"Snaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... about them, sometimes racing with the Advance. The adventurers beheld great ocean caverns, and skirted immense rocks, where dwelt monsters of the deep. Once a great octopus tried to do battle with the submarine and crush it in its snaky arms, but Tom saw the great white body, with saucer-shaped eyes, in the path of light and rammed him with the steel point. The ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... bustling about over pots and stew-pans, getting supper; old Peter stood at the table peeling potatoes. In an arm-chair before the fire sat another old woman with snaky-black eyes, hooked nose, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... grey; not like our northern moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north and west, there is a blue line of higher land ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... The poison of a snake is a powerful acid, and is counteracted by powerful alkalies, such as potash, ammonia, &c. The Indians are accustomed to apply wet ashes, or plunge the limb into strong lie. White men, employed to lay out railroads in snaky places, often carry ammonia ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... to help me,' she said, and started a little sing-song, then shouldered the post herself and carried it in. These posts are painted red, black, and white, with a snaky pattern, the Kurreah sign, on them. She also planted in my garden two other witch-poles, one painted red and having a cross-bar about midway down it from which raddled strings were attached to the top; this was to keep away the Euloowayi, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... Mr. Thoburn, with his snaky eyes on me, "I think I may say that you might go almost anywhere without my turning out to recover you. But ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... clustered on each side of it; other swarms hung almost motionless—except for their constantly writhing tentacles—above, so that their line of progress was through what resembled a restless, living tunnel of repulsive black flesh, snaky arms and huge, unblinking eyes. Keith felt faint from the horror of it. Thousands of the monsters were there, all hanging in the soft, blue-glowing water; and occasionally, as he floated almost horizontally in his ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... Monster, Pimlico, after another delay, Tomkins was produced. Again Brett described David Hume, adorned now with "black, snaky eyes ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... said Chris, sitting very upright now, and gazing in the face of Ned's father. "Yes, snakes. Made the water taste snaky. Horrid! Dries up your tongue. ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... (1851) Mr T.R. Crampton, with Messrs. Wollaston, Kuper, and others, made and laid an improved cable between Dover and Calais, and ere long many other parts of the world were connected by means of snaky ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... the streaming skipper, "that was a near thing for you and me when she shipped it. If I hadn't been on the right side of the mast, both on us must have gone." Dawn rose slowly; the sky became blotched with snaky tints of dull yellow and livid grey; the gale kept on, and the schooner was hove-to to meet a sea of terrifying speed and height. Two of the ladies were below, only craving to be left alone even by the stewardess; but the hideous fascination of the storm ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Saint of Umbria. It was a landscape that suggested asceticism. Crags of bluish or reddish rock lined the roadway on either side, with pines and cypresses rising from the hollows, and extending black, winding, snaky roots out over the fallow soil. At intervals, white shrines with tiny roofs harbored mosaics of glazed tiles depicting the Stations on the Via Dolorosa. The pointed green caps of the cypresses, as they waved, seemed bent on frightening ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the grand political significance of such a scene, in which patriotism and religion become one—and feel, too, the exquisite dramatic effect of the innocent, the weak, the unwarlike, welcoming among them, without fear, because without guilt, those ancient snaky-haired sisters, emblems of all that is most terrible and most inscrutable, in the destiny of nations, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... His best policy now is to act promptly and liberally toward me, for I pledge you my word that if I see any disposition to evade my requirements I will blow out the bottom of everything," and a snaky glitter in his small black eyes showed how remorselessly he could scuttle the ship bearing ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... from Juda's Land The dredded Infants hand, The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside, Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swadling bands ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... circumstances. I must know first if Mr. Engelman has really set his heart on the woman with the snaky movements and the sleepy eyes. Can ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... around the circle. Then something like a light ring of smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again, and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... real estate salesman who had been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a fool for ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... but the gradual unfolding and appropriating of the results which are already secured. The 'strong man' is bound; what remains is but the 'spoiling of his house.' The head is bruised; what remains is but the dying lashing of the snaky horror's powerless coils. 'I send you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour.' The tearful sowing in the stormy winter's day has been done by the Son of Man. For us there remains the joy of harvest—hot and hard work, indeed, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... forest, within two bowshots. It stretched full thirty leagues in length and in breadth, and had wild beasts in it and snaky things. She was afraid that if she went into it, these would kill her; and on the other hand she bethought her that if she were found there she would be taken back to the town ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... for devouring fire, Two burning pines against the tower they brought, So from the palace of their hellish sire, When all this world they would consume to naught, The fury sisters come with fire in hands, Shaking their snaky locks and sparkling brands: ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the oxen, not knowin' what to do, a big Injun come out o' the brush, with a big knife in his hand. I knowed what he was goin' to do—skelp my father! I braced up to 'im to keep 'im away, an' he jist laffed at me. I never think what the devil looks like without seein' that red demon with his snaky black eyes, ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... you need to kill yourselves at it," grinned Jack, and went to examine the riata. Those two trips had accomplished much towards making it a pliable, live thing in the hands of one skilled to direct its snaky dartings here and there, wherever one willed it to go. Many trips it would require before the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on the opposite side of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... front of the ears, being what we call "banged." The only exception to this style of hair dressing I saw was the manner in which Ci-ha-ne, a negress, had disposed of her long crisp tresses. Hers was a veritable Medusa head. A score or more of dangling, snaky plaits, hanging down over her black face and shoulders gave her a most repulsive appearance. Among the little Indian girls the hair is simply braided into a queue and tied with a ribbon, as we often see the hair upon the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... after she had again, listened, in a piercing cry of consternation. The term is not too strong. Evidently by the unknown speaker she had been first puzzled, then startled, then horrified; and now, as her anguished cry still rang in my ears, that snaky premonition of evil again ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... and his eyes looked snaky, as though he would like to strike, but dared not. We motioned to him, and led the way to the small private room where Mr. Critchet was lying, and when he saw his uncle's wan features, he turned pale, and his agitation ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... inosculate^; entwine, intwine^; twist, coil, roll; wrinkle, curl, crisp, twill; frizzle; crimp, crape, indent, scollop^, scallop, wring, intort^; contort; wreathe &c (cross) 219. Adj. convoluted; winding, twisted &c v.; tortile^, tortive^; wavy; undated, undulatory; circling, snaky, snake-like, serpentine; serpent, anguill^, vermiform; vermicular; mazy, tortuous, sinuous, flexuous, anfractuous^, reclivate^, rivulose^, scolecoid^; sigmoid, sigmoidal [Geom.]; spiriferous^, spiroid^; involved, intricate, complicated, perplexed; labyrinth, labyrinthic^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the view was open to the valley by reason of a pasture. The low stone wall was topped by a snaky fence of split rails. They were so old, so gray, that they, too, seemed of stone. Beyond them sloped the meager pasture-land; brown, almost barren even in the youth of the year. It was strewn with flat, outcropping rocks. Here and there ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the eyes of Jakie grew more pronounced; grew even snaky, in the opinion of Happy Jack. "It is that I am no more permitted the privilege of preparing the food for fich I have the judgment, yes?" His voice purred too much to be convincing. "It is that I am no more the chef to be obeyed ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro's ill ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... a young live mummy. But the grandmother squaw was even uglier than the grandchildren; a thousand and one lines seamed her coppery face, which was the colour of an old penny piece rather burnished from use. And she had eyes, Bob, little and wide apart, and black as sloes, with a snaky look. I don't think she ever took them off me, and 'twas no manner of use to stare at her in return. So, as I could not understand what they were saying,—gabbling a sort of patois of bad French and worse English, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... great league was then and there ratified between the representatives of the Mohawk and Oneida nations. The name of Odatshehte means "the quiver-bearer;" and as Atotarho, "the entangled," is fabled to have had his head wreathed with snaky locks, and as Hiawatha, "the wampum-seeker," is represented to have wrought shells into wampum, so the Oneida chief is reputed to have appeared at this treaty bearing at his shoulder a quiver ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... and Moira's action in making for the rocks at top speed betrayed her terror of whatever it was that followed her. Hastily descending the cliff I ran to her assistance, when I saw Moira spring on to a flat rock upon which she generally landed from her canoe. At the same moment a snaky tentacle rose out of the sea and caught her, while other tentacles quickly enveloped her. The monster now dragged its shiny bulk upon the rock, and except in a nightmare surely no man had beheld such a creature before. It resembled a monstrous ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... having been delivered by Mrs. Lebours, who meanwhile flourished the reward-book; Miss Rader approached Adele, and tapping her unkindly on the shoulder, she whispered to her in a whistling tone, her snaky eyes expressing the kindliness of a tiger: "You see what you gain through wanting to leave my school; you ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... There would have been hours as long, when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the multitudinous tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped so to the ground. He would have known little snaky paths, narrow enough to be filled by his own small feet, or a goat's; and he would have wondered where they went, and have marvelled again to find that, wherever they went, they came at last, through loops and twists of the branchy wood, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... localities where one can enjoy such charming spectacles as the blossoming of cherry-trees in spring, the flickering of fireflies in summer nights, the flushing of maple-leaves in autumn, or even that long snaky motion of moonlight upon water to which Chinese poets have given the delightful name of Kinryo, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... had the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were heavy and it seemed to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... that hazardous crossing even now fills me with a sympathetic thrill. The river, near where I had leaped in, varied in depth from my middle to my neck, and the snaky stalks of tule clung to me, retarding my retreat like faithful allies of the enemy. An area of this plant extended to the channel, a distance of some fifty yards, where a clear current rendered swimming feasible; and this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... she was (for lofty Pride that dwells In towered courts, is oft in shepherds' cells), And too-too well the fair vermilion knew And silver tincture of her cheeks, that drew The love of every swain. On her this god Enamour'd was, and with his snaky rod Did charm her nimble feet, and made her stay, The while upon a hillock down he lay, And sweetly on his pipe began to play, And with smooth speech her fancy to assay, Till in his twining arms her lock'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... pages of my old journal, but the hope proves fallacious, and wherever I turn, the same subject is renewed. So there is no longer any reason in waiting until all mention can be avoided. Yesterday a little, sly, snaky creature asked me if I knew "the Hero of Port Hudson." "Yes," I said briefly. "Unmistakable! I see it in your face!" she remarked. "See what?" "That you betray yourself. Do you know that every one believes that you are engaged to him?" ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... upon him. Her beautiful face wore an expression like that of the stony countenance with the snaky locks. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... claim to be only thirty-six?" exclaims Aunt Martha. "Why, she's fifty if she's a day! Besides, I don't like that snaky way ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... broke, the Worm uncoiled its snaky twine from around the hill, and came to its rock in the river. When it perceived the Childe waiting for it, it lashed the waters in its fury and wound its coils round the Childe, and then attempted to crush him to death. But the more it pressed, the deeper ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... it out willingly enough and spilled it out on the improvised table, a glittering mass of gold trinkets, watches, jewels. He picked out of the mass a chain of diamonds and spread it out on his snaky fingers so that the light could play on it. Andrew knew nothing about gems, but he knew that the chain must be worth a great ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... deeper into the bad odour of the neighbours who traded in the Piazza with fruit and indifferent photographs. Nothing went very well—thanks to that unspeakable old Marco! His girl grew longer and lazier and handsomer, with a shapelier bust and a pair of arms like that snaky Bacchante in the Opera. Maso had to quail more than he liked to admit before the proud stare of her eyes; and when she dropped the heavy lids upon them and sauntered away, arms akimbo under her shawl, he could only swear. And he always cursed Marco Zoppa who gave her chestnuts and sage counsel ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Payson, as being the chief cause of his miseries. "If he had not stolen the buried gold, I would have returned in time," he muttered. "He is at the bottom of all this. As I walked away from Jack in the garden, I felt as if it was McKee that was following me with his black, snaky eyes." ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... here cycle-of-dance portrayals. The first one wasn't much dance; it was mostly slow, snaky motions with the arms and other things, and it was to portray a mother cobra mourning her first-born. At least that's the way I understood it. Another one was called "The Striving Soul," to which ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... nor shoot thy forked tongue With honied words upon it! Thou hast got What thou didst wish—a husband at the last! For this, then, didst thou show thyself so soft And smooth-caressing, for this only wind Thy snaky coils so close about my neck? Oh, if I had a dagger, I would smite Thee, and thy father, that so righteous king! For this, then, hast thou sung those winsome songs, Taught me to play the lyre, and tricked me out In these ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... engulf him bodily; and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure not to ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... beatings of the tom-tom, gradually becoming faster, and with a low, weird, tuneless chant, like the voices of the forest, the Indians began to tread a mazy, winding pace, which my slow eyes could not follow, but which in a strange way brought up memories of snaky convolutions about the naked body of some Egyptian serpent-charmer. The drums beat faster. The suppressed voices were breaking in shrill, wild, exultant strains, and the measured tread had quickened from a walk to a run and from a swaying run to a swift, labyrinthine pace, which has no name in ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... earth, and ye eternal lamps That restless keep his course in order due; Thou, Phoebe bright, that scatterest the damps Of darksome night, I make my plaints to you. And thou, Alecto, hearken to my call; Let fall a serpent from thy snaky hair; Tisiphone, be swift to plague them all, That make a pastime of my care and fear! And thou, O Jove, that by thy great foresight Rulest the earth and reign'st above the skies; That wreak'st the wrongs of them that master right Against the wretches that thy name despise. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... deserved it. But it was not wise of him to pay it quite such close attention, and for the moment fail to keep ears or eyes alert to other things. Even as it was, however, a sound caught his attention—an odd, hissing, whistling noise,—and he raised his long, snaky neck and head, now dyed a brilliant red, and dripping frightfully. Yes, he was not mistaken. Something was coming, and he stirred uneasily. Not that he was afraid,—of what living creature in those days was a Rider of the Berg ever afraid?—but he might have to fight for ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... slopes into the Bois de Boulogne, the snaky lines of sap and trench bring the octopus daily nearer to the doomed modern Babylon. Flash of rifle gun and crack of musketry re-echo in the great park. It is now shorn of its lovely trees, where man and maid so lately ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that; Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... lain; blessed spirits adoring, float upward to God, while the abyss seizes its victims. Here one of the ascending spirits seeks to save his condemned brother, whom the abyss already embraces in its snaky folds. The children of despair strike their clenched fists upon their brows, and sink into the depths! In bold foreshortenings, float and tumble whole legions between heaven and earth. The sympathy of the angels, the expression of lovers who meet, the child that at the sound of the trumpet ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sharp as needles, was caught up bodily by the wind in great masses—here in snaky coils, there in whirling eddies, elsewhere in rolling clouds; but these had barely time to assume indefinite forms when they were furiously scattered and swept away as by the besom of destruction, while earth and sky commingled in a ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... those things from the morass. They were hideous. They were things out of nightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what might have been gigantic frogs, save that frogs possess no tails. And there were long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vast palpitating bodies following those impossible small brain-cases, and long tapering tails that thrashed mightily as the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... in a convenient corner among certain trusses of hay; it being the intention of the amiable woman to occupy the chair during her journey. Mrs Pipchin herself is next handed in, and grimly takes her seat. There is a snaky gleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast, relays of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharp snappings at poor Berry, and all the other delights of her Ogress's castle. Mrs Pipchin almost ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,—it looks to you like just such a bit of iron as the other,—and lo! it leaves them all,—the tugging of the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,—it leaves the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with each other, all fighting for it, and springs straight ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the firelight the Nigger's sullen face looked sinister, Pulz's nervous white countenance looked vicious. Thrackles' heavy, bulldog expression was threatening, Perdosa's Mexican cast fit for knife work in the back. And Handy Solomon, stretched out, leaning on his elbow, with his red headgear, his snaky hair, his hook nose, his restless eye and his glittering steel claw—the glow wrote across his aura the names of Kid, Morgan, Blackbeard. They sat smoking, staring into the fire with mesmerised eyes. The silence got on my ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... holdups to looting. The police reserves were all out; they could do little. Favored by obscurity, the thieves plundered. It would have needed a solid cordon of officers to have protected adequately the retail district. Swiftly a guerrilla warfare sprang up. Bullets whistled. Anarchy raised its snaky locks and peered red-eyed through the ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... the rail, thundering down upon us till The Waif was buried in a boiling turmoil from which she would leap and shake herself, only to be pulled down again when the next sea fell upon us. When she sprang out of the lather, those devilish, snarling, snaky waves sprang after her, slapping at her flanks, tearing and biting at her like a pack of wolves. There's an awful likeness to a wolf pack about storm waves. When you see them all foam-lathered stretching out like a pack in full cry, or watch them leaping up as if they ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... warmed. In fine, here as everywhere along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind, we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women, who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for themselves only by snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulity—the continued trust in the man—is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as he made his way up the avenue towards the Villa Mimosa, wondered whether he was not indeed finding his way into fairyland. On either side of him were drooping mimosa trees, heavy with the snaky, orange-coloured blossom whose perfumes hung heavy upon the windless air. In the background, bordering the gardens which were themselves a maze of colour, were great clumps of glorious purple rhododendrons, drooping clusters of red and white roses. A sudden ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over Greaser, but still he punished me cruelly. Suddenly he got his snaky hands on my throat and began to choke me. With all my might I swung my ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... rapidly, and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the fire line. He stepped like a calcium-lit figure over the wet, gleaming pavement, over the snaky hose, and among the rubber-sheathed, glistening firemen, gave one look at the ghastly heap on the sidewalk, and then became, like the host of raving relatives and friends and lovers, a man insane. It was as if the common surfaces of life—the busy days, the labor, the ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... end, and all the ills of it, The axe of sharp Detachment ye would whet, And cleave the clinging snaky roots, and lay This Aswattha of ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... of man's cruelty is inexplicable to me; I feel the mad blood pouring hard when the quarry rushes away, and the snaky dogs dash from the slips; no thought of pity enters my mind for a time because the mysterious wild-man instinct possesses me, and so I suppose that the primeval hunter is ignobly represented by the people who go to see rabbit coursing. We have been refining and refining, and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... fair type of marine officer, had, in fact, resigned from the United States service with Captain Moore. He was by no means an ill-looking man, but his snaky eyes and treacherous mouth told Ned to look ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... we came down, for we desired their clothes, and their bridles, and their rifles, and their boots—more especially their boots. That was a great killing—done slowly.' Here the old man will rub his nose, and shake his long snaky locks, and lick his bearded lips, and grin till the yellow tooth-stumps show. 'Yes, we killed them because we needed their gear, and we knew that their lives had been forfeited to God on account of their sin—the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... eye could glitter: but his life had impregnated his noble features with hardness and meanness; his large black eye was restless, keen, and servile: an excellent figure for a painter, though; born in Spain, he was not afraid of color, had a red cap on his snaky black hair, and a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Blake, scornfully. "Couldn't know! Hell! You make me tired! What do you mean by debauching and degrading a good, pure word like love by applying it to this snaky, bestial fascination ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... she wears only one gown at a time she will live with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give them the fair test of living with ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... crown. K. Edw. No, 'tis for Mortimer, not Edward's head For he's a lamb, emcompassed by wolves, Which in a moment will abridge his life. But, if proud Mortimer do wear this crown, Heavens turn it to a blaze of quenchless fire! Or, like the snaky wreath of Tisiphon, Engirt the temples of his hateful head! So shall not England's vine be perished, But Edward's name survive, though Edward dies. Leices. My lord, why waste you thus the time away? They stay your answer: will you yield your crown? K. ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... death, riotous and red, Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, The steely snows of Russia, for the tread Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss The snaky lines of blood violently shed. Like living creeping things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of lust, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sure; by his gait there was blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment he was under way, I started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagramor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Ellhorn went away and forgot the earnest of his future good behavior. Emerson smiled that evening as he saw it trailing its snaky length over the back of a chair and stuffed it in the side pocket of his coat, thinking he would give it to Ellhorn the next time his friend should come to ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... may no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare, No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds, No Siren lull it on ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... uttering the watchword of 'Repeal' in Gaelic than of uttering it in Zulu. Grattan could hardly have brought himself to believe that the real repeal of the Union would actually be signed in London in the strange script as remote as the snaky ornament of the Celtic crosses. It would have seemed like Washington signing the Declaration of Independence in the picture-writing of the Red Indians. Ireland has clearly grown away from England; and her language, literature, and type of patriotism are far less English than they were. On the other ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... With Essex' sudden and accomplish'd fall. The trampled corse of all his envy'd greatness, Lies prostrate now beneath thy savage feet; But still th' exalted spirit moves above thee. Go, tell the queen thy own detested story: Full in her sight disclose the snaky labyrinths, And lurking snares, you plant in virtue's path, To catch ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... said. "I wonder how long we have been moving parallel with the creek instead of toward it? Some of those snaky ravines we passed through must have turned us around without our ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... on the snaky fire, Crushes the curling heads till smoke is thickened And the ash sinks beneath the billet's weight, And then again the hissing heads are quickened: Just as this wood, by fretful fangs new stung, Glows angrily, then whitens in the grate And slowly smouldering smoulders away, And dies ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... snaky run Slipping through low green leagues of sedge, An ebbing tide, and a setting sun; A hut and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... revolution has failed,' he said; and walking across quite suddenly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away at last. And as I saw the long snaky tail of it disappear along the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... arrived at a place well behind the line, and not at all wrecked, except for holes here and there. But the river! Oh my aunt! It's marvellous. It winds in and out of low hills, and as I saw it this evening, from an eminence, it looked more snaky than ever. Huge great loops with the lovely pale sedges on either side. The almost yellow hills are dotted with junipers. I long to see it to-morrow morning. There's no doubt it's one of the most fascinating ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... world below the earth, to which all we mortals must one day come, grant me to tell a simple tale and declare unto you the truth. Not to look upon the blackness of Tartarus have I come hither, nor yet to bind in chains the snaky heads on Cerberus. It is my wife I seek. A viper's sting has robbed her of the years that were her due. I should have borne my loss, indeed I tried to bear it, but I was overcome by Love, a god well known in the world above, and I think not without honor ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... dipping about among the green islands. The favorite boat is a canoe with a small sail stepped forward, which is steered without centre-board or rudder, merely by a change of position in the boat of the man who holds the sheet. While the fishermen are here, it would seem that the long, snaky pickerel is the chief game pursued and caught. But this is not the case when the fishermen return home, for then it appears that they have been dealing mainly with muskallonge, and with bass by the way. No other part of the country originates so many excellent fish stories as the Sixteen ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... can make their way through the dense bush I am unable to see. Nevertheless, we must try it." As they turned their horses' heads, a din of yells burst upon their ears from the bushes round about; and immediately a score of savages with tomahawks uplift, headed by a Metis with snaky eyes, surrounded them. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... bristles of the spectators stand on their ends. And as those heroes endued with mighty energy fought on, the two mighty elephants, the Kurus beheld them with wonder. And those brave bulls among men assailed each other with arrows of snaky forms and resembling blazing fires. And as the couple of quivers belonging to the Pandava was inexhaustible, that hero was able to remain on the field immovable as a mountain. And as Aswatthaman's arrows, in consequence of his ceaseless discharge in that conflict, were quickly exhausted, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... comprehending by signs, investing with life what was tongueless else. Over great stretches of barren country—that limitless land of France—he could see massed men on the move; creeping forward in snaky columns, spread fanwise from clump to woody clump; here camping snugly under the hill, there lining the river bluffs with winged death; checked here, helped there by a moraine—as well as you or I may foresee the conduct of a chess-board. He omitted nothing, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... steaming horses were tied up outside the station, and inside on the platform Moses-not-much, as Mazarine had been called by Jonas Billings, marched up and down, his snaky little eyes blinking at the doorway of the station reception-room. People came and some of them nodded to him derisively. Some, with more hardihood, asked him if he was going East; if he was expecting anyone; if he was seeing ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... feet back from the footlights, ran a snaky-looking fence with high-spiked posts. It had taken him all morning to build it, even with Alec's and Walker's help. Above this peered a thicket of small trees and underbrush bearing a marvellous crop of gold and silver apples and plums. Real gold and silver fruit it looked to be in the dim ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... his stubby mustache and looked the bunch over. "You know that country?" he asked, still doubtfully. "Them Navvies are plumb snaky, lemme tell yuh. Ain't like the Pueblos—you're taking a risk when yuh ride into the Navvy country. They'll get yuh if they get a chancet; run off your horses, head yuh away from ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... crowd waving "good-byes" to those on board as well as they could for the intervening bulk of the two ships. But as the bows of our ship came about level with those of the New York, there came a series of reports like those of a revolver, and on the quay side of the New York snaky coils of thick rope flung themselves high in the air and fell backwards among the crowd, which retreated in alarm to escape the flying ropes. We hoped that no one was struck by the ropes, but a sailor next to me was certain he saw a woman carried away to receive ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... was absolutely calm. A red and green beacon marked the entrance to the basin. The city climbed a hill in the background, the houses shining white even in the dark, from the millions of lights that suggested a festival. What a waste of gas! Long snaky stripes of color came out over the surface of the water, flecked here with the harbor lights of a merchant vessel, there with the distinguishing marks of a man-o'-war. Off in this direction was ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the heaven, a glowing smother hung in the dark over a snaky brood, darting red tongues hither ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... race down its stony stairs before it reached a place with a turbulent floor, where the white mouths of other two streams foamed into it through rock-rifts, loud-throated on either hand. Thenceforward the water which had threaded the large boulders in heavy strands coiled like monstrous braids of snaky locks, rose up and drew together above their tallest heads into a single obliterating fold, as it slid on smoothly with only now and then a quiver puckering its surface, as if it had rolled over some live creature that writhed. Its mounded solidity made ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Juda's land The dreaded Infant's hand, The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne: Nor all the gods beside Dare longer there abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. Our Babe to shew His Godhead true Can in His swaddling bands control the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... and dragged the writhing serpentine creature close to the surface. Then, quick as thought, Josh had the great snaky fish by the head with his short sharp gaff-hook, drew it over the gunwale, and before Arthur could realise what was done the axe had descended with a dull thud, and Josh dragged the quivering half inert ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... for the lad rose from his knees, stepped to the hole, and picked up something which Tom saw at once to be a long, reddish, writhing ferret. This snaky animal the lad thrust into his breast, stuffed the little piece of net into his pocket, picked up three more scraps from the mouths of other holes, and finally took the rabbit from the ground to pack inside his jacket ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... words that slip From darkening soul to whitening lip. The snaky usurer,—him that crawls, And cheats beneath the golden balls, The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes— I stabbed them deep with muttered oaths: Spawn of the rebel wandering horde That stoned the saints, and slew ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... the Stygian shade Wild Discord raises her disorder'd head; From whose swoln eyes there ran a briny flood, And blood congeal'd otre all her visage stood; Her hideous rows of brazen teeth were furr'd, A filthy gore there issu'd from her tongue, With snaky locks her guarded head was hung; Rent and divided did her garb betray The image of the breast on which it lay; And brandisht flames her trembling hand obey. Thus from Hell's deeps she past with dire design, Up to the top of noble Appennine, From whose proud height she all ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the lowlands clear, a fuzz of baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the sun. Along the river's edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... kill the unlucky serpent, says "he had a single rattle". The letters of these gentlemen were written without communication to each other. If Mr. Kinsolving is right, the real snake with one rattle was not the dream snake with two rattles. The brothers were in a snaky country, West Virginia. {43} ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... Buttons and blew into several snaky Tubes and put the whole Shop on the Jump to find Mr. Byrd. The latter happened to be in a Rathskeller not far away. When he heard that there was Work to be done in his Department he brushed away the Crumbs and Hot-Footed ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. Fearful Megaera, with her snaky twine, Was cursed dam unto thy damned self; And Hircan tigers in the desert rocks Did foster up thy loathed, hateful life; Base Ignorance the wicked cradle rock'd, Vile Barbarism was wont to dandle thee; Some wicked hellhound ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... cursorily noticed, themselves intimate the connexion of modern demonology with the mythology of the ancients. The cloven foot is the attribute of Pan—to whose talents for inspiring terror we owe the word panic—the snaky tresses are borrowed from the shield of Minerva, and the dragon train alone seems to be connected ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... feels from Juda's land The dreaded infant's hand— The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide— Not Typhon huge, ending in snaky twine; Our babe, to show His God-head true, Can in His swaddling-bands ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... every meal all the year round, though he could get bits as easy as the other and without begging. The gipsy is a cook. The man with a gold ring in his ear; the woman with a silver ring on her finger, coarse black snaky hair like a horse's mane; the boy with naked olive feet; dark eyes all of them, and an Oriental, sidelong look, and a strange inflection of tone that turns our common English words into a foreign language—there they camp in the fern, in the sun, their Eastern donkeys ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the top, though, it wasn't so bad. We went a couple of hundred yards through a narrow gorge, and then we came out onto the old lake bottom Abe had spoken about. As far as our lights would shine in the snow, we could see stubby trees with snaky branches growing out of ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... the mosquitoes are so bad we cannot read at all. This evening, till a strong breeze blew them away, they were intolerable. Aunt Judy goes about in a dignified silence, too full for words, only asking two or three times, "W'at I dun tole you fum de fust?" The food is a trial. This evening the snaky candles lighted the glass and silver on the supper-table with a pale gleam and disclosed a frugal supper indeed—tea without milk (for all the cows are gone), honey, and bread. A faint ray twinkled on the water swishing against the house and stretching away into the dark woods. It looked ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... same purpose as the phonograph, but in a somewhat different manner. The phonograph recorder digs vertically downwards into the surface of the record, whereas the stylus of the gramophone wags from side to side and describes a snaky course (Fig. 151b). It makes no difference in talking-machines whether the reproducing stylus be moved sideways or vertically by the record, provided that motion is imparted by ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... close as wet muslin. They were bare-footed, bare-armed, and bare-headed. They all had beauty, but it was not of earthly cast. He saw one with hair like pale silk, and one, ruddy and fierce in the face, with snaky black hair which, he thought, flew out beyond her for a full yard's measure. Another had hazel-brown hair and a sharp little peering face; another's was colour of ripe corn, and another's like a thunder-cloud, copper-tinged. ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... and these two angry moons." Then said the dragon, "Let my guard, and you, Attendant hosts, recede"; and they went back, And formed about the cave a widening ring, Then halting, stood afar; and from the cave The snaky wonder spoke, with hissing tongue, "If ye were Tartis and Deleisonon, Be Tartis ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... had changed front with the speed of light and attacked with horse, foot and guns. She failed to see, she had declared, where this poor, lone girt was in great fault. Of course it was probable that she had listened to this snaky. tongued Rufus Coleman, but that was ever the mistake that women made. Oh, certainly ; the professor would like to let Rufus Coleman off scot-free. That was the way with men. They defended each other in all cases. If wrong were done it was the woman who suffered. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the snaky wave, upflung With writhing head and hissing tongue; The weed whose tangled fibres tell Of some inviolate deep-sea dell; The faultless, secret-chambered shell, Whose sound is an epitome Of all the utterance of the sea; Great, basking, twinkling wastes of brine; ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... boys, she was as withered and wrinkled and brown as an old frosted punkin-vine; and her little snaky eyes sparkled and snapped, and it made yer head kind o' dizzy to look at 'em; and folks used to say that anybody that Ketury got mad at was sure to get the worst of it fust or last. And so, no matter what day or hour Ketury had a mind to rap ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not the same. Thus, a nude man with a raised club was described, not as Hercules but as Cain. Another, plunged up to his middle in earth and stretching out despairing arms, was Chore, not Ophiuchus, and a third, hung by his hair to a snaky tree, was Absolon. Near the last, a man in long robes and high cap, standing in a circle and addressing two shaggy demons who hovered outside, was described as Hostanes magus (a character unfamiliar to Humphreys). The scheme of the whole, indeed, seemed to ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... accordingly made the best of his way to the great gate, took a flying leap right over the three-headed mastiff, and stood at the door of the palace in an inconceivably short time. The servants knew him both by his face and garb; for his short cloak, and his winged cap and shoes, and his snaky staff had often been seen thereabouts in times gone by. He requested to be shown immediately into the king's presence; and Pluto, who heard his voice from the top of the stairs, and who loved to recreate himself with Quicksilver's merry talk, called out to him to come up. And while they ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
