison fangs, and when next I passed that ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... rushing forward to seize her in my arms. She raised her right hand above her head and, as I had almost reached her, threw something full in my face! Instinctively I struck at it with my walking-stick, and it fell in the grass at my feet,—it was a young Indian cobra—Naja tripudians—a serpent of the deadliest sort. I did not pause to reason how this sweet angel had been so quickly changed into a venomous fiend, although the thought that somehow she had been led to think me false to ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... I fancy most have erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... what is it?' we all shouted confusedly, as we rushed up to him and looked round in expectation of encountering a tiger—a cobra—we hardly knew what, but assuredly something terrible, since it had been sufficient to cause such evident emotion in our usually self-contained comrade. But neither tiger nor cobra was visible—nothing but Cameron pointing with ghastly, haggard face ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... saves them from being crushed by the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids him with his ingratitude, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the straits of Caspar, and always saved the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... far more deadly than the effects of firing up hill. The Indians stood their ground, fitting their arrows with swift dexterity, encouraged by Anastacio, who glided from point to point like a hungry cobra, discharging two arrows to every man's one. His only hope was to keep the Californians at long range until losses compelled the latter to retreat: at close quarters arrows would be no ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... black cobra sits up, and puffs his hood, and hisses, giving warning to his prey, ere he strikes: so I, Shatrunjaya[6] the lute-player, son of a king, do send this my menace to thee, Narasinha, the lover of a queen too good for so vile a thing ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... story as, at least, improbable. Yet it is clear that the stories of the New World may have had an actual basis of fact; for the Heloderma horridum has been, beyond doubt, proved to be poisonous in as high a degree as a cobra or ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... fragrant flowers and not quarrel with its leafless limbs. When the pipal and the neem glisten with star flowers and sweeten the foetid night-air, it matters nothing to me that the natives believe evil gods home in the branches. I know that even a cobra tries to get out of my way if I'll let him, and I know that the natives have beauty in their natures—one gets to almost love them as children. So, my dear Captain, when you tell me that the Gulab rendered you and me and the British ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... might become a tornado, our girls thoroughly enjoyed themselves in a lively, wholly unsentimental way, pleased with the company and their own happy youth; and not suspecting that in this same soft, silky atmosphere which breeds both the exquisite Paradise-bird and the deadly cobra, might be found, not only friendliness, but also that "envy, malice, and uncharitableness" which the honest-hearted are least able to guard against, in ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... great and cruel scoundrel) is king, with many regrets we parted from our comfortable wagon. Only twelve oxen remained to us out of the beautiful span of twenty which I had bought at Durban. One we lost from the bite of a cobra, three had perished from "poverty" and the want of water, one strayed, and the other three died from eating the poisonous herb called "tulip." Five more sickened from this cause, but we managed to cure them with doses ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... I am talking here that serpent! that copperhead! that cobra capella! is coming round again! How astonishingly tenacious of life all foul, venomous creatures are!" exclaimed Cloudesley, as he happened to espy Throg moving slightly where he lay, and rushed ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... picked the thing up on their radar screens, going straight up at high acceleration. They bracketed it with Cobra pursuit rockets and blew it out of the sky when it didn't respond to identification signals. They could trace the thing back to its launching pad, of course, ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... writer and able assistants. Every few hours orderlies and special couriers were despatched to the headquarters of the camp, with such reports as could be obtained. We have read Eastern tales of travelers, when accident had discovered them in closest proximity to the deadly cobra de capello, the breathless horror with which they contemplated its motions, and saw it slowly coiling itself upon their limbs, or upon a table at their bedsides, and knowing that a single motion on the part of the imperilled person would be but to invite certain death, the vigilance and ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... menos Cantidad, tiene El alcalde mayor de salario trecientos pesos librados en las penas de camara y si no alcancare en la Real caxa cobra por comission del goueror y de los oficiales Reales los tributos qe pertenecen a su magd en aquella ysla. qe seran poco mas de dos mil hombres, en el Rio de haraut y Rio de ajuy y Rio de panay y los ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... This, she says, is because of the consensus of opinion that arsenic is deadly. Such would probably be her explanation of the destructive processes which go on in the world without the knowledge of man; fire consumes the forest, the tiger kills the antelope, and the bite of the cobra kills the tiger because the human mind has attributed such tendencies to fire, to the tiger, and to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as he can. But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail. For the female of the species is more deadly than ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... we had closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line that circled the throng like the deadly coils of the cobra. The buffaloes had become completely demoralized, and were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other. Now was the time for the onslaught. Tonsaroyoo, by whose side I was riding, placed the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... get used to almost anything, Grand Master," I said. "I found a cobra under my pillow when I rolled out of the sack this morning. A coral snake fell out of the folds of my towel when I went to take a shower. Somebody stashed a bushmaster here in my locker to meet me when I dressed for surgery. I'm getting almost ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... dismayed or deprecating. Budding conversationalists were temporarily frost-bitten, and the watery helpings of fish were eaten in a constrained silence. But with the inevitable roast beef a Scot of unshakeable manner, decorated with a yellow forehead-lock as erect as a striking cobra, turned to follow up what he apparently conceived to ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... canary yellow, wandered down to the post-office. To the city-bred Applebys there would have been cheer and excitement in this mild activity, after their farm-house weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure of the Crimson Cobra'—six reels—that sounds snappy." But his exuberance died in a sigh. A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign, light-encircled, tea-pot shaped, hung out from a great elm. Without explanations they ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... whirling with astonishing rapidity in a kind of frenzied dance around the wicker basket that contained the serpents, which were covered by a goatskin. Suddenly he stopped, plunged his naked arm into the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... way," broke in Kennedy decisively. "If we are to make any progress in this case, we must look elsewhere than to an autopsy. There is no clue beyond what you have found, if I am right. And I think I am right. It was the venom of the cobra." ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... uttered a scream, and snatched her arm out of the hole. To it, or rather to her hand, was hanging a great hooded snake of the cobra variety such as the Boers call ringhals. She shook it off, and the reptile, after sitting up, spitting, hissing and expanding its hood, glided back into the wall. Tabitha sat still, staring at her lacerated finger, which Ivana ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... of escaping the thorns was to crawl on our hands and knees, trailing our rifles after us; and to do this without the certainty of their going off, we had to secure the locks in cases. Then we had the possibility of meeting unexpectedly with a cobra di capello, or boa constrictor, or a wild boar, or more dangerous still, a bear, besides running a risk of having our eyes scratched out, and other little inconveniences of that sort. Our chief object was to ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... captain, who was named Indudu, perhaps because he or his father had longed to the Dudu regiment, crawled into the hut, whence presently emerged sounds not unlike those which once I heard when a ringhals cobra followed a hare that I had wounded into a hole, a muffled sound of struggling and terror. These ended in the sudden and violent appearance of Kaatje's fat and dishevelled form, followed by ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... and jealous combat of rival males. The rattle of certain snakes is supposed to act as a love-call. Snakes of different sexes appear to feel some affection for each other when confined together in cages. Romanes relates the interesting fact that when a cobra is killed, its mate is often found on the spot a day or two afterwards. Darwin cites an instance of the pairing in spring of a Chinese species of lizard, where the couples appear to have considerable fondness for one another. If one is ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... drowned the sound of a cracking whip and sharp commands which came from the runway, and announced the appearance of Brandu, the snake charmer, in the exhibition cage, and the audience watched him play with a cobra, all unconscious that Franz, the jaguar, which a few minutes before had desisted from his attempt to tear the fair shoulders of Morelli only after a dozen blank cartridges had been fired in his face, was a gentleman-at-large in Dreamland. The ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... chief complaint, and even the bon ordinaire had lost much of its attraction. A harmless snake was killed and bottled; its silver robe was beautifully banded with a line, pink as the circles of the "cobra coral," which ran along the whole length of the back. It proved to be a new species; and Dr. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... animal. I heard one at a spot where no kid could possibly have been. It is supposed by the natives to lure travelers to itself by this bleating. Several varieties, when alarmed, emit a peculiar odor, by which the people become aware of their presence in a house. We have also the cobra ('Naia haje', Smith) of several colors or varieties. When annoyed, they raise their heads up about a foot from the ground, and flatten the neck in a threatening manner, darting out the tongue and retracting it with great ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... flattered and repelled. She was interested, even while she shuddered; it was as though she had been made the object of the sudden, if venomous, admiration of a king-cobra. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... for the drawing. I must say, however, the resemblance to a snake is not very striking, unless to a cobra not found in America. It is also evident that it is not Mr. Bates's caterpillar, as that threw the head backwards so as to show the feet above, forming imitations ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... garuda, hawadiga[3], or whatever else they call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... judgment of her was correct, Caley might have told him. Was she already false? She pondered within herself, and cast no look upon her maid until she had concluded how best to carry herself towards the earl. Then glancing at the hooded cobra beside her—"What an awkward thing that Lord Liftore, of all moments, should appear just then!" she said. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... of viperine snakes, including the rattlesnakes and moccasins; all of these have a pit-like depression between the nose and eyes, and hence are called pit-vipers. In the southern portion of our country there are two species of a colubrine genus closely related to the dreaded cobra of the East, one of them being called the coral-snake or harlequin snake, and the other, which occurs in the southwest, is known as the ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... and secret, grasping and malicious, may wreak at any hour disasters on the unwary. "Points" are given by one operator to another with the same mendacious glibness as of yore. The market is now dull with the torpor of a sleeping cobra, now aflame, like that reptile, with treacherous and poisonous life. In its repose as in its excitement our novice begins to know it, fear it, and heartily love it besides. The chances are nine out of ten that he loves it too much and fears it too little. Its hideous ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... is still in town," said Colonel Ashley. "I passed his place a while ago. He has a pair of beautiful Benares candlesticks, in the form of hooded cobra snakes, that I want to get. Singa ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... told of the time when a soldier could get "jungling leave"; when he could go off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or three months; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so many for a cobra—a scale of rewards for bringing back the trophies ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... affection for dogs has an understratum of fear. These excellent creatures, so good, so faithful, so devoted, so loving, may go mad at any moment, and then they become more dangerous than a lance-head snake, an asp, a rattlesnake or a cobra capella. This reacts on my love for dogs. Then dogs strike me as a bit uncanny; they have such a searching, intense glance; they sit down in front of you with so questioning a look that it is fairly embarrassing. Goethe disliked that glance of theirs that seems to attempt to ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... although they lack both the fairy elegance of Netley Abbey, and the massive grandeur of a Pevensey Castle. The men who accompanied me advanced very cautiously through the thick underwood, beating with their sticks in order to drive away the Iguana Lizards, which they call the "bis cobra" and hold in deadly fear, believing its bite to be most surely fatal. This belief is universal among the natives of India, but there is no proof of its truth, and I need hardly say that the dental arrangement of Bactrachian reptiles is incompatible ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... encountered many dangers abroad. Once whilst going in search of game he came upon a tiger, which seemed as if it were preparing to spring upon him. With the greatest caution he retired slowly from the place, and was just congratulating himself that he was out of danger when he trod on a cobra. The reptile twisted itself about Moffat's leg, and was about to bite him when he managed to level his gun at it and kill it. The poison of this snake is so deadly that had he been bitten his death would have ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... dangerously inflammable'; 'English will be the universal language.' But far the most important kind of modality, and the only one we need consider, is that which is signified by some qualification of the predicate as to the degree of certainty with which it is affirmed or denied. Thus, 'The bite of the cobra is probably mortal,' is called a Contingent or Problematic Modal: 'Water is certainly composed of oxygen and hydrogen' is an Assertory or Certain Modal: 'Two straight lines cannot enclose a space' is a Necessary or Apodeictic ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... lives near a spring or small stream of water, and bites the unfortunate people who are in the habit of going there to drink. The brute creation it never molests. They avoid it with the same instinct that teaches the animals of India to shun the deadly cobra. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... very mixed, some being those of eponymous Brahman gotras, as Sandilya, Kaushik and Bharadwaj; others those of Rajput septs, as Karchhul; while others are the names of animals and plants, as Barah (pig), Baram (the pipal tree), Nag (cobra), Kachhapa (tortoise), and a number of other local terms the meaning of which has been forgotten. Each of these sections, however, uses a different mark for branding cows, which it is the religious duty of an Agharia to rear, and though the marks now convey no meaning, they were probably ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... small round stick. An innocuous snake, the Trovidonotus macrophthalmus, an inhabitant of India, likewise dilates its neck when irritated; and consequently is often mistaken for its compatriot, the deadly Cobra.[23] This resemblance perhaps serves as some protection ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... he brought in a king cobra (naia bungarus) which he had shot, and as life was not yet extinct I got a good photograph of it. This serpent was about three metres long, but these very poisonous snakes, called ular tadong by the Malays, attain a length of seven ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood; and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the conflict between ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... That is a cobra he takes out; you know it by its large, flat head. It seems sleepy and stupid, but its bite is deadly. It is possible, of course, that he has abstracted the poison-fangs which make its bite fatal, but ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... dreary plain, marked every few yards by the bleached bones of camels fallen by the way; the only living thing met with for two days being a snake of the cobra type trailing across our path. The evening of the second day we camped in a long wadi, or shallow valley, full of mimosa trees, where our camels were hobbled and allowed to graze. They delighted in nibbling the young branches of these prickly acacias, which carry ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... obeyed and revealed the tail of a large cobra disappearing among the improprieties. Jim ran to a rude cupboard where pistols and ammunition were kept, and began ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Like the cobra, dark and hissing, Karna's gleaming lightning dart, Struck the helpless archer Arjun on his broad ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... man, would choose a knife; a Westerner would take in preference that same harmless piece of rope. In his hands it takes on life, it gains a strange and sinister quality. One instant it lies passive, or slowly whirled in a careless circle—the next its noose darts out like the head of a striking cobra, the coil falls and fastens, and then it draws tighter and tighter, remorselessly as a ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... drew back in sudden horror. This tiny thing had taken the semblance of a snake. A vicious cobra cast at her feet would be less alarming, for the reptile could be killed, whilst his venomous fangs would ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... The taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles—which abound in Kuria,—and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to Tembinok'. 'A' cobra berong me,' observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the houseful. 'You got copra, king?' I have heard a trader ask. 'I got two, three outches,' his majesty replied: 'I think three.' ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the impression he made upon the colonel. "I expected to see a great man, but at the first glance I saw that I was in the presence of a master. The Thug was tall, active, and slenderly formed; his head was nearly oval; his eye most strongly resembled that of a cobra di capello; its dart was perfectly wild and maniacal, restless, brilliant, metallic, and concentrated." The colonel had a narrow escape from irretrievably affronting this eminent professor of murder, by unguardedly enquiring whether he was in any way cognizant of a trifling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the cattle-fold, where its remains, like those of a chief, were henceforward kept perfectly undisturbed. The period of penance, as in the case of mourning for the dead, is now happily reduced to a few days." In Madras it is considered a great sin to kill a cobra. When this has happened, the people generally burn the body of the serpent, just as they burn the bodies of human beings. The murderer deems himself polluted for three days. On the second day milk is poured on the remains of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with miasma-bearing fevers and agues on their wings; while it a fellow has to live on shore he gets roasted by day, with a good chance of a sunstroke, and he is stewed at night, and bitten by mosquitoes and other winged and crawling things, and wakes to find a cobra de capella or green snake gliding ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... ruddy soft gold, worked and graven with exquisite art in the semblance of a two-headed cobra; inside the band was an inscription so worn and faint that Amber experienced some difficulty in deciphering the word RAO (king) in Devanagari, flanked by swastikas. Aside from the stone entirely, he speculated, the value of the ring as an antique would have ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... one knew What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; 165 And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, Until the golden eye of the bright flower, Through the dark lashes of those veined lids, ...disencumbered of their silent sleep, 170 Gazed like a star into the morning light. Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw The pulses With which the purple velvet flower was ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... care. I am familiar with the country for miles in every direction. We shall have to travel for the first two or three days through a thick jungle, and it is too dangerous work to undertake in the night-time. This, you know, is the land of the cobra and the tiger, not to mention a few other animals and reptiles equally unpleasant in their nature. Last night," continued the doctor, "I saw a glare in the sky off to the westward on the opposite side of the river in the direction of Meerut. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... meantime Jasper Very and the monster dwarf were having an interesting combat. Turner would not relax his hold upon his adversary in spite of all he could do. His grip on his throat was like a coil of the cobra de capello. At first Very was at the mercy of the dwarf; and if things had gone on this way a little longer serious consequences would have come to the preacher. Though he was half choked by the other's arm, Very, summoning all his strength, took hold of his antagonists's arm and pulled it from ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... the deadly peril in which I found myself was in itself sufficient to cause the cheek of the bravest man to pale, for from that box there slowly issued forth a large, hideous cobra, which, coiling with sinuous slowness in front of my face held its hooded ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... Hotel; the timid pensionnaire of numberless summers starts and grows pale; SHIRTSOFF looks with peremptory encouragement towards the Teuton; "Ach, graesglich!" rattles out DONNERWITZ, and strikes again; the cobra-like gutturality of that "Ach" is heart-rending; still no ADOLF; at a gold-fraught glance from my companions, he has ordered another detachment to the front; a fresh current of air invades the room. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... pulled up his cuff and showed Mr. Gubb his arm. It was beautifully tattooed in red and blue, like the scales of a cobra. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... hissing breath, and when he spoke his voice was as calm and quiet as a coiled cobra. "The both of you come up with the goddamnedest answers to things. Things I never knew about or even cared about before. Things I wish I'd never heard of. Things that don't have any explanation. And—" He stopped, his face dark in the screen. Malone ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of my grooms, a robust woman, and the mother of a large family, all living within my grounds, was bitten by a poisonous serpent, most probably a cobra, or coluber maja, and quickly felt the deadly effects of its venom. When the woman's powers were rapidly sinking, the servants came to my wife, to request that the civil surgeon of the station might be called in to save her life. He immediately attended, and exerted his utmost skill, but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... Skag's long night. He tried to think of the Kabuli as if he were an animal. A man might have a destroying enmity against a cobra or a tiger or a python; but it was not black and self-defiling like this thing which crept over him, out of the ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... land of the elephant and the poisonous cobra, of the tiger and the unsuccessful English missionary, is original and strange. Everything seems unusual, unexpected, and striking, even to one who has travelled in Turkey, Egypt, Damascus, and Palestine. In these tropical regions ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the snakes, which are found here of all sizes and in great variety of species; the larger proportion harmless, but of some, and those generally small and dark-coloured, the bite is mortal. If the cobra capelo, or hooded snake, be a native of the island, as some assert, it must be extremely rare. The largest of the boa kind (ular sauh) that I had an opportunity of observing was no more than twelve feet long. This was killed in a hen-house where it was devouring the poultry. It is very surprising, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... take you to the Ranee's court." At these words the poor girl went down to the river very sorrowful, for she saw no hope of escape, as her father was from home. As she knelt by the river-side, washing her saree and crying bitterly, some of her tears fell into the hole of an old Seven-headed Cobra, who lived on the river-bank. This Cobra was a very wise animal, and seeing the maiden, he put his head out of his hole, and said to her: "Little girl, why do you cry?" "Oh, sir," she answered, "I am very unhappy; for my father is from home, and my stepmother has sold ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... rather glad you're not a common thief. You've lots of pluck—plenty. You're as clever as a cobra. It isn't every poisonous snake that ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Those cobra species are man-haters. They love to attack and do damage. They go out of their way to bite people. They crawl into huts and bungalows, especially during the monsoon rains, and they infest thatch roofs. But are they wise, and retiring, like the house-haunting ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... come, and, squatting in the blazing sun, beg us to give heed to their tricks. They are singularly clever, these Indian mountebanks, especially in sleight of hand tricks. The serpents which they handle with such freedom are of the deadly cobra species, fatally poisonous when their fangs penetrate the flesh, though doubtless when exhibited in this manner they have been deprived of their natural means of defense. True to their native instinct, however, these cobras were more than once seen to strike at ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... had slung him. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I believe that in all these cases of recovery it was pure fright working on the imagination, and not snake-bite at all. My opinion is shared by most planters, that there is no cure yet known for a cobra bite, or for that of any other poisonous snake, where the poison has once been fairly injected and allowed to mix ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... world-wise, and fluent man had now become to Hogarth like manna, or rather a vice, like opium: for in those grey eyes of the cleric was hinted anon the baleful glint of the cobra's. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... quietly, brooding, his elbows upon the table, his inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly in a cobra's head, gleamed from a ring upon his little finger. ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... tell you. Perceiving that your Majesty's spirit was completely broken by some distress of mind under which you were labouring, I determined to rouse your energies by moving you to anger. Because To light a flame, we need but stir the embers; The cobra, when incensed, extends his head And springs upon his foe; the bravest men Display their ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... saw a man in evening dress who had just entered the room. He was exceedingly dark, almost swarthy, with a thin face, black- bearded to the lips, an abundance of coarse black hair in some disorder, a high nose and eyes that glittered with as soulless an expression as those of a cobra. One of the group rose and introduced him as Dr. Dorrimore, of Calcutta. As each of us was presented in turn he acknowledged the fact with a profound bow in the Oriental manner, but with nothing of Oriental gravity. His smile impressed me as cynical and a ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... snake-catching, but found the sport too dangerous; when the animal flees, the tail is caught by the left hand and the right is slipped up to the neck, a delicate process, as a few inches too far or not far enough would be followed by certain death in catching a Cobra. At last certain of my messmates killed one of the captives and the snake-charmer would have no more to do ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... of rushing away, like its fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... of large gilt wings, gave it a most gorgeous appearance. My Ghorka guide could give me no information as to what particular divinity this figure was intended to represent. The other pillar was crowned by the figure of a Newar monarch with an unpronounceable name, who was watched over by a cobra, standing upon its tail, and looking over his head with ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... is hushed,—a pause! Satyavan lets the weapon drop— Too well Savitri knows the cause, He feels not well, the work must stop. A pain is in his head,—a pain As if he felt the cobra's fangs, He tries to look around,—in vain, A mist before his vision hangs; The trees whirl dizzily around In a fantastic fashion wild; His throat and chest seem iron-bound, He staggers, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... all the way? Or, shall we join the company at the half-way stopping place? Well, it's a matter of your eyes, how you use them. If the knife holds your eyes, you'll never get past it. That knife is like the deadly serpent's glittering eye. If the cobra's eye can get your eye, you are held fast in that awful, ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... The cobra serpent was sacred from the earliest times to the present day. It was never identified with any of the great deities, but three goddesses {26} appear in serpent form: Uazet, the Delta goddess of Buto; Mert-seger, 'the lover of silence,' ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Indian Buddhism survives among the Jains but there is no proof that the multiplication of temples and images was a feature of this style. But in some points it is clear that the Jains have followed the artistic conventions of the Buddhists. Thus Parsvanatha is sheltered by a cobra's hood, like Gotama, and though the Bo-tree plays no part in the legend of the Tirthankaras, they are represented as sitting under such trees and a living tree ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... school and lost the company of the worthy barbarians who had befriended him there, he had almost lost the sense of kinship with humanity; he had come to dread the human form as men dread the hood of the cobra. To Lucian a man or a woman meant something that stung, that spoke words that rankled, and poisoned his life with scorn. At first such malignity shocked him: he would ponder over words and glances and wonder if he were not mistaken, and he still sought now ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... to the charm of harmonious tonal vibration; witness the performance of the Hindu snake charmer, who, while handling that deadly poisonous creature, the cobra-de-capello, plays continuously on flageolets, fifes, or other musical instruments.[65] I, myself, have often held tree lizards completely entranced until grasped in my hand, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... his sister very closely, saw that she started at the sight of the wretch, and seemed immediately to shrink still further within herself, whilst her eyes, suddenly luminous and dilated, rested on him like those of a captive bird upon an approaching cobra. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... estate of which he was Administrador was in the Province of Camagey, at Cobra; an overnight trip from Havana, Lee had learned. It was Sunday evening now, and they would have to give up their room at the Inglaterra Tuesday. Obviously there wasn't time to write Daniel and have a reply by then. The other desirable hotels were as full as the Inglaterra. He must ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... you have a choice of ordinary ones. I only asked, because I have in stock a very special one which I got lately from Nepaul. He has a record of his own. He killed a king cobra that had been seen in the Rajah's garden. But I don't suppose we have any snakes of the kind in this cold climate—I daresay an ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... at Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will learn too, that not quite all were killed. He will come hotfoot to find the four we could not find. For these British are as cobras; slay the he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge. Slay the she one and beware! Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee. They are not ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... his crooning noise, and the great cobra swayed its inflated neck to and fro as though to some mysterious rhythm, the native with naked hand and arm seeming ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... poison in the system as asserted, Wallie had a notion that his bite would have been as fatal as a cobra's. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... not stock 'Cobra,' as we are seldom asked for it. Do you wish polish for the class of shoes ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... and part beetle and has a face the color of the meat of an avocado. His head is shaped like a pear standing on its stem and has two eyes spaced about six inches apart and they are as friendly as those of a spitting cobra irked by hives. He is about four feet tall and has two pairs of arms. I guess I am still a little delirious or I would not have told the thing he would make a swell ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W'zy.t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see BUSIRIS). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebesheh. The former city is placed by Petrie at Tell Ferain, a large and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... it all!" the priest retorted indignantly. "The half for me, or I wash my hands of it and tell Gungadhura that you know the secret! I will trust him to find a way to draw thy cobra from its hole!" ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the brilliant gleamed. His forehead was moist; his lips dry; his delicate nostrils were indrawn in harmony with the concentrating lines of his brow, and the next moment, as if in response to an insinuating pass of the merchant's hand of cobra-like undulation, the rigid poise recoiled, he settled more easily upon the divan, and with eyes still fascinated by the entrancing bauble he listened, with anomalous impassiveness, to the weird proposal ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... old Katibas Iban, tells us that he has been helped by a python ever since he was a youth, when a man came to him in a dream and said, "Sometimes I become a python and sometimes a cobra, and I will always help you." It has certainly helped him very much, but he does not know whether it has helped his children; nevertheless he has forbidden them to kill it. He does not like to speak of it, but he does so at our request. Payang concluded by saying that he had no doubt that ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... and at that moment a gust of wind, fiercer than any which had gone before, leapt down the mountain gorges, howling with all the voices of the storm. It caught the frail hut and shook it. A cobra hidden in the thick thatch awoke from its lethargy and fell with a soft thud to the floor not a foot from the face of the dying man—then erected itself and hissed aloud with flickering tongue and head swollen ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... been pasteboard; and, at the same instant, Tim sprang from the other side of the bed, and fainted in the arms of the men. Hossein threw off the rug, and there, severed in pieces, lay the writhing body of a huge cobra. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... a cry; but that cry, in spite of several attempts, was not uttered. For the idea of being bitten, of receiving the two sharp fangs of the monster in my flesh, was so horrible that, cowardly or no, I could not call. I had heard too much of the results of a cobra bite, and the thought of the insidious poison making its way rapidly through the veins, and ending one's life by arresting the pulsations of the heart in a few minutes, or at most hours, was too terrible for me ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... having asphalte laid down in the printing-room, to keep away white ants. The room had been emptied to do this, and Stahl went in to inspect the work after the men had gone to their breakfast at eleven o'clock. He saw a large cobra at the end of the room, and hit it with a stick he had in his hand; but the stick broke in two, and the cobra reared itself up with inflated hood. Another minute must have seen Stahl a prey to the monster; but the Bishop, passing by, heard him exclaim when the stick broke, and going quickly ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Destroyer. His face is turned to the east and wears a stern, commanding expression. His head-dress is elaborate and crowned by a tiara beautifully carved. In one hand he holds a citron and in the other the head of a cobra, which is twisted around his arm and is reaching towards his face. His neck is adorned with strings of pearls, from which hangs a pendant in the form of a heart. Another necklace supports a human skull, the peculiar symbol of Siva, with twisted snakes ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... from his torpor, and he staggered to his feet. Meanwhile the ostrich and the young lady had come to the ground, and were rolling about together in a confused heap, over which the elegant neck and open hissing mouth wavered to and fro like a cobra about to strike. With a rush John seized the neck in both his hands, and, putting out all his strength (for he was a strong man), he twisted it till it broke with a snap, and after a few wild and convulsive bounds and struggles the great bird ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... serpent deadly brood appears; First the dull Asp its swelling neck uprears; The huge Hemor'rho[:i]s, vampire of the blood; Chersy'ders, that pollute both field and flood; The Water-serpent, tyrant of the lake; The hooded Cobra; and the Plantain snake; Here with distended jaws the Prester strays; And Seps, whose bite both flesh and bone decays; The Amphisbaena with its double head, One on the neck, and one of tail instead; The horned Cerast[^e]s; and the Hammodyte, Whose sandy ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... The cobra not an aggressive snake. Unless hurt or provoked will probably never bite. Illustrations in support ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... and looked savagely at him. She had talked herself into her courage. There was a color in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye; she looked dangerous as a cobra. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
