"Crouched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was no one left in whom she might confide; none whose hand was friendly, or on whom she dared to reckon for the barest loyalty. With the fall of Gondremark, her party, her brief popularity, had fallen. So she sat crouched upon the window-seat, her brow to the cool pane; her dress in tatters, barely shielding her; her mind ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Crouched as a nestling, still its wings untried, The man's mind opened under weight of cloud. To penetrate the dark was it endowed; Stood day before a vision shooting wide. Whereat the spectral enemy lost form; The traversed wilderness exposed its track. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... came another hurricane squall with rain that lashed. The rushing air itself shook. We crouched, all humped up, in the lew of a drifter's bows, whilst the rain water washed around our boots and coat-tails. "This 'll tell 'ee what 'tis like for us chaps," said Tony. "I be only sorry," Uncle Jake added, "for them what's out to sea now ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... plunged. He was awaiting his reappearance with all the patience of a hunter, or rather of a fisherman, for he was really fishing. He was silent, motionless, without any sign of life. Suddenly the surface of the water was agitated; the seal had come up to breathe. The bear crouched low upon the ice, and rounded his two paws about the crevasse. The next moment the seal appeared, with his head above water; but he had not time to withdraw it. The bear's paws, as if driven by a spring, were clashed together, strangling the animal with ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... trap up to Phonny. Phonny held it upon the pommel of the saddle, directly before him. He found that the squirrel had gnawed through the board so as to get his nose out, but he could not gnaw any more, now that the box was all the time in motion. So he gave it up in despair, and remained crouched down in a corner of the trap during the remainder of the ride, wondering all the time what the people ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... will go on. Would that I were still young and strong as when we got up an ambuscade before Troy. Menelaus and Ulysses were the leaders, but I was in command also, for the other two would have it so. When we had come up to the wall of the city we crouched down beneath our armour and lay there under cover of the reeds and thick brushwood that grew about the swamp. It came on to freeze with a North wind blowing; the snow fell small and fine like hoar frost, and our shields were coated thick with rime. ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... harvests the grain. Over all is a gentle solemnity. In "Autumn," probably the most admired of the four, against the background of a fruit-bearing tree, a superb nymph bears proudly the full jar of wine or oil. On one side a crouched figure gathers a richly-laden garland of the vine; on the other, a youthful, kneeling female figure plays with a lusty child. Even this period of completion is marked by the general pensive beauty. It is emphasized most, however, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... night of which we were speaking, it contained a novel piece of lumber. Crouched behind an old barrel sat Julia, listening eagerly to the conversation between her teacher and Mr. Miller. When it ceased she arose from her dark hiding place and muttered to herself: "So you'll see, will you? ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... many memorials have been erected, not only in the New World, but the Old. In the plaza in front of the cathedral, in the city of Santo Domingo, stands a statue, heroic, in bronze, representing Columbus pointing to the westward. Crouched at his feet is the figure of a female Indian, supposed to be the unfortunate Anacaona, the caciquess of Xaragua, tracing ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... departed through the house of Odysseus, and on her fell a cloud of consuming grief; so that she might no more endure to seat her on a chair, whereof there were many in the house, but there she crouched on the threshold of her well-builded chamber, wailing piteously, and her handmaids round her made low moan, as many as were in the house with her, young and old. And Penelope spake among them ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... crouched bawling beside their wares, sailors passing, some with pots of tar, some with steaming pots of stew, others with baskets full of squid which they were taking to wash in the fresh water of the fountains. Everywhere prodigious heaps of merchandise of every kind. Silks, minerals, baulks of timber, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... happened to her surpassed her hopes. Several times when with me she has expressed her astonishment; and with me has laughed at many people, often of much consideration, whom she scarcely knew, or who had been strongly opposed to her, and who basely crouched at her feet. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... an occasional glint of light, but only a few airholes clustered at the top. Then, too, his quarters were so cramped that even the slightest flutter was well-nigh impossible; and, after a few struggles, utterly discouraged, and fearing the worst, he gave up and crouched down, entirely at a loss ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... Mrs. Chesters crouched lower upon her horse's shoulder, waited till the maiden had reached the water's edge, then turned her horse and trotted swiftly down to battle with ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... recollection," he says, "I believe that every antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two days upon an average, and that he starts or gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times in a day. Those who have crouched at night by the side of pools in the desert, in order to have a shot at the beasts that frequent it, see strange scenes of animal life; how the creatures gambol at one moment and fight at another; how a herd suddenly halts in strained attention, and then breaks into ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... And there, crouched at the foot of a tree was Kitty. She looked like nothing so much as a toad-stool, a bit of human fungus growth, at the foot of that gentle birch tree. Her knees drawn up, and bare feet hiding in her bedraggled gingham skirt, Kitty was truly a sorry ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... grape-shot, tearing ghastly passages through them. They were near enough to be scorched by the flame of it. Down and across it rent them, as they crouched and fought with each other to get away and hide. There was no hiding. Before the breath of it they went down in rows, strewing the deck horribly, mangled, ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cautiously advancing through the protecting brush; they spread out widely until their two flanks were close in against the wall of rock, and then the deadly rifles began to spit spitefully, the balls casting up the soft dirt in clouds or flattening against the stones. The two men crouched lower, hugging their pile of slag, unable to perceive even a stray assailant within range of their ready revolvers. Hampton remained cool, alert, and motionless, striving in vain to discover some ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Lorraine crouched behind a juniper bush close against the rock and waited. The next flash came within a half-minute. It showed a man at the horse's head, holding it by the bridle. The horse was rearing. Lorraine tried to scream that the man on the ground would be trampled, but something went ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... did this one of the wildcats suddenly opened its eyes and looked around. On the instant it let out a cry of rage and its back commenced to bristle. Then the other wildcat leaped from the tree to the ground and crouched as if ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... a state of physical collapse after the service that she did not send for him until the second day following. He came timidly even then, for he was at a loss how to comfort her, vividly conscious as he was of his own guilt and shame. He found her crouched upon one of the old stone benches in the garden in the full hot glare of the sun. It relieved him to find that she had lost her unnatural self-control, having fallen, it seemed, into much the same mood ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... was a sharp report, and he fell back shot through the heart. The rest made a rush forward. Another shot was fired, but this missed them, and before it could be repeated they had wrested the pistol from the hand of Matheson's wife. She was firmly secured, and they then entered the kitchen, where, crouched upon the floor, lay some seven or eight negro men and women in an agony of terror. Vincent's question, "Dinah, where are you?" was answered by a scream of delight; and Dinah, who had been covering her child with her ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... She crouched, gasping, on the ground, the same horrible terror that had come to her last night stealing over her irresistibly, paralysing her. Waiting, listening, agonising, the tom-tom growing louder and louder—or ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... humming a tune, with my face to a mirror, and my back to Carlotta, so that I was able to watch her motions without her perceiving it. She was standing near the fireplace, the coffee was by her, on the table, and the old woman crouched in the chimney corner, with her bleared eyes fixed on the embers. Carlotta seemed in doubt; she pressed her hands forcibly on her forehead; took up the coffee-pot to pour me out a cup, then sat it down again; the old woman muttered something in their language; Carlotta stamped with her little ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rose over a hill And the steady wind blew yet more cool; And crouched on a stone a wayfarer sobbed, For at last he knew ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... you to-day, Spark," asserted Walter Shackleton, as he crouched froglike behind the bat. "There are no quitters on ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... groped their way in among the pillars of the portico of the Regia,[161] and crouched down under cover of the masonry, half sheltered from the chilly blasts. They could from their post command a tolerably good view of one side of the Atrium Vestae. Still the darkness was very great, and they dared not divide their force by one of them standing watch ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... and there was his cab, And we ran downstairs like a streak, And he said, 'Hullo, you bad dog,' and you crouched to the floor, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... he went into the park, and if, after searching for her long, he could not discover on what tree she was swaying, nor the covert in which she crouched to play with a bird, nor the roof on which she might have clambered, he would whistle the well-known air of "Partant pour la Syrie," to which some tender memory of their love attached. Instantly, Stephanie would run to him with the lightness of a fawn. She was ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... We crouched in the companion-way for shelter, not doubting that the squall would speedily pass, and that the schooner, which we naturally supposed lay close to the berg hove-to, would, the instant the weather cleared, send a boat to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... fire beside which the old man crouched and shivered, he took a blazing brand and using it to light his way entered the lodge from which the former had emerged. It seemed empty of everything save that in one corner, on a heap of dried grasses, there lay an old wrinkled hag, who stared at him with keen beady eyes, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... his nerves evidently greatly unstrung by his unfortunate experience on the roundabout, was dreadfully upset, and alarmed, and, hiding his eyes, he crouched at the bottom of the car till it reached the other end, when he at once got out, and no amount of persuasion would induce him to ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... day only three things existed in the world—on my table I turned from the Bhagavad-Gita to Drinkwater's Reverie and back again; then I looked up to the jar of clear water and watched Guinevere hovering motionless. At six the next morning she was crouched safely on a bit of paper a foot from the aquarium. She had missed the open window, the four-foot drop to the floor, and a neighboring aquarium stocked with voracious fish: surely the gods of pollywogs were kind to me. The great fins were gone—dissolved into blobs of ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... his way to the window through which he was to leap. He paused there to look in with some concern. "Say, Mr. Burke, will you please make sure she understands? She isn't to let go of that thing until I'm in and crouched down ready to shoot—understand what I mean? I don't want to get ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... door from the outside. It shuddered but did not give. Dennis crouched, gripping his knife. Frank Corson staggered to his feet and hurled himself groggily at the android. Dennis roared again, pushed away and arced the knife ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... had, and being glad of the opportunity, stopped to watch. There were three men in the boat, of whom one worked the paddles, while the other two, stark naked, crouched on the forepart, sheltering themselves from the biting wind with an old straw mat. Having come to a suitable spot, where the depth may have been from ten to fifteen feet, the boat was stopped, and the two divers instantly plunged into the turbid water, to reappear ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... at full speed—I can't conceive where. Being brought back in triumph, he made a number of fictitious starts, for the sake of being overtaken again, and we made a regular game of it. At last, when he and Ally had run away, instead of running after them, we came into the garden, shut the gate, and crouched down on the ground. Presently we heard them come back and say to each other with some alarm, "Why, the gate's shut, and they're all gone!" Ally began in a dismayed way to cry out, but the Phenomenon shouting, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... afraid that some of them, flying in other directions, might pass by the spot where we had left our friends, who would run a great risk of being killed either by them or their pursuers. Aboh and I were so well concealed that there was not much danger of our being discovered. As may be supposed, we crouched down among the thick leaves, much in the same way that Charles the Second did in the oak after the fight of Worcester. The tide of battle swept by beneath our feet, and a more fearful din of shouts and shrieks and cries I had never heard. ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... every rock, and valley, as perfect and plain to be seen as if the sun was standin' right above us in the sky. Crop was as much astonished as I was, and he crept to my feet and trembled like a coward, as he crouched beside them. I looked up, and flyin' across the heavens was a great ball of fire, lookin' for all the world as if the sun had broke loose, and was runnin' away in a fright. A long trail of light flashed and streamed along the sky where ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... their way here and there over the glassy surface, and then with a roar the black squall was upon us, keeling our craft almost upon her beam-ends. The water seemed torn from its bed, flung by some unseen power high into the air, and borne hissing and roaring away. It cut and lashed our faces as we crouched flat upon the deck, clinging where we could. The sea rose as if by magic, and, with the wind astern, was driving us upon the reef which we had been encircling in search of a harbor. After ten minutes of the wild race with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Thom crouched down by her husband's side, motionless as a bronze statue, only her eyes flashing from face to face in ceaseless search. And Avery Van Brunt, as he talked on and on, felt a nervousness under the dumb gaze. In the midst of his most graphic battle descriptions, he would become suddenly ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... make for poverty and lack in material possessions; they have liberty in flesh but not the perfect law of it in environment. There are those who have known the grinding hand of need, who have stood with crushed lives, hopeless; with courage dead and the devil of despair crouched on their shoulder, whispering words of disappointment; there are those who are homeless in a land of homes, and those who are starving in a world of plenty; what can we say to them? How can we comfort them and point them to the hope of a ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... cases desert-coloured. The lion, for example, is almost invisible when crouched among the rocks and streams of the African wastes. Antelopes are tinted like the landscape over which they roam, while the camel seems actually to blend with the desert sands. The kangaroos of Australia at a little distance seem to disappear into the soil of their respective localities, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... was led to the fence and again that heavy weight slid onto his back. He crouched again, with waves of blind panic surging up in him, but the panic did not master his sense this time, and as his brain cleared he began to discover that there was no urging, no will of another imposed upon him. He could walk where he pleased, following his own sweet will, or else he could stand ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... plan, and the weary men were glad enough of the rest before the battle should begin. All were full of hope and ardour; but in spite of that, most of them fell asleep crouched in the cover. The surrounding hills kept off the wind, and it was warm beneath the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... were those who lived in the sage-brush. The early explorer, Bonneville, found the tribes of Snake River wintering in brush shelters without roofs merely heaps of brush piled high, behind which the Indians crouched for protection from wind and snow. Crude as such shelters may seem, they were the best that could be constructed by people who dwelt where there was no vegetation except little bushes, and where the soil was for the most part sandy or so salty that it could ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... brown savage children, that among The hills and valleys chased the buck and doe, And round the wigwam fires Chanted wild songs of their wild savage sires, And danced their wild, weird dances to and fro, And wrought their beaded robes of buffalo. Day following upon day, Saw but the panther crouched upon the limb, Smooth serpents, swift and slim, Slip through the reeds and grasses, and the bear Crush through his tangled lair Of chaparral, upon the startled prey! Listen, how I have seen Flash of strange fires in gorge and black ravine; Heard the sharp clang of steel, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... from the thunderbolts the whole earth trembled, and the Ishmaelites lost their way in their terror. The beasts and the camels stood still, and, beat them as their drivers would, they refused to budge from the spot, but crouched down upon the ground. Then the Ishmaelites spake to one another, and said: "Why hath God brought this upon us? What are our sins, what our trespasses, that such things befall us?" One of them said to ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... appeared; but at two hundred yards from the road, in a hidden hollow, I thought I perceived the glimmer of a fire—probably made by some straggler. I rode toward it, descended into the hollow, approached the fire, beside which crouched a figure, wrapped in an overcoat. The figure raised its head—and I ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... nearer, to force the unhappy woman with their pike-heads to rise from the ground, where she still lay crouched together, the wretched Magdalena raised her head, and her eyes fell upon the dark face of the witchfinder, as it glared upon her in triumph. The hideous yells of the crowd prevented her hearing the only faint voice of pity raised in her behalf—that of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... hull of the craft was shaken and rocked by the bursting shells. An occasional bullet thudded into or pinged off the Chill, and, despite Peter's warning that, high or low, they were bound to get it if it came to them, every man on board, including Peter, crouched, with chest contracted by drawn-in shoulders, in an instinctive and purely unconscious effort to lessen the area of body he presented as a target or receptacle for flying ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... few paces from her, and eyed her steadily in dead silence. She still crouched against the summer-house, and still with one hand mechanically kept her hold of the dog. It was well for the priest that she did so. Scarammuccia's formidable teeth were in full view, his shaggy ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... a bound he has crossed from one palm-tree to another, and, with a second spring, has climbed half-way up the tree, still holding his massive club in one hand. One understands by his movements that the lion has followed him, and, crouched and angry, stops at the foot of the tree. The Sicilian, leaning over, notes the slightest change of posture; then, like a flash of light, he leaps to the ground behind the trunk of the tree; the terrible club makes a whistling sound as ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... ruddy hound, Sister fair and tall, Went snuffing round my garden bound, Or crouched by my bower wall? With a silken leash about his neck; But in his mouth may be A chain of gold and silver links, Or a letter writ to me.'— 20 'I heard a hound, highborn sister, Stood baying at the moon; I rose and drove him from your wall Lest you ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the hour. Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen. The girl looked up from the low seat on which she crouched, and listened too. Eleven. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to die all along the boulevards of Paris. Often since I have wondered could the goddess have been lifting, however slightly, some fringe of the crimson curtain, behind which, in all its horror, his destiny crouched. ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... entrance crouched a young Indian woman. She was an unusually good-looking specimen of the desert tribes: a tall well-shaped form; a head and face of much beauty and character, with a pair of eyes that, at first glance, betrayed a close relation to the woman lying on the bed. They were of the same size, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... and there was a double click as the door to the front compartment closed. Warren turned toward Taylor, While Shirley flattened himself against the rear wall, and crouched down slowly, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... short, loose skins tied around the neck, and hanging from the shoulders, over the back, partly to the waist, could hardly be called clothing. With swollen bodies, thin limbs, and stooping forms; with a childish, yet cunning, leer on their faces, they crouched over the fire, spreading their hands toward its genial warmth, and all shrieking at once, "Tabac! tabac!" and "Galleta!"—biscuit. Tobacco there was none; but the remains of the lunch, such as it was,—hard bread and pork,—was distributed among them, and they greedily devoured ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... is the crouched form of a woman, while successively come the Awakening, the Ecstatic Joy of Being - or it may be the Realization of Living; the Kiss of Life, with the human pair offering up their children, representative of the beginnings of fecundity; a female, strong of limb and superb of physique, ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... did not come to them consciously at the moment, there being little time to think, but it was evident as soon as, diving out of the circle of light into the sheltering darkness, they crouched down and waited for the next move, that a somewhat skilful ambush had been effected. The other members of the gang, who had fled with such remarkable speed, had by no means been eliminated altogether from the game. While the questioning of Mr. Repetto had been in progress, they had crept back, unperceived ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a moment mindless of the Cid, Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid[280]! Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital[281] Twice spared to be the traitress of his fall! Ye race of Frederic!—Frederics but in name And falsehood—heirs to all except his fame: Who, crushed at Jena, crouched at Berlin[282], fell First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt[283]! 160 Poland! o'er which the avenging Angel past, But left thee as he found thee,[284] still a waste, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... "but the offence was that man's. He cast an evil eye upon my child, and I killed and hid him. Only such as are served by devils," he glared at Tietjens, crouched stolidly before him, "only such could know what ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... gun, and as it clicked in cocking, he began raking my legs, sharpening his claws and growling like a tiger. I gave a yell and kicked him off, when he sprang up on the old table and I could see his eyes glaring at me. I emptied my gun at him a second time, and at every shot he crouched lower and crept forward as if getting ready to spring. When I had fired the last shot I jumped up and ran out into the rain, and hadn't gone more than a hundred yards before I fell into a dry wash. When I crawled out there was that d——d cat ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... Together they crouched down. The man looked around as though to trace the noise which had been made when Joe accidentally stepped on a stick, ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... were checked. Lifting her eyes she saw at the end of the narrow path a low shed which looked like a pig-sty; by it was a plank, raised at each end on a stone, so as to form a rough bench, and on this there crouched a small disconsolate figure. It was bent nearly double, and had its face buried in its hands, so that only a rough shock of very light hair was visible; but though she could not see any features Miss Unity knew at once that it was David ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... Sokwenna's rifle answered. A single shot, a shriek, and then a pale stream of flame leaped out from the window as the old warrior emptied his gun. Before the last of the five swift shots were fired, Alan was in the cabin, barring the door behind him. Shaded candles burned on the floor, and beside them crouched Keok and Nawadlook. A glance told him what Sokwenna had done. The room was an arsenal. Guns lay there, ready to be used; heaps of cartridges were piled near them, and in the eyes of Keok and Nawadlook blazed deep and steady fires as they held shining ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... the bulk-heads creaked, the ropes and blocks clashed together and rattled in a way I had never before heard. Indeed, I believed that our last moments had come, for it seemed impossible unless the masts went that the ship would right. Jim and I and Horner crouched down close to each other, sheltering ourselves as we could under the bulwarks. Not far off were Miles Soper, Sam Coal, ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... seemed full of people. At the table itself two men and a woman were drinking, though they were already drunk, and beyond in a corner Toby could see the head and shoulders of a tall old man. Beside him there crouched a woman with a faded, pretty face, and between Toby and the rest of the room there stood a box in which lay a baby ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... already riding forward to the point from which they were to start. Galtsin, a friend of Vronsky's and one of his more formidable rivals, was moving round a bay horse that would not let him mount. A little light hussar in tight riding breeches rode off at a gallop, crouched up like a cat on the saddle, in imitation of English jockeys. Prince Kuzovlev sat with a white face on his thoroughbred mare from the Grabovsky stud, while an English groom led her by the bridle. Vronsky and all his comrades knew Kuzovlev and his peculiarity of "weak nerves" and terrible ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... holding up the picture, eyeing it intently. "Sanctuary" represented the interior of an old village church. On the ground against a pillar, crouched a young and beautiful woman, her dress and general aspect indicating the last degree of vagrant wretchedness; worn out, she had fallen asleep in a most graceful attitude, and the rays of a winter sunset smote upon her pallid countenance. Before ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... cellar upward. As he drew near the women's rooms on the lower story, he heard, even at a distance, a lamentable chaos of voices. Entering, he found the bare walls dimly lighted, the floor covered with straw, on which crouched women and children. The women expressed their terror by every kind of passionate gesture, many ceaselessly imploring the help of Heaven, without any alleviation of their intense misery; others staring straight before them, stunned by the horrors of the night; in short, the pleasantest impression ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... there confusion amongst the remaining canoes. Before the volley could be repeated, they had drawn closer together. Each Indian had dropped his pole, and seizing his rifle crouched low in the bottom of his craft, his keen eyes searching ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the chase lies that inner consciousness which dwells upon and questions itself—the soul of the Cave-man pondered upon itself; the question came to him, as he crouched in the semi-darkness, over the fire which he had stirred, 'Will my form and aerial shadow live on after my death like that which passed but now? Shall I, too, be a living dream?' The reply was, 'Yes, I shall continue to be; I shall start forth from my ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Girard, the priest who had withdrawn to this island rather than break his oath to the English, writes: "Many of them cannot protect themselves day or night from the severity of the cold. Most of the children are entirely naked; and when I go into a house they are all crouched in the ashes, close to the fire. They run off and hide themselves, without shoes, stockings, or shirts. They are not all reduced to this extremity but nearly all are in want."[103] Mortality among them was great, and would have been greater ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Anne crouched beside her, uncomfortably, holding her little body away from the great warm mass among ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... to open; and when admitted, the figure was not easy to set up so that it could be looked at. The human niche where the idea of a God must stand, was in Richard's house occupied by the most hideous falsity. On the pedestal crouched the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... had again taken up that nerve-racking moaning and groaning sound, as of an unseen giant in distress, and the spray from the crests of the waves blew in the faces of the two young men, as they crouched down behind the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... her get in first, which she did very rapidly, as if to escape observation. There she crouched like a wild beast, in the left corner, on the straw, riding backwards. The doctor sat beside her on the right. Then the executioner got in, shutting the door behind him, and sat opposite her, stretching his legs between ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... I crouched and shivered. In St. Antoine's, at the mouth of the lane, a man was beating a drum preparatory to publishing a notice; and presently his voice caught my attention in the middle of my lamentations. I listened, at first idly, then with ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... dull, gray-headed villager would go home, and leave her alone for awhile in this solemn and sacred place; but he crouched still on the ground, stirring neither hand nor foot. When at last she moved as if to go away, he stretched out a toil-worn hand, and laid it ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... week before was still fresh in her mind. She stepped back, but the light in her eyes gleamed more threateningly than before, as with tragic attitude she turned towards the staircase. On the lowest step crouched Pixie, all eyes and gaping mouth; on the third Mademoiselle clasped her hands, and wagged her head from side to side, as if calling someone to witness that she at least was innocent of offence; from between the banisters peered a red, questioning ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... command could be obeyed, Rohan got under shelter, and the bullets rained harmlessly round the spot where he had just stood. Then, under cover of fire, some men advanced and again placed the ladder against the precipice. As Rohan crouched down on the ledge, he was startled by the apparition of a human face. With a cry of rage, he sprang to his feet, and, heedless of the bullets thudding on the rock around him, he slowly and painfully lifted up a terrible granite boulder, poised it for a moment over his ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... pistol from his holster and cocked it. Roland, sabre in hand, was charging, crouched on his horse's neck. When they were twenty paces apart, Cadoudal slowly raised his hand in Roland's direction. At ten ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and looked it. His mare, too, appeared neither happy nor spirited. Except for some nebulous figures, indistinct in the yellow murk, little else was visible. Mac crouched scowling in the lee of the mare, who stood with drooping head and closed eyes, swaying occasionally to the violent buffetings of the desert storm, and patiently waiting for some move on the part of her master. The three squadrons and the transport had left camp independently just after dawn ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... off from the crowd, Granville, crouched behind a clump of thorny acacia, and, signalling to the Namaqua to hide at the same time, drew his revolver and fired point-blank at the ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... have arrested him, and I have just come from the court." He had no time to go on, for his sister was crouching prostrate on the floor before him. She had not fainted. Women do not faint under such shocks. But in her agony she had crouched down rather than fallen, as though it were vain to attempt to stand upright with so crushing a weight of sorrow on her back. She uttered one loud shriek, and then covering her face with her hands burst out into a wail of sobs. Lady Chiltern and her brother both tried to raise her, but she would ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... flash of instant cognition that this was Miss Colebrooke. Amazement seemed to have dulled her powers of action—amazement that she, who had stolen to this place and crouched close to earth that she might see the triumph of this preferred woman, and, having seen and paid her grievous dole, steal away and take up the thread of endless little things that spun for her the web of life, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Dan crouched down in the bottom of the Isabel, with the gun ready for use when the decisive moment should arrive; Quin and Cyd did the same, and the intrepid skipper proceeded to give them such instructions for repelling the assault as the occasion required. ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... and at last poised itself unusually steadily for an insect of its class. Below it, on the window sill, near the wall, with head erect, and its little basilisk eyes upturned towards the lovely fly, crouched a chameleon lizard, its beautiful body, when I first looked at it, was a bright sea-green. It moved into the sunshine, a little away from the shade of the laurel bush, which grew on the side it first appeared on, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... heard a faint click inside the laboratory—in a place where no one should be. Instinctively he whirled and crouched—and an orange ray streaked over his head with its wicked spit of death. At once his own ray-gun was up and answering to the spot where the other bolt had started, and then he was flat on the floor and ceiling toward ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... she left the dining room that noon Betty sped away to the foot of the hill. There were several stubby bushes about half-filled with wind-blown leaves and old rubbish and affording an excellent screen. Betty crouched ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... flew. The clock ticked loudly in the quiet. Outside a winter blizzard was sweeping in white fury from the hills. Stump crouched silently in a corner, his head upon his paws. And Abner Sawyer, returning to his work in helpless indecision, felt his privacy and his dignity forever compromised by a boy and a dog. He knew of course that a small boy, scantily clad, should not be ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... cupboard. So I went up closer and looked: and there was a bit of a black stuff cloak, and just below it an edge of a brown stuff dress, both sticking out of the shut of the door: and both of them was low down, as if the person that had them on might be crouched down inside. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... to waken my companion, that he too might see them, but something made me hesitate—the sudden realization, probably, that I should not welcome corroboration; and meanwhile I crouched there staring in amazement with smarting eyes. I was wide awake. I remember saying to myself ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... meal times he never came to Granite House, although invited several times to do so, but contented himself with eating a few raw vegetables. At nightfall he did not return to the room assigned to him, but remained under some clump of trees, or when the weather was bad crouched in some cleft of the rocks. Thus he lived in the same manner as when he had no other shelter than the forests of Tabor Island, and as all persuasion to induce him to improve his life was in vain, the colonists ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... and though England called in her cruisers, prohibiting them any longer to burn, sink, and destroy those of her enemies, she wisely declined drawing her own teeth or cutting her claws, by dismantling her ships and disbanding her crews, but, like a good-natured lion, crouched down, wagging her tail and sucking her paws, while, turning her eyes round and round, she carefully watched the turn affairs were ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... nose, while my club descended on one of his horns with a bang which jarred my arm to the elbow, and sent the weapon flying over the fence. The animal turned tail for a moment—long enough to place us, enlivened by our success, on the other side of the wall, where we crouched so that he could not see us. Turkey, however, kept looking up at the line of the wall against the sky; and as he looked, over came the nose of the bull, within a yard of his head. Hiss went the little whip, and bellow went ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... passed, to look over the mud-splashed hoarding into the great excavation we'd made. It was a sight. Staging rose on staging, tier on tier, with interminable ladders all over the steel structure. Three or four squat Otis lifts crouched like iron turtles on top, and a lattice-crane on a towering three-cornered platform rose a hundred and twenty feet into the air. At one end of the vast quarry was a demolished house, showing flues and fireplaces and a score of thicknesses of old wallpaper; and at night—they might well have stood ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Mnande, sat on the ground some distance away, her ear strained to catch every word chat fell from her son's lips. A few yards behind her five young girls crouched on their knees and elbows, each with an earthen pot of beer, or a skin of curdled milk before her. As each new-comer arrived within a certain distance of the throne, he flung his spear and shield to the ground, and then came forward. When he reached within ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... We crouched together as the thunder crashed over the house. Rain,—nothing but rain. No ever-varying light and shade, as in common squalls. One great cascade poured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... endless strip of white that raced through a pair of hands to feed itself into the insatiable maw of the electric sewing-machine. Every face, tense and stony, bespoke a superb effort to concentrate mind and body, and soul itself, literally upon the point of a needle. Every form was crouched in the effort to guide the seam through the presser-foot. And piled between the opposing phalanxes of set faces were billows upon billows of foamy white muslin and lace—the finished garments wrought by the so-many dozen per hour, for the so-many cents ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... classes of society became bound together. At the top stood the King, who was no man's tenant, but, in name at least, every man's master; at the bottom crouched the villein, who was no man's master, but was, in fact, the most ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... his wheel behind a thick growth of untrimmed poplar saplings, and made himself comfortable in the dry bed of a ditch which crossed the road and was bridged over with a few planks. In the shadow cast by this bridge he crouched and, leaning against a boulder, settled himself for patient waiting. A great bull-frog, which had dropped out of sight at his approach, soon returned again, and croaked hoarsely of his personal affairs. For, in wet weather, this was a marshy spot, and he remembered happier days. Presently the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... difficult, indeed, to discover that the dark object just discernible upon the edge of the blackened mass of smoking cinders really was a human being, so shapeless was the form, so strangely was it crouched down before the spot where the pile had been consumed. From time to time only an upward-flung movement of two thin arms, as if in the violent emotion of earnest prayer or deprecation, showed that this object was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... for the second time I saw it. They are very friendly there, and just as in the Red Lake Village they let us look behind the curtain, so here again they pushed it back, and let us in, and went on with their business, not minding us. We crouched up close together on the only scrap of empty ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... dunes a thousand guns lie couched, Unseen, beside the flood,— Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched, That wait and ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... was a scene of fierce confusion; swords flashed high; there were groans and shouts; a trooper, pierced by a lance, fell writhing at their feet; one of the enemy, cut down by a sword blow, fell to the earth and crouched there, blood dripping from his head and shoulder; but the armoured troopers, well drilled and trained, would have prevailed, had not a flight of arrows sung with a sharp rattle out of the thicket, and four ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fright, crouched lower down in his mossy bed, thinking that the awful people of the forest must have seen him, and would be upon him in a few moments. But though he stared with wide-open eyes into the gloom he could see nothing but the trees, standing silent and motionless, and ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... the edge had been taken off our hunger by this food, we crouched around the fires, talked over the events of the day, speculated as to what was to be done with us, and snatched such sleep as the biting ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to understand. He stopped, crouched above him. Miss Abbott herself came forward and lifted her friend in ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster |
