"Cowering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they had 'leaped without looking,' and were 'in the trap' themselves; and, guessing that whoever had made that trap would soon be alongside, they were as much frightened as the poor doe. In this state we had actually found them—cowering and crouching, and more scared-like than the fawns themselves. You will think this a very improbable relation, yet it is quite true. An equally improbable event occurred not long after. Frank caught a large fox and a turkey in his trap; and although they had been together for ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... it? What is the trouble?" came in muffled tones from within, and Peggy breathed a prayer of thanks. Just then she discovered the key which Monty had dropped and quickly opened the door, expecting to find him cowering with fear. But the picture was different. The prisoner was seated on the divan, propped up with many pillows and reading with the aid of an electric light ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... urgent invitation to stay to supper, but when he saw that she shared John Jay's fright, he decided to remain. Had it not been for his protecting presence in the house, Mammy was so affected by the boy's story that she would have barred every opening. Then, cowering around one little flickering candle, they would have fed each other's superstitious fears until bedtime. George knew this, and so he stayed to reassure them by his matter-of-fact explanations, and his cheerful common sense. While he could not convince them ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... River which flowing through the Lakes of Grasmere and Rydale falls into Wyndermere. On Helm-Crag, that impressive single Mountain at the head of the Vale of Grasmere, is a Rock which from most points of view bears a striking resemblance to an Old Woman cowering. Close by this rock is one of those Fissures or Caverns, which in the language of the Country are called Dungeons. The other Mountains either immediately surround the Vale of Grasmere, or belong to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... opposing her, with the thing patent that she was to hold in her hands the hooks on the double-trees and form the link that connected the two spans which were to pull in opposite directions—at the sight of this her courage failed her and she shrank back, drooping and cowering, her face buried in ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Mott like a handful of crooked rheumatic fingers, then suddenly the Bowery again, cowering beneath Elevated trains, where men burned down to the butt end of soiled lives pass in and out and out and in of the knee-high swinging doors, a veiny-nosed, acid-eaten ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... you could have seen her after she had swung her paddle inboard, sitting there, gripping the gunwales with both hands, panting, her wide eyes dry, you might easily have thought of some defenseless wild thing cowering in a momentary shelter, listening for the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Eugene, cowering close to the fire, needed not speech to make evident his awe of the battle-field. "Injun spirits all round," he whispered. "Hear 'em? They cry to Pogos'." He lifted a hand ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Kepler's, especially the law of the planetary motions. And I remember in particular, that upon the very last Monday of his life, when the extremity of his weakness moved a circle of his friends to tears, and he sat amongst us insensible to all we could say to him, cowering down, or rather I might say collapsing into a shapeless heap upon his chair, deaf, blind, torpid, motionless,—even then I whispered to the others that I would engage that Kant should take his part in conversation with propriety and animation. This they found it difficult to believe. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... nearly three feet long. The scene at this moment was exceedingly good, as seen by the light of a small, bright, silver lamp, fed with spirits of wine, that I always travelled with, which hung from one of the hoops of the toldo. First, there was our friend Peter Mangrove, cowering in a corner under the after part of the awning, covered up with a blanket, and shaken as if with an ague—fit, with the patron peering over his shoulder, no less alarmed. Sneezer, the dog, was sitting on end, with his black nose resting on the table, waiting patiently for his crumbs; and the black ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... crash, it sprang upon its victim. Clinging to the weather shrouds I could distinctly see some ten or twelve frightened seamen, who, when their light revealed my presence, turned their white faces towards me and waved their hands imploringly. I felt my gorge rise against these poor cowering worms. Why should they presume to shirk the narrow pathway along which all that is great and noble among mankind has travelled? There was one there who interested me more than they. He was a tall man, who stood apart from the others, balancing himself upon the swaying ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... turned back to a man, and came cowering to the water's edge. Thirty of their fellows lay dead or wounded on the stones, and many of those crawling towards us had bullets in their limbs. Yet Black had no ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... the officer in command, we decided to try getting around the town to the station by way of the ring of outer boulevards. We got through in good shape, being stopped a few times by soldiers and by little groups of frightened civilians who were cowering in the shelter of doorways, listening to the noise of fighting in the town, the steady crackle of machine guns, and the ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... The fairies were simply cowering away from the King and Naggeneen and shivering and squealing with fright at the talk of handling iron and crossing running water. "Ah, Naggeneen," said the King, "you know we can't do all that. Tell us ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... and affright were the worst things possible for her patient, counselled the cowering maids to make good their escape at once, since there was nothing to be done in the house that night, and they were far too frightened to sleep. All had friends who would give them shelter. And soon the house was silent and empty, for the men had gone off either to the fire or out of sheer ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shocked decency at the thought that she had been about to enter Constant's bedroom. Then the terror came over her afresh. She felt that she was alone in the house with a corpse. She sank to the floor, cowering; with difficulty stifling a desire to scream. Then she rose with a jerk and raced down the stairs without looking behind her, and threw open the door and ran out into the street, only pulling up with her hand violently agitating Grodman's door-knocker. In a moment the first floor ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... deep-blue arch of the sky, the amethyst sea flecked with glittering silver foam, and the dark, sombre rocks of the Cretan coast bringing a suggestion of fate into this dancing, soulless vision. Turning now to Rome, we see that this same music has fallen to a wretched slave's estate, cowering in some corner until the screams of Nero's living torches need to be drowned; and then, with brazen clangour and unabashed rhythms, this brutal music flaunts forth with swarms of dancing slaves, shrilling out the praises of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the King of Water, supporting the umbrella, bowed assent to his words. Tu-Kila-Kila motioned Felix and Muriel into the nearest hut. It was the one where the two Shadows lay crouching in terror among the native mats. As the god tried to enter, the two cowering wretches set up a loud shout, "Taboo! Taboo! Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" Tu-Kila-Kila retreated with a contemptuous smile. "I want to see you alone," he said, in Polynesian, to Felix. "Is the other hut empty? If not, go in and cut their throats who sit there, ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... we had promise of better things. The weather cleared somewhat, revealing ranges of white-clad hills around Garda.... But, alas! at Verona it rained as hard as ever, and we made our way from the railway station at Venice, cowering in the coffin-like cabin of a damp and extremely draughty gondola, while cold flurries of an Alpine-born wind swept across the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... reply. As yet, however, no such attempt had been made, so far as his ears informed him, but his misgivings were none the less on that account. What was the use of their taking the trouble to answer when he was walking directly into their hands? There was a cowering, shrinking sensation from his own noise, caused by the expectation that a half-dozen crouching figures would leap up and swoop ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... sinking moon, entering by the small, deep window, and shining feebly on the chair. He struck a light, kindled the peats on the hearth, and went for water. Returning from the well he found the house dark as before; and there was the old man again, cowering over the extinguished fire! The idea lasted but a moment; once more the level light of the moon lay cold and gray upon the stone chair! He tried to laugh at his fancifulness, but did not quite succeed. Several times on the way up, he had thought of his old uncle: ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... violent desire for the old life. Perugia was rebuilt, and rehabilitated, in spite of the conquering name of Augustus superimposed upon its most ancient Etruscan portal. Assisi was plying a busy and happy life on the opposite hillside. The intervening valley, once cowering under the flail of war, was given over now to plenty and to peace. Its beauty, as she had seen it last, recurred to her vividly. She had left home in the early morning. The sky still held the flush of dawn, and the white mists were just ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... to look as near as possible, pluck up their habits so that they would not tread in it. The sight of the great stag crushed by weariness, gradually drooping his branching head, tormented by the howls of the hounds which the whipper-in held back with difficulty, and that of the little one, cowering beside him and dying with gaping throat, would have been touching had one given ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... revolt and defeat. What a to-do to discover if this particular soldier was innocent or guilty! When La Vendee was recovering heart, when Toulon was surrendering to the enemy, when the army of the Rhine was recoiling before the victors of Mayence, when the Army of the North, cowering in Caesar's Camp, might be taken at a blow by the Imperialists, the English, the Dutch, now masters of Valenciennes, the one important thing was to teach the Generals of the Republic to conquer or to die. To see yonder feeble-witted ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... sewing in the fading light of the attic window, snatched him up as Odo entered. Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with Filomena's call—"Where are you then, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... awful self-humiliation) must have struck all travellers. It stands in the centre of the arched rotunda, which is common to all denominations, and from which branch off the various chapels belonging to each particular sect. In the Coptic chapel I saw one coal-black Copt, in blue robes, cowering in the little cabin, surrounded by dingy lamps, barbarous pictures, and cheap faded trumpery. In the Latin Church there was no service going on, only two fathers dusting the mouldy gewgaws along the brown walls, and laughing to one another. ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mixed in with, and forming the basis and the body of higher things—the strong practical woof through which the warp of golden stuff is woven into a glorious fabric—a glorious fabric of national progression. Yes, and into a wider garment still; one that will cover many an outlying Bedouin cowering in the darkness round—one that will join together the high and the low, the good and the bad, and so knead up the baser element into amalgamation with and absorption into the higher. This is no ideal theory. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... forth house-hunting, dropping Terry ere long at the Library, where she went to make inquiries, and find the sine qua non. When she reached the sitting-room at the hotel, she found Frank cowering over the fire in an arm-chair, the picture of despondency. Of course, he did not hear her entrance, and she darted up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. He looked up to her with ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were lifted right on to the rock. In the fore cabin was a poor woman, Mrs. Dawson, with a child on each arm. When the vessel was stranded on the rock the waves rushed into the exposed cabin, but she managed to keep her position, cowering in a corner. First one and then the other child died from cold and exhaustion, and falling from the fainting mother were swept from her sight by the waves, but the poor soul herself survived all the horrors of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... not waited to hear her pleadings, and before she was half across the Close he had overtaken her, dragging the cowering struggling boy in his ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Europe had been cowering in confused alarm before the shadow of a new Roman empire. Ever since the first triumph of Luther, the cause of Reformation had been Steadily losing ground; on England and the Low Countries hung ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the monsters shot past him with bellowings that shook the earth. They turned and Jason poised for the leap. As they passed a second time, he grasped the nearest by the horn and lightly vaulted upon its back. The bull, unused to the burden, sank cowering to the ground. Jason patted its neck caressing it, and gladly it shared ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the sea," she said gently, holding out her hand to help him to his feet. Before she had put Fred in the sea she had felt it would be much better to go herself than live with Louis any more. But the flood of madness ebbed; Louis's cowering as she came near him seemed to her so appalling, so appealing that she could not leave him, and her hatred of Fred made her set her teeth and determine not ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... of the contrition in this case is shown by two things,—the request to Samuel to pray for them, and the boon which they begged him to ask, 'that we die not.' They had better have prayed for themselves, and they had better have asked for strength to cleave to Jehovah. They were like Simon Magus cowering before Peter, and beseeching him, 'Pray ye for me to the Lord, that none of the things which ye have spoken may come upon me.' That is not the voice of true repentance, the 'godly sorrow' which works healing and life, but that of the 'sorrow of the world which worketh death.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to be doubted whether anything else in the world could have restored the fighting spirit to Jill's cowering soul at that moment: but the reference to Lady Underhill achieved this miracle. That deep mutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sight had sprung up between the two at the instant of their meeting. The circumstances of ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... carrots, and turnips were pelted by the grey water, quite drowned by the muddy torrent that rushed along the pavement. There was no longer any of that glorious greenery so apparent on bright mornings. The market gardeners, cowering in their heavy cloaks beneath the downpour, swore at the municipality which, after due inquiry, had declared that rain was in no way injurious to vegetables, and that there was accordingly no ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... afternoon when I reached Hebron; and nearly an hour later before I could get myself deposited at Kathleen Somers's door. There was no garden, no porch; only a long, weed-grown walk up to a stiff front door. An orchard of rheumatic apple-trees was cowering stiffly to the wind in a far corner of the roughly fenced-in lot; there was a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... burghers to resist other supposed opposition of an altogether more formidable but yet undefined character. When nothing further transpired, the feeling uppermost with the people was unbounded derision at that impotent fiasco, and a loathing contempt for the cowering Johannesburg rabble who betrayed and sacrificed the insensate doctor. It was loudly asserted that the combined forces of the two Republics were competent to resist an invasion a hundred times stronger than the one so foolishly attempted; but, with cooler counsels, it was resolved to adopt ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... the room she hid her face in her dishevelled hair and lay cowering on the floor. Everyone looked at her as though she were a piece of dirt off the road. The old men scolded and condemned, and the young ones laughed at her. The women condemned her too, and looked at her contemptuously, just as though she were some ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... they obtained told them that something unusual had indeed happened. A number of the native crew were in range of their vision, but every man had fallen flat on his face and seemed to be cowering ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... Cowering like a condemned criminal, the dark-deeded villain crept toward a shelter, dragging with him his captives. Suddenly a dazzling flood of light, blinding and bewildering, enveloped the whole party, and, at the same instant, an earth-shaking, sky-rending burst of sound stunned them all ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... Ulysses, chosen sentries, were guarding the spoil. Hither from all quarters is flung in masses the treasure of Troy torn from burning shrines, [765-798]tables of the gods, bowls of solid gold, and raiment of the captives. Boys and cowering mothers in long file stand round. . . . Yes, and I dared to cry abroad through the darkness; I filled the streets with calling, and again and yet again with vain reiterance cried piteously on Creuesa. As I stormed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... him equal with most men. Few sailors whom God had carefully and completely made could handle a sailboat as well. Five points nearer the wind than even the best of them he could sail his sloop. When the elements raged and set other men to cowering, the deficiencies of Felipe seemed of little importance. He was a perfect sailor, if an imperfect man. He owned no boat, but worked among the crews of the schooners and sloops that skimmed the coast, trading and freighting ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... were loitering about, were pressed into the service, and pushed it along; and the gentlemen, walking, brought up the rear. I don't know that I ever in my life felt so completely desolate as during that half-hour's slow progress. We sat cowering among the trunks, my faithful Margery and I, each with a baby in our arms, sheltering ourselves and our poor little burthens from the bleak northern wind that ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to the fort. He had almost passed it when, suddenly, he dropped to the ground and lay cowering against a piece of wall. And, wringing his ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... remember when reading the above description, which has been so much quoted, that the man who wrote it was in such a weakened condition, that he had no energy left to withstand the hot wind, and that the shade they were cowering under was ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop. Then, suddenly, she became ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... would have freely indulged their religious propensities, find themselves nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the agnostic vetoes upon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraid to use our instincts. In many persons such inhibitions are never overcome. To the end of their days they refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious centre, and the latter remains ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... now, his hand reaching. "Down, down," he cautioned quietly. Suddenly the wolf crouched, cowering, at his feet. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Skeaton that she was seriously alarmed. To say that that first ten minutes in Paul's study alarmed her is to put it mildly indeed. As she looked at the place where her mother's portrait had been, as she stared at the trembling Mitch cowering against Maggie's dress, she experienced the most terrifying, shattering upheaval since the day when as a little girl of six she had been faced as she had fancied, with the dripping ghost of her great-uncle William. Not at once, however, was the battle to begin. Maggie gave way ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... shadow of the thought, abasing himself in the awe of God Who had made all things and all men. Madness. Who could think such a thought? And, cowering in darkness and abject, he prayed mutely to his guardian angel to drive away with his sword the demon that was ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... shouldered through the crowd. He was dragging a woman along by the arm. Another policeman came behind, urging her forward. Somehow she slipped from them and sank, cowering against the wall. Braith's eyes met ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... much about that second, headlong passage of the caves, when he and Little Billy, and the cowering Ichi, retraced their path to the beach. He was in a frenzy of rage and fear. The hunchback was weeping and cursing in the same breath. Their prisoner howled hysterically as they kicked him along the ledge by the chasm edge. Martin ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... Sly little, cowering, timorous beastie! Oh what a panic's in thy breastie! You need not start away so hasty, With bickering speed: I should be loth to run and ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... not sit down till thou say 'yes' to what I ask"; for some womanly instinct told her that while Adam was cowering over the hearth blaze and she stood in all her beauty and splendour above him, she controlled the ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hour I throw the casement wide, Fall on my knees beside it in the gloom, And cowering before me lies the balmy night, Wafted aloft the breath of lilac bloom. The nightingale her plaint from a near thicket sobs, I listen to the singer, share the woe— With a longing for my home within me waking, The home I looked on last ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... because she was so close to it, the most urgent and eager of all. She went to the door and opened it. There was no light in the passage save the dim reflection from the lamp on the lower floor, and in the shadow she saw a figure cowering back into the corner behind ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... faces. The grins were gone. There was no misunderstanding the sentiments which those men entertained toward a woman who had wrought the undoing of a square man. She presented completely then the pathetic spectacle of a baited, cowering, wild creature at bay. She was bitterly alone among them. Even Crowley of the city was against her. In her agony of loneliness the thought of her kin in the big house on the hill came to her mind. But to her, in spite of her passionate efforts to aid, must be ascribed the defection of ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... special agency of the Almighty, offended with the burning of Saint Quirinus,—now came to complete the horror of the scene. Three-quarters of the town were at once in a blaze. The churches, where the affrighted women had been cowering during the sack and slaughter, were soon on fire, and now, amid the crash of falling houses and the uproar of the drunken soldiery, those unhappy victims were seen flitting along the flaming streets; seeking refuge against the fury of the elements in the more horrible cruelty of man. The ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tending Menelaos of the loud war-cry, the ranks of shield-bearing Trojans came on; so the Achaians donned their arms again, and bethought them of the fray. Now wouldest thou not see noble Agamemnon slumbering, nor cowering, unready to fight, but very eager for glorious battle. He left his horses and his chariot adorned with bronze; and his squire, even Eurymedon son of Ptolemaios Peiraieus' son, kept apart the snorting steeds; and he straitly charged ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... and while they sought, Yarra—for it was he who had led the police away on this wild-goose chase—had doubled on his pursuers, and was making a bee-line for the station again on foot. He was found in his bed at home two hours later, cowering under the blankets, pretending an overpowering fear of the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... length of it, when, with a writhing twist the bag jerked the basket sideways and upward, knocking to the ground the last two men who had held it and whirling forth into the deathly emptiness of space a cowering, stunned girl, whose white face peered and white hands pleaded over the basket rim—peered down upon the upturned faces of thousands who would have risked their lives to aid, but who stood helpless in their pity, ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... lost it longer than I had thought, since, although I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were the words of my own thought, "Two One ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... an ancient olive tree against the far wall of the vineyard. Cowering under its shelter, Roy tore the string off with his strong white teeth, then picked up the paper. These were the hurried words scrawled in pencil:— 'Sorry! All we can do for you. Make east. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... committee were gone, taking the cowering Myrtle with them, and Leslie lay snuggled up on the couch, with Allison building up the fire and Cherry bringing a tray with a nice supper. Julia Cloud fixed a hot-water bag to warm the chilled hands and feet. It was so good to be at home! The tears rushed into her eyes again, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... sensation. As the man in charge of the officers passed near the auto, poor Carrie cowering away from him, though he no longer had it in his power to harm her, the Little ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so groveling. In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the turned-up female noses with which it was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... songs proclaim the dreadful Zamor dead, Me, whom the hungry gods from plain to plain Have follow'd, feasting on thy slaughter'd train, Me wouldst thou cover? No! from yonder sky, The wide-beak'd hawk, that now beholds me die, Soon with his cowering train my flesh shall tear, And wolves and tigers vindicate their share. Receive, dread Powers (since I can slay no more), My last glad victim, this ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... certainty announced by the inexorable walls, served to make the wretch's case the more desperate. Panic, chalk-white, staring panic-fear, swallowed her up: the next few hours flew by as minutes, while she was cowering and gibbering in a corner. Before the inevitable you either resign or rave yourself mad—there is no middle course. Bellaroba took the first. Sitting in her cell with her cheek pressed against the wall which (though she knew it not) penned also her Angioletto, she never opened ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... wild shriek, she sprang to her feet, and darted round the rock, against which she had been cowering; she saw the little red gleam through the chinks of the hut; she ran up to it and fell against its wooden walls, which she began to hammer with clenched fists in an almost maniacal frenzy, ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... he would have fought to the death! There's treachery! What paynim dog dare face His lance, who naked braved yon lion's rage, And eyed the cowering monster to his den? Speak! ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... unbroken, and, after what seemed to the cowering man an eternity of expectant waiting, he crawled again to the wall and glanced furtively into the interior. The form by the fire was motionless ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... about them seemed to be shivering; the river itself; craft, rigging, sails, such early smoke as there yet was on the shore. Black with wet, and altered to the eye by white patches of hail and sleet, the huddled buildings looked lower than usual, as if they were cowering, and had shrunk with the cold. Very little life was to be seen on either bank, windows and doors were shut, and the staring black and white letters upon wharves and warehouses 'looked,' said Eugene to Mortimer, 'like inscriptions over the graves ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... in, staggering forward, and hardly able to keep upon my legs, so that I nearly reached the middle of the room before I was aware that the boy was cowering down in a corner upon our rope, and that a big scowling stubble-chinned man had just risen dressed from a bed on which he had lain, to catch me by the shoulders in a tremendous grip, and hold me backwards panting like some ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... have been wrong in those unformulated assumptions. Perhaps he would not have been calm enough for satisfaction in the completed deed, since the mind does, after a red act, become at once fugitive before the furies of inherited beliefs and fears. Perhaps it would have shrunk cowering back from the old, old penalty against the letting of blood, as it did now when he was faced with the tragic irony of the deed as it was. He had shed blood and, by one of the savage mischances of life, the blood of a man innocent ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... When the bent wire rattled in the lock, and the key fell out upon the floor, she screamed, and his coarse chuckle answered. She was cowering against the wall in a corner of the room when he came in and picked up the key and locked the door. But when his stretched-out, grasping hand came down upon her slight shoulder, she turned and bit it like some savage, desperate little animal, drawing the blood. Bough swore at the sudden ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... that Noyez fell back three steps, then sank cowering into a chair, covering his eyes ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... awoke half the school one night by loud and repeated screams, and when Miss Frazer rushed into their room, imagining fire or burglars, she found them cowering behind the bed curtains, in mortal terror of a large bat that had made its way through the open casement. Earwigs were a constant nuisance, and everyone grew almost accustomed to catching green caterpillars, which crept in from the roses that surrounded the windows, and ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... to kick him out of the cabin like a craven hound and henceforward ignore his existence. But this impulse lasted only for a moment; they recalled to mind the insolent arrogance with which this same cowering creature had treated them when he deemed himself secure from retaliation; and they determined that, while his miserable life was not worth the taking, he should still receive so salutary a lesson as should effectually deter him from any repetition of ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... marching into Burgundy, and destroying every thing in their way. And great flight and confusion prevailed. Men and women hurried hither and thither in dismay. Soldiers busily sharpened their weapons, and burnished their armor, ready for the fray. Little children were seen cowering at every sound, and anxious faces were ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... render himself invisible. He crouches to the ground and remains perfectly motionless until he perceives himself discovered, when he makes one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a very timid warrior,—cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame, guilt, and humiliation. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue trying to hide by embracing a small ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... my three children were uninjured. I found them, cowering and terrified, in an inner chamber. But the infidels had searched every room in their quarters, scattering the contents of chests on the floors. And at sight of this vile desecration the iron of revenge even ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat of cowering fear. Panic-stricken, he strove to comprehend what he had done. For though he knew not what, he knew he had done something, something fatal, irreparable, blasting. Anger he had felt, but not this blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of his ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance; And when the cannon's mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall; Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... at ye! I winna luke at ye! I hae lukit at ye ower muckle for my ain gude already!" cried the girl, cowering under ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... of the house stood open. I walked through room after room, and found no human being. At last, at the foot of the stairs in the back part of the house, I came upon all the servants huddled together in a cowering, weeping group. Flat on the floor, with his face to the wall, lay black Caesar, the coachman. I put my hand on his ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... western sky had become overcast and blackened by the vaporous army of invasion, whose forecoursing streams of cavalry skirmishers were already high over his head. The earth had lost its laughing colors, and seemed to lie cowering, with its head covered with a dull mantle, and the sea had accepted the challenge of the storm clouds and was beginning to leap forward in ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... courageous old sinner, his heart failed him, for such sounds had not visited the old house within the memory of man in the day time, much less in the dead of night; and, instead of going to the door, he hurried away to the chamber where old Le Prun was cowering, screwed up in the middle of a great old fauteuil, and more frightened at the tempest than he would have cared to confess. So he told him of the sounds he had just heard, and he and his master mounted together to a small room ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the religion of the place. In this terrible country, where the great forces of nature, drought and famine and pestilence, the intolerable sun, the intolerable rain, and the exuberance of life and death, have made of mankind a mere passive horde cowering before inscrutable Powers—here, more than anywhere, men were bound under a yoke of observance and ritual to the gods they had fashioned and the priests who interpreted their will. Then came the Deliverer to set them free not for but from life, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Cowering and trembling beneath the threats and fiendish glances of the other, Elwood siezed his hat, and rushed ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of Africans, as manifested among ourselves, —the courage created by desperate emergencies. Suppled by long slavery, softened by mixture of blood, the black man seems to pass at one bound, as women do, from cowering pusillanimity to the topmost height of daring. The giddy laugh vanishes, the idle chatter is hushed, and the buffoon becomes a hero. Nothing in history surpasses the bravery of the Maroons of Surinam, as described by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... beautiful in you," continued Julia, cowering down before her mistress. "These eternal, tiresome and intolerable state affairs would make your face prematurely old and wrinkled, my dear princess. Ah, there is nothing more tedious than governing. I am heartily ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... other half of my soul refused to be comforted. It was cowering in some minute and inadequate corner—at ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... tramp came the hunters through the jungle, flashing their lights and looking for the lion which one of them had shot while the hunter was hidden on the platform in a tree. But Nero, cowering away back in the dark cave, kept very still and quiet, and he heard the hunters walk ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... changes as all higher natures are, he could kill and tame the huge and powerful animals which had the advantage of him in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness threatened him at every turn with destruction, from which his only escape would seem to have been constant cowering and hiding. He could compel the earth to bear for him choicer food than for the other beings who lived on her gifts. He could command the service of fire, the dread visitor from heaven. Stepping victoriously ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... according as it was viewed in the light of a dramatic trick of Mr. Moffat's, or as the natural outburst of a man fighting for his life in his own way and with his own weapons. I could not catch the eye of Ella cowering low in her seat, so could not judge what tender chords had been struck in her sensitive breast by these two assertions so dramatically offset against each other—the one, his antagonism to the dead; the other, his freedom from the crime in which that antagonism ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... not seen. . . . In other words, it is the rock we search for. . . . Draw near it, and you will know yourself in God's very shadow—the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. . . . As with this building, so with you, O man, cowering from wrath, as these walls are cowering. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... the deacon arrived at the head of a squad of soldiers that evening, there was no girl of any description to be found. Ignoring the cowering and unhappy reward seeker, the old woman delivered her dictum to the sergeant ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... Cowering for a few moments in the darkest corner of the carriage, she had heard the voice of Tartar raised in anger, followed by the tumult. The latter she had anticipated with fear and trembling. She had divined at the last moment that these were agents of the police, and that ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... sight, when encamped on a showery day, to see every man take off his skin, wrap it carefully up, and place it in his mzigo or load, and stand, whilst his garment is thus comfortably disposed of, cowering and trembling like a dog which has just ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... thunderously, And all the panting firths of Ocean boil. The Sire himself in midnight of the clouds Wields with red hand the levin; through all her bulk Earth at the hurly quakes; the beasts are fled, And mortal hearts of every kindred sunk In cowering terror; he with flaming brand Athos, or Rhodope, or Ceraunian crags Precipitates: then doubly raves the South With shower on blinding shower, and woods and coasts Wail fitfully beneath the mighty blast. This fearing, mark the months and Signs of heaven, Whither retires ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... grasp the little one, if the more childish brother should fail her, and his countenance, lighted up with interest and affection, was far more prepossessing than when so lately it had been, full of cowering, almost abject apprehension. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soon as the roads were passable Mrs. Nixey made her way up to the solitary farmstead. The last time she had seen old Marlowe he had been ailing, yet she was quite unprepared for the rapid change that had passed over him. He was cowering in the chimney-corner, his face yellow and shrivelled, and his eyes, once blue as Phebe's own, sunken in their sockets, and glowering dimly at her, with the strange intensity of gaze in the deaf and dumb. There was a ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... this unnamed terror, and cowering before this shapeless thought which loomed in the darkness of her mental gloom, an idea entered her mind that I, too, was suspicious that something was going wrong,—that I was watching,—waiting the evil to come. The child died. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... with a hand trembling with eagerness—eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her situation in the face, and collect herself before she came out again among her kind. She had stood on the door-step, cowering among her bags, counting the instants till a step sounded and the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare of the outer world.... And now she had sat for an hour in Violet's drawing-room, in the very house where ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... sat cowering in the bracken, hare-like, when it might have loped away, selected this, the one moment when it ought to have sat still, to bolt frantically between Peter's bandy legs and speed away ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... side—if we had only known how. The writing of the letter would occupy us, at any rate. I made another effort to give my mind to the subject—and once more it was an effort made in vain. Knowing what I wanted to say to my mother, my faculties seemed to be paralyzed when I tried to say it. I sat cowering by the fire—and she sat waiting, with her writing-case ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... his tenant should never sublet it to any person of the name of Logan! If he found the gold he probably was not allowed to carry off his third share. Logan being a resolute character of this kind, Sprot, a cowering creature, would not forge letters to blackmail him. He would have been invited to dine at Fastcastle. The cliffs are steep, the sea is deep, ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... content without us, love within That hour there was, now thunder and wild rain, Have wrapped the cowering world, and foolish sin, And nameless pride, have made us wise in vain; Ah, love! although the morn shall come again, And on new rose-buds the new sun shall smile, Can we regain what ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... and June, when the twisted and cowering madrone trees are putting forth their clusters of creamy buds, when the white blossoms of the dogwoods line the banks of little streams, when the azaleas and rhododendrons, lovely and delicate as orchids, ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... he caught sight of his mother's ill-shapen figure cowering over the fire. Clutching Rotha's arm with one hand, he pointed at his mother with the other, and said, with an ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... free in his talk, excessively candid in the expression of his desires, and with a reserve of stinging repartee which must have been more blessed to give than to receive. Terrible storms of rage possessed him at times, under which the house seemed to rock and roll, which sent his sweet wife cowering into a corner. But, though she feared him, she respected and loved the man—and I was to find that out to my cost before my first ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... paraphrase. Her French was of that mixed creole sort, a blending of linguistic elegance and patois, impossible to imitate. Like herself it was beautiful, crude, fascinating, and something in it impressed itself as unimpeachable, despite the broken and incongruous diction. Rene felt his soul cowering, even slinking; but he fairly maintained a good face, and went away without ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... and home, but as he stood for a moment to get his breath and his bearings, the westerly breeze brought him a sound of voices on the ridge close by. He prayed fervently that the wind which had warned him had served also to carry away the sound of his progress. Cowering against a tree, he stood perfectly still while the voices—there seemed to be two—came nearer and nearer. One was a very deep, rough bass that laughed hoarsely between speeches. The other voice was of a totally different sort, with a cool, even ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... who are they, who, cowering, wait Within the shattered fortress gate? Dark tillers of Virginia's soil, Classed with the battle's common spoil, With household stuffs, and fowl, and swine, With Indian weed and planters' wine, With stolen beeves, and foraged corn,— Are they not ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock Place trying to keep his attention on the "tick, tick, tick, tick" of his two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the vast shadowy presences that slunk in ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... she was a year old, hatched a respectable family of chickens; little, cowering, timid things at first, but, in due time, they became fine chubby ones; and old Norah said, "If I could only keep Yarico out of the copse, it would do; but the copse is full of ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not move. After a while Cooney slipped off to his hammock; Faed to his bunk, alongside Lashman's. The Gaffer had picked up his book again. The Snipe laid a couple of logs on the blaze, and remained beside it, cowering, with his arms stretched out as if to embrace it. His shapeless shadow wavered up and down on the bunks behind him; and, across the fire, he ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... him with the ferocity of a wild beast and carrying him headlong to the lawn before the windows. Never in his life had such a paroxysm of anger overtaken the boy or one which mastered him so utterly. Blindly he struck; his blows rained upon the cowering face as though he would beat it out of all recognition. He knew not wholly why he thus acted if not upon some impulse which would avenge the wrongs good women had suffered at the hands of such an impostor as this. When he desisted, the man lay almost insensible upon ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Martines promised to take the little rogue in hand, and he did, in fact, give him a lecture, which reduced Tonet, for a moment at least, to cowering in terror in the presence of that uniform and that heavy gun, which the soldier would never let go of for an instant. These slight favors gradually brought Martinez into the family, making his relations with sina Tona more and more intimate. He got his meals now at the tavern, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... He stands transfixed; cowering as one detected in an act of crime, and by a strong hand held in the attitude in which caught! Only for a short while thus; then, starting up, he rushes to regain his horse, jerks the bridle from the back, and drags the animal in the direction ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... recollection of his last sermon, that we are all shadows; but turns to note the cattle cowering behind the fences; the labourer carving the haystack; the woodman going to work, followed by his half-bred cur, and cheered by the fragrance of his short pipe. He watches the marauding sparrows, and thinks with tenderness of the fate of less audacious ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... again, calls to her in anguish, "Anethe, Anethe! Get out of the window! run! hide!" The poor girl, almost paralyzed with fear, tries to obey, puts her bare feet out of the low window, and stands outside in the freezing snow, with one light garment over her cowering figure, shrinking in the cold winter wind, the clear moonlight touching her white face and bright hair and fair young shoulders. "Scream! scream!" shouts frantic Maren. "Somebody at Star Island may hear!" but Anethe answers with the calmness of despair, "I cannot ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a wild deer, cowering beside a log on the little island near which they were passing. Here he stopped, and disembarking, soon called out to them that he had seen the track of a bear, fresh in the loam near-by. They being terrified at this, he returned to the boat, ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... stretched himself at full length on the sofa, and composed himself to sleep. But his favourite cocker, Dash, that had been lying at my feet, took the liberty of jumping upon him and beginning to lick his face. He struck it off with a smart blow, and the poor dog squeaked and ran cowering back to me. When he woke up, about half an hour after, he called it to him again, but Dash only looked sheepish and wagged the tip of his tail. He called again more sharply, but Dash only clung the closer to me, and licked my hand, as if imploring protection. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the inhabitants were cowering in terror; the Little Ones and their strange cavalry were encamped in the square; the sun shone upon the princess, and for a few minutes she saw herself glorious. The vision passed, but she sat on. The night was now come, and darkness clothed ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... Anderson proved true to his bargain. He immediately reversed his engines, and, when he had backed in as close as he thought safe, sent a boat ashore for us. We got into it without any obstruction from the cowering natives, who only shrank from us in horror, now that their prayers had failed to move us. The moment our boat was made fast to the steamer's davit ropes and we were pulled out of the water, "full speed ahead" was rung from the bridge. We were raised to the deck ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie |
