"Clenched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you, I will not write the ugly mockeries my imagination conjured up. I was constantly on the verge of talking and cursing aloud to myself, or striking aimlessly at nothing with clenched fists. I was too stupid to leave London, too disturbed for work or any distraction of my mind. I wandered about the streets of London all day. In the morning I came near going to the church and making some ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the injustice of fate, and cast the blame on men, on all men, because nature, that great, blind mother, is unjust, cruel and perfidious, and he repeated through his clenched teeth: "A set of hogs" as he looked at the thin gray smoke which rose from the roofs, for it was the dinner hour. And, without considering that there is another injustice which is human, and which is called robbery and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... glowed on the full cheek; but the ball had entered the heart, and the warm blood, bubbling from his breast, dripped on the glistening grass. The surgeon who knelt beside him took the pistol from his clenched fingers, and gently pressed the lids over his glazing eyes. Not a word was uttered, but while the seconds sadly regarded the stiffening form, the surviving principal coolly drew out a cigar, lighted and placed it between his lips. The child's ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... basket for her spool. "It is quite out of the question for you to undertake nursing her. I could not allow it in any case, but it would be unfair to Mrs. Jarvis. She must expect your return any day?" She looked up inquiringly, and Elizabeth's clasped hands clenched each other again. She made a desperate attempt to be brave, and turned squarely towards her aunt. The very necessity of the case drove her to ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... from about my patient, though she is worth the pressing, and set thy hands at freedom to help me with what I want. Nay, I will not insist on your quitting her hand, if you will beat the palm gently, as the fingers unclose their clenched grasp." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... are like the clenched fist—pugnacious, disputatious, quarrelsome, always spoiling for a fight; a verbal fisticuff, if not a physical one, is their delight. Others are more conciliatory and peace-loving, not forgetting that a soft answer ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... radical articles of the French creed of the eighteenth century would consist largely of the contradictions of the main propositions of Pascal. The old theological idea of the fall was hard to endure, but the idea of the fall was clenched by such general laws of human nature as this,—that 'men are so necessarily mad, that it would be to be mad by a new form of madness not to be mad;'—that man is nothing but masquerading, lying, and hypocrisy, both in what concerns himself and in respect of others, wishing not to have the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... all be well with a land,' he cried, 'where in high places reigns harlotry?' He raised his clenched fist on high and glared round upon his audience. 'Corruption that reacheth round and about and down till it hath found a seedbed even in this poor house of my father's? Or if it is well with this land now, how shall it continue ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... sidling up to each other with clenched fists, and a third boy, who had a mischievous face, seized the paper that had had the pepper in it, and running up to them shook it ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... and O'Connell raced towards the Chief, whom they saw lurching uncertainly along the banquette ahead of them. The detective was cursing; Blake sobbed through his tight-clenched teeth. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... toward the stairway. But the showman was by the fellow's side by the time he had gotten to his feet, and began assisting him up the companionway, while Teddy Tucker followed, prodding the pilot in the back with a clenched fist. ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... underneath when they arrived, but he loosened his clutch of Skeeter's throat, and darted forth a small, grimy hand that closed upon the treasure. In an instant Skeeter seized upon the clenched fist, and was wrenching it open, when a third ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of women with hair hanging, dressed in dirty wrappers, and shawls about their shoulders, stood together under the flickering corner lamp. To judge from their gesticulations, they were much excited. They were all talking at once and shaking their clenched ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... up, as when a hound yelps to the sky: laughter ensued, barking laughter—not mirth, not grief disguised, but mockery, the worst of all. One on the gallery nudged his fellow; that other shrugged him off. Richard stretched his long arms, his clenched fists to the dumb sky. 'Have I bent the knee to good issues or not? Have I abased my head? O clement prince! O judge in Israel! O father of kings! Hear now a parable of the Prodigal: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... in darkness— eyes might strain and hearts might plead, For their darlings crying wildly, they would never rise nor heed! Ay, we yearned into their faces looking for the life in vain, Wailing like to children blinded with a mist of sudden pain! Dear hands clenched, and dear eyes rigid in a stern and stony stare, Dear lips white from past affliction, dead to all our mad despair, Ah, the groaning and the moaning—ah, the thoughts which rise in tears When we turn to all those loved ones, looking backward ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Although Nayland Smith had declared that Fu-Manchu was alive, yet I would have sworn upon oath before any jury summonable that he was dead; for with my own eyes I had seen the bullet enter his skull. Now, whilst I crouched against the matting-covered wall, teeth tightly clenched and my very hair quivering upon my scalp, he dragged himself laboriously across the room, the sticks going tap—tap—tap upon the floor, and the tall body, enveloped in a yellow robe, bent grotesquely, gruesomely, ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... good-fellowship which his overstudious life had cost him and to recover touch with the friends of his earlier days, Stephen Dartrey, filled with a queer sense of impending disaster, was climbing the steps to Nora's flat. On the last landing he lingered for a moment and clenched his fingers. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... one body, then another; but all his strength was unequal to the task of raising either. After a hurried examination, it was found that one body, that of the negro, was entangled in a rope and thus held under water from the first; while Harry's leg was firmly clenched in the dying grip of Black Bob, who must have seized it as Hazlehurst passed, and drawn him downward in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... well dressed, and as some blown sand had drifted over his boots and ankles I knew that he had been there for some hours. There was blood upon his collar, and the fingers of his right hand were tightly clenched. I told myself that I was a coward, and I set my teeth. I must lift his head from the water, and cover him up with my own coat while I fetched help. But when I stooped down a deadly faintness came over me. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... silence, signified her wish to seal the conversation, and he drooped again. On the door step she paused a moment, and hung her head pensively, as if moved by a reminiscence. The youth had hurried away some strides. Margarita looked after him. His arms were straightened to his flanks, his hands clenched, and straining out from the wrist. He had the aspect of one tugging against the restraint of a chain that suddenly let out link by link ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rigid in the death-clasp. Paying no attention to his ghastly condition, I opened his lips with my right finger and managed, with my left hand and the help of the cork, to put the oil drop by drop over his clenched teeth. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... holding her small hands, which were clenched with spasmodic violence. "No, ye poor, lost soul, that ye mustn't do. The dear, blessed Lord never shed no blood but his own, and that he poured out for us when we was enemies. Lord, help us to follow his steps, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... never forget you." He cried it in a low, tense voice, his clenched hands thrust into the pockets of ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... chin were visible to every eye. Only one hand, so the LEICHENFRAU babbled on, was convulsively closed, and could not be undone; and, as she spoke, she drew the sheet further down, and displayed the naked arm and hand: the long, fine fingers were clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise, Avery appeared to sleep, to sleep profoundly, with an intensity such as living sleep never attains to—the very epitome of repose. It seemed as if her eyelids were pressed down by some unseen force; and, in her ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Quarter Master Serjeant spent much of his time dragging the Beuvry river for his Company Serjeant Major whom he had lost. This Warrant Officer was eventually discovered asleep in an old sentry box, with his false teeth clenched in his hand. The Germans, in spite of their boast, dropped in a message from an aeroplane, "to eat their Christmas dinners in Bethune," caused no disturbance, and did not show the slightest sign of being ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... with clenched fist, but "the Beau" not knowing the trick, was promptly bowled over on the grass—the shock making quick tears start in his ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... shoulder and girth, might have fascinated the eye for ever!—but for her beautiful hind quarters and the speed and power they indicated! The arch of her back rib, her flank, her clean legs, with firm, dry muscle, and tendons like steel wires, her hoofs, almost as small as a clenched fist, but open and hard as flint, all these utterly baffle description. Her hide was glossy black, without a hair of white. From her Canadian sire she had inherited the staunchest constitution, and her thoroughbred dam ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... [His hands clenched, but preserving his suavity.] Extremely grateful to you, Bertie. I see! And so, burdened by these suspicions, you ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... and listen at the door. One man is telling how they all went last year to the fete at Fleury, and another how well so-and-so would sing of an evening: and here are a third and fourth making plans for the whole future of their lives; and there is a fifth imitating a conjurer and making faces on his clenched fist, surely of all arts the most difficult and admirable! A sixth has eaten his fill, lights a cigarette, and resigns himself to digestion. A seventh has just dropped in, and calls for soup. Number eight, meanwhile, has left the table, and is once more trampling the poor piano ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... called her 'Miss Stewart' quite a lot lately," interposed Keith, in a voice so quietly self-controlled that even Dorothy herself was almost deceived. But not quite. Dorothy saw the clenched muscles and white knuckles of his hands as he gripped the chair-back before him; and she knew too much to expect him to offer his hand in good- bye. So she backed away, and she still spoke lightly, inconsequently, though she knew her voice was shaking, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... barracks to their room. Sitting on the side of his narrow bunk, his hands clenched, his ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... Lucile had found in the park even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell, with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... quitted the home of their forefathers. 'Never mind, mother,' said Henry, kissing her, to prevent the tears from springing, 'home is wherever we are together!' 'Never fear, mother,' echoed Oliver, with knitted brow and clenched hands, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in her voice than she knew. A great tremor went through Burke. He clenched his hands to ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... table with a clenched fist. "That which has been said here to-day will be heard openly in the streets of the capital to-night. To-morrow it will be preached far and wide throughout the confines of the country by every man who has ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... of his nature broke out in these words; an unearthly fire gleamed in his eyes, and his hands were clenched; every fiber quivered in wild revolt; he was resolved to fight out this battle with his ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... lightly with his hands. They slipped along her arms till he clasped her fingers, tightly clenched in her muff. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... She felt as if she were stifling. She covered her face with her hands and turned toward the wall. A sharp, nervous trembling shook her from head to foot. An occasional sobbing sigh or, rather, gasp escaped from her lips, while she pressed her clenched hands more tightly on her eyes, as if to increase the darkness of the abyss in which she felt ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... forcibly prevent him from indulging in the language he had used with impunity for so many years. He leaned back pale and astonished, and momentarily dumb with amazement. Gianbattista stood over him, his young cheeks flushed with anger, and his broad fist clenched. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... reached the deck at last, and kind hands lifted them on board; it was only a raft, but it seemed a support after the deep, dark water. The mother took her baby, and Hugh sank down at her feet. Some one had a flask of brandy, and they succeeded in pouring a little through his clenched teeth; after a moment or two he revived, sat up, looked about him, and murmured some incoherent words. Then he tried to take out his little note-book, but it was wet, and the pencil was gone; the captain gave him his own, and Hugh had ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... wearied with the exertion of their talk. His eyes had left Milo's, and had concentrated on the man's big and hairy hands. As Milo spoke of the supposititious criminals who desired his possessions enough to do murder for them, his fists clenched, tightly. And to Brice's memory came ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... duke, who had become pallid and whose clenched teeth showed beneath his red beard, "I do not know what Madame la Duchesse de Rosas has said to you, or what you have dared to say to her, but you will ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... twenty-two. He dresses better, and his manners, from seeing a great deal of society, are very much improved. When silent and occupied in thought, walking up and down the room as he always does, his hands clenched and muscles working with the intense exertion of his mind, strangers would think his countenance stern; but I remember a writing-master of ours, when Tom had come into the room and left it again, saying, 'Ladies, your brother looks ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... his hand on her arm. She had intended to obey, since that was the law of God and man and since in all the world there was no other place for her, nameless and outcast. But at his touch she clenched ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the room with rapid strides, and, slamming the door behind him, disappeared. Madame Lescande, who had listened, motionless, and pale as marble, remained in the same lifeless attitude, her eyes fixed, her hands clenched—yearning from the depths of her heart that death would summon her. Suddenly a singular noise, seeming to come from the next room, struck her ear. It was only a convulsive sob, or violent and smothered laughter. The wildest and most terrible ideas crowded to the mind ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... this last with teeth clenched, in an excess of deep, vengeful ire. Never had Morville of the whole line felt more deadly fierceness than held sway over him, as he contemplated his revenge, looked forward with a dire complacency to the punishment ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... toes, we flopped down on to the ground and got up again with lightning rapidity. We ran to and fro until we were breathless. Mistakes were frequent, and whenever a mistake was made the instructor would stride up to the culprit with bared teeth and clenched fist and bellow contemptuous and filthy abuse at him. Not one of us had the courage to remonstrate. Suddenly our tyrant looked at his watch, and, to our immense satisfaction, walked ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... He came to the Soldiers' Fellowship Meeting one night, and told how he had been tested to the limit. He had taken his money out of the Savings Bank, and locked it in his box; but the box had been broken open, and the money taken away. He stood and looked at it, hands clenched, teeth set. For a moment the fire of anger flashed in his eyes, and words that belonged only to the long ago sprang to his lips. A year's savings had gone. The promised trip to the old home could not be taken. And a vision of the old mother waiting for her boy, and waiting in ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... hands over the face, lips, and nose, and breathing on the forehead, temples, and neck, and drawing in the sick man's breath. Thus he pretends to seek the fever in the veins of the sufferer. Afterwards he rubs the shoulders, the hips, and the legs, and opens the hands; if the hands are clenched he pulls them wide open, exposing the palm, shaking them vigorously, after which he affirms that he has driven off the sickness and that the patient is out of danger. Finally he removes the piece of meat ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... more to do in the composition of my lectures than to produce such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses, I should soon have done my work, and be prepared to read." It is said this speech was delivered with his fist clenched, in a menacing posture.' (Northcote's Life of Reynolds, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... indispensable,[421] and in communicating his purpose to the commander of the squadron, Captain Downie, he used language indefensible in itself, tending to goad a sensitive man into action contrary to his better judgment; and he clenched this injudicious proceeding with words which certainly implied an assurance of assault by the army on the works, simultaneous with that of the navy ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to keep her mouth still. She saw Jerrold glance at her, she heard him give a soft groan of pity or of pain; then he moved away from them and stood by the terrace wall with his back to her. She saw his clenched hands, and through his terrible, tense quietness she knew by the quivering of his shoulders that his breast heaved. Then she saw him grasp the terrace wall and grind the edge of it into the palms of his hands. That was how he had stood by his father's ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... clenched her hands and shook two menacing fists against the gathering dark. "I hate gold, along with the meanness and the lying and the thieving and the false judgment it brings into ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... water, came quickly out of the basin in Anna-Rose's clenched fist. For one awful instant she stood there in her nightgown, like some bird of judgment poised for dreadful flight, her eyes flaming, her knotted pigtails bristling on the top ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... forefront of the crowd; Rajinder Singh towering in their midst, his face set like a mask; his eyes fierce with the lust of victory. Evelyn Desmond, installed beside Honor in a friend's dog-cart, sat with her small hands clenched, her face flushed to the temples, disjointed murmurs breaking from her at intervals. Honor sat very still and silent, gripping the iron bar of the box-seat, her whole soul centred on the game. Paul Wyndham, who had mounted the step on her side of the cart, and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... sentences, which were spoken with great difficulty, she began to pull the bedclothes about with her hands, and whilst uttering the last word, her beautiful hand was slightly clenched, as if helping out a sentiment so completely in accordance with her brave spirit. These motions, however, ceased suddenly—she heaved a deep sigh, and the troubled spirit of the kind, the generous, the erring, but affectionate Sarah M'Gowan—as we shall call her still—passed ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... whom his relations were not improved by the suspicions now attaching to his loyalty. Accordingly, while the legal forms of the transfer were being gone through, the young chief made a remark extremely offensive to Paulet, which was resented by a blow in the face with his clenched fist. Instead of returning the blow, young O'Dogherty hurried away to consult the M'Davitts, whose advice was that the insult he received must be avenged by blood. The affair having been immediately reported to the lord deputy, who apprehended that mischief would come of it, he sent a peremptory ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... to which army do you belong? Which community is yours? Are you in Christ's ranks, or are you in the world's? Do you love Him back again, or do you meet His open heart with a closed one, and His hand, laden with blessings, with hands clenched in refusal? To which class do I belong?—it is the question of questions for us all; and I pray that you and I, won from our hatred by His love, and wooed out of our death by His life, and made partakers of His life by His death, may yield our hearts to Him, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... make-up. She hid her face in her hands. Once she looked at him through her white fingers to see how he was taking it. Jimmy Challoner was taking it very badly indeed. He stood biting his lip hard. His hands were clenched. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... expected summons. The telephone bell rang. Monte Irvin clenched his hands and inhaled deeply. His color changed in a manner that would have aroused a physician's interest. Regaining his self-possession by a visible effort, he crossed to a small side-table upon which the instrument rested. Rolling ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... his head thrown back an' his left hand clenched, while his right gripped the butt of his gun so fierce that the knuckles stood out white as chalk an' the veins was black an' swollen. His bosom was heavin', his teeth showed in a threatenin' white ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... fast clenched, his fingers firmly clasped, So man this life begins. He claims earth's wealth, and constitutes himself The heir of all her gifts. He thinks his hand may snatch and hold Whatever life ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... wine that freely circulated. Surely if guardian spirits attend the footsteps of youth, one angel must have wept that evening "tears such as angels weep" to see him with his flushed face and sparkling eyes, eagerly seizing the sums he won, or, with clenched hand and contracted brow, anxiously awaiting the result of some adverse turn in the chances of the game. I remember once to have accidentally entered a scene like this in going to borrow something from a neighbour's room; and I shall never forget the ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... from the corner of his eye. This glance, swift as it was, came near to being his undoing. Harrigan caught him with a terrible right on the jaw. It was a glancing blow, otherwise the fight would have ended then and there. Instantly he lurched forward and clenched before the other ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... starts to run after her, but stops by the signpost and stamps on the ground furiously, his fists clenched in impotent rage at himself and at fate. ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... makes him unclose his clenched fist, in which there appears to be one or two cloves, and then says: "I am shocked to hear this, Mr. PENDRAGON. As you have no political influence, and have never shot a Tribune man, neither New York law nor society would allow you to commit murder with impunity. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... in front of the great Tecumseh, with his knife clenched in his band, and dared the chieftain to mortal combat, the luminous black eyes flashed lightning, and the muscles on the graceful limbs were knotted like iron. They were now in repose and the eyes were as soft ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... clenched fist in his face, "to blow my brains out would make short work of me, and be soon over; death by drowning is as sure, and the agony prolonged: yet I tell you to your face, if you were to toss me over yonder cliff into the sea, I would not tell you where my ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... to Thirkle's face, and his clenched teeth grinned at me through snarling, open lips, but his eyes were glazed with death. We stripped him of his arms and lay him down in ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... but now that he was here, on their beautiful yacht, he pitied the wretched Holbeins so intensely that he felt physically ill. The man, with fiercely shining eyes and hawk nose, hunching up his round shoulders as he clenched and unclenched his pudgy hands, deeply hidden in his pockets, was horribly pathetic to Vanno, who tried not to see the little bright beads that oozed out of the tight-skinned forehead. Even more pathetic was the woman, blazing in 20,000 ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... upstairs she heard the cries of Rowcliffe's children, bumping and the scampering of feet. She stood still then and clenched her hands. The pain at her heart was like no other pain. It was as if she ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... slight steep on the further road where they must go slower. Moreover, there were a few curves in the horse-road. He set his teeth with the desperate resolution of a moment, clenched his hands, intensified his mental cry to Heaven, and with the dogged determination of Kencroft dashed on, not daring to look at the carriage, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his bony hands with a vindictive energy. He stood a few moments, breathing fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Russ. Russ, pipe clenched between his teeth, reached out his fingers for the keys. The ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... was free from pain. Yet still he struggled on, for he realised that his life depended on his extricating himself from the terrible labyrinth in which he was entangled. He struck match after match, till his stock was expended, and then, panting, weary, and sore, he clenched his teeth and battled onward. It seemed miles to the end of the passage. He imagined that he had got into some new tunnel, the opening of which he had passed unwittingly when he crept into the trap; and to the natural dread of his situation was ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... had already reached the kingdom of Micomicon, and was engaged in combat with his enemy; and believing he was laying on the giant, he had given so many sword cuts to the skins that the whole room was full of wine. On seeing this the landlord was so enraged that he fell on Don Quixote, and with his clenched fist began to pummel him in such a way, that if Cardenio and the curate had not dragged him off, he would have brought the war of the giant to an end. But in spite of all the poor gentleman never woke until ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... yet—and yet—I wouldn't spoil Ted's chances for worlds." She rose and walked a few paces to and fro. "Let me think, let me think!" She stood still, an image of abstract Justice, with one hand folded over her eyes, and the other clenched as if it held the invisible scales of destiny, weighing her present, overcharged with agreeable sensations, against her lover's future. Apparently, after some shifting of the weights, she had made the two balance, for she clapped her hands suddenly, and exclaimed, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... with her, for Howard and his mother withdrew, excusing themselves on the score of private matters. Christine Latimer was touched by the forlorn quartermaster, who, in his nervousness, gripped his chair with clenched hands and started when he was asked a question. She soon got him past this stage of their acquaintance, and, leading him on by gentle gradations to talk about himself, even learned his whole story, and that in so unobtrusive a fashion that he was ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... thinking of that also. When a moment later I saw your eyes wander away from the picture, I suspected that your mind had now turned to the Civil War, and when I observed that your lips set, your eyes sparkled, and your hands clenched I was positive that you were indeed thinking of the gallantry which was shown by both sides in that desperate struggle. But then, again, your face grew sadder, you shook your head. You were dwelling upon the sadness ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hastened thither to find water. But when they at last reached it they sank down in despair, for the well was dried up. The woman, exhausted, laid down the child, and sat down crying by the side of the well. The man threw himself down by her side; he lay and beat the ground with his clenched hands. The palm heard them say to each other that they must die. It also understood from their conversation that King Herod had caused all children of two or three years of age to be killed from fear that the great expected King in Judaea had ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... tougher bow, pierced with his arrows Partha, his chariot, charioteer, and horses. Arjuna, thus assailed in battle by the Panchala warrior, forgave not his foe. Eager to slay him at once, he pierced with a number of arrows his antagonist's horses, flags, bow, clenched (left) fist, charioteer, and the attendant at his back. Then Satyajit, finding his bows repeatedly cut in twain and his horses ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... from the gutter, gave him a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his forehead. The next day that young man was found dead under one of the wharves. Now he, Mr. Green, could not say that the gambler murdered him, but he was dead and held the handkerchief in his clenched fist. That young man had swallowed the wrong pill; why did not the gamblers tell him they were robbers and assassins, why did they not stick to the truth. They dare not do it, and he (Mr. Green) thought it his duty as a reformed man to speak truly and act honestly. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... Weems was craning over the edge of the pit, his eyes goggling, and lips drawn back from his clenched teeth. He looked unpleasant, to say the least of it, and a thought dangerous as well. There was a bit of the ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... stood with clenched teeth and dilated eye, regarded these sharks from quite another point of view. He thought about devouring the sharks, not about the sharks devouring him; and if he could succeed in catching one, I doubt ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... heavy grizzled lock fell down upon his dark, frowning brow, one hand clenched the top of his staff, the other his ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... a sudden blow on the table with his clenched hand. There was a sharp crack of splitting wood. Almayer started up violently, then fell back in his chair and looked ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... Angelique's eyes flashed out daggers. She clenched her delicate hands until her nails drew blood from her velvet palms. Her frame quivered with suppressed passion. She grasped her companion fiercely by the arm, exclaiming,—"You have hit the secret now, Amelie! ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Josey,' sez he—'There was no God in it, only a devil!' and 'is lips trembled more'n ever—'no woman ought to die in givin' birth to a child—it's jes' wicked an' cruel! I would say that to God Himself, if I knew Him!' An' he clenched 'is fist 'ard, an' then 'e went on— 'But though I wanted to kill the little creature, I couldn't do it, Josey, I couldn't! It's eyes were like those of my Dearest. So I let it live; an' I'll do my best by it, Josey,'—yes, them's ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... soldiers. "Aha!" said he, divining her purpose—the soldiers behind and the rock before her—"I will help you to die!" And he stooped and wrenched from the dead fingers of a sergeant the sword which they clenched by the bloody hilt. A new throb of life pulsed through him to his very finger-tips; and on the brink of the unseen world he stood, with the blood rushing through his veins in a wild dance of excitement. One who lay near him wounded, but recovered ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... run away from it. He stood slowly gulping down his nauseating horror. His teeth were clenched; his face, through the sunburn, livid; the blue of his eyes seemed to have faded into an ashen grey. The sight he was looking on would have sent three men out of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... going to take his saddle?" Beatrice stood up and clenched her hands, looking very much as if she would like to pull his hair. Keith in trouble ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... Max Wyndham made no sound of any sort. The cigarette remained between his lips, and not a muscle of his face moved. His hand with the broken needle in it was not withdrawn. It clenched slowly, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... by acting. Swiftly he climbed the rude pile, and reached for the edge of the hole. It was still searingly hot, and he gasped with hurt as his palms and fingers clenched over it, but he did not let go. Levering himself rapidly up, he got a leg through and then his body. A second later he peered back in and lowered ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... presided but a few minutes before, full of life, vigour, and animation), until the surgeons should examine the mortal wound. The face of the corpse was decently covered with a napkin. To the surprise and horror of the bystanders, which displayed itself in a general AH! drawn through clenched teeth and half-shut lips, Robin Oig removed the cloth, and gazed with a mournful but steady eye on the lifeless visage, which had been so lately animated that the smile of good-humoured confidence in his own strength, of conciliation at once and contempt towards his ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... anything were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambition, possibly in achievement, who sit in a row under a fence, with their teeth grimly clenched upon clay pipes, their eyes screwed up in perpetual and ungenial observation. Their conversation is telegraphic, smileless, esoteric, and punctuated with expectoration. If Phaeton and the horses ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... castle, I might never again have the opportunity of finding Flora. The little impression I had made, even supposing I had made any, how soon it would die out! how soon I should sink to be a phantom memory, with which (in after days) she might amuse a husband and children! No, the impression must be clenched, the wax impressed with the seal, ere I left Edinburgh. And at this the two interests that were now contending in my bosom came together and became one. I wished to see Flora again; and I wanted some one to further me in my flight ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his arm, which he had thrust as a barrier across the way, but his fist remained clenched, and raising it he shook it again. The sun had sunk over the dim mountains in the north and the burning red there was fading. All the thin forest was clothed now in dusk, and the figure of the chief himself ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... that showed his athletic muscles; he offered her water, going so far as to pick up the bottles of perfumes in his confusion as if they could serve him as sedatives, and finally he knelt down, trying to kiss the clenched little hands that thrust him away, catching at his hair ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... silence, now with sparkling arpeggios, now with a sonata of Beethoven's which (in happier days) he knew to be one of the loudest pieces of that powerful composer. Still not a sound. He gave the Broadwood two great bangs with his clenched first. All was still as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... quite white and walked up to the girl, her teeth set, her small fists clenched. "You are wicked!" she stammered out; "how dare you say such things? I—I will never speak to you again!" and then she turned, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... when "Dona Sol," beside herself, raises her poignard to "Don Ruy Gomez," saying, "I am of the family, uncle," there was an outburst of "Bravos" for Esperance, who, erect and trembling, shoulders thrown back, had just sobbed these words in a vibrant voice between clenched teeth. With her pale face and out-stretched arm, she might have been the statue of despair struggling ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, a cocked pistol clenched in his right hand. His breath seemed to have stopped, but his heart was pounding as though it must burst through his breast. How could he shoot down in cold blood a fellow man? The horror of it crowded out all other impressions, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... tree; and he came swiftly. I can see him now, in my wake-a-day life, as I write this, swinging along through the trees, a four-handed, hairy creature, howling with rage, pausing now and again to beat his chest with his clenched fist, leaping ten-and-fifteen-foot gaps, catching a branch with one hand and swinging on across another gap to catch with his other hand and go on, never hesitating, never at a loss as to how to proceed on his ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the downfall ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... new pest-house, that other songster and prisoner, the gay little chestnut vender, Pietro Tobigli, had called lamentably upon the name of his God and upon "Libra Ogostine," and now lay still forever, with the corduroy waistcoat and its precious burden tightly clenched to his breast. Even in his delirium they had been unable to coax or force him to part from it for ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... in which direction, with the letter in his clenched hand, and his teeth firmly set. Gradually he became more composed: and out of breath with the rapidity of his motion, he sat down upon a bank, and there he long remained, with his eyes riveted ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he did, in a blue-gray mist in which he could feel nothing solid, not even the ground under his feet or the touch of his clenched fingers against his palms. ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit |
