"Coiled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a patch that looked like the contents of a pot, suddenly petrified in the act of boiling; sometimes the black, iridescent lava had assumed the form of waves, or more frequently of huge masses of rope, twisted and coiled together; sometimes it was piled up like a collection of organ pipes, or had gathered into mounds ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... grinding through the hollow hush. There was a split, a splintering, a dull boom of titanic weight falling, miles away. They saw the puff of snow dust fly up in a toss of mist over the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... think, that wants boilin' down bad. Some day they'll do it, maybe; they'll have to when all the good country's stocked up. After Warrigal had his supper he went out again to see his horse, and then coiled himself up before the fire and wouldn't hardly say ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... oracular word From the snow-topped rock that we gaze on heard, Counsels of thy glorious giving Manifest for all men living, How thou madest the tripod of prophecy thine Which the wrath of the dragon kept guard on, a shrine Voiceless till thy shafts could smite All his live coiled ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he resumed, casting a glance at the beggar-girl, as she coiled up under the shawl, "she's ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... heard you all," said the hedgehog. "I have heard the flier's point of view from the bat, the gymnast's point of view from the squirrel, the swimmer's point of view from the water-rat, and the assassin's point of view from the stoat." For a moment he coiled himself up with a snap, but the stoat made no remark, so he slowly uncoiled himself, and resumed. "Yet I maintain my original contention, there is nothing like spines. 'The fox's tricks are many; one is enough for the urchin.' What is the one ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... with the two men from the Lone Dog. And then he followed them when they turned and rode to the little corral. The horses in it bunched up, quick-eyed, alert, at the far side of the inclosure. Rawhide Jones and Toothy as they rode were taking down the ropes coiled upon their saddles. ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... dragon lies round the treasures in a cave, as Fafnir, like a Python, lay coiled over his hoard. So constant was this habit among the dragons that gold is called Worms' bed, Fafnir's couch, Worms' bed-fire. Even in India, the cobras ... are guardians ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... - can we e'er forget? - How, in the coiled perplexities of youth, In our wild climate, in our scowling town, We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed, and feared? The belching winter wind, the missile rain, The rare and welcome silence of the snows, The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night, The grimy spell of the nocturnal town, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pointing finger, and he now noticed the Mexican, a vaquero, who had been crouching so low that his figure blurred with the earth. Ned saw the coiled lariat hanging over his arm, and he knew that the man intended to capture Old Jack, a ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was this. I heard them talking about a girl. It was at night, in our watch, and the wind had headed us off a little rather suddenly, and when we had flattened in the jibs, we clewed down the topsails, while the two Benton boys got the spanker sheet aft. One of them was at the helm. I coiled down the mizzen-topsail downhaul myself, and was going aft to see how she headed up, when I stopped to look at a light, and leaned against the deck-house. While I was standing there I heard the two boys talking. It sounded ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... small, are carefully hidden in the walls of those petal-like tentacles, or feelers of the Anemone. Still other lasso-cells are hidden in the mouth of the Anemone, and inside its stomach. In the cells the long, slender, thread-like lassos lie coiled up ready for use. The lassos escape from the cells by turning themselves inside out with lightning-like swiftness, and woe to the crab, or small water animal that comes in contact with this lovely flower! It is immediately pierced ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... they were happy talking, and forgot how they thought differently on marriage. But always the difference lay there in the background, coiled up like a snake, ready to uncoil and seize them and make them quarrel and hurt one another. Always one was expecting the other at any moment to throw up the sponge and cry "Oh, have it your own way, since ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... but hummed like a bee, to hear a gray bird sing clear and loud and sweet every strain that sang other birds, was to see and hear most joyous things. Lizards were innumerable; at edge of a marsh we met with tortoises; once we passed coiled around a tree a great serpent. It looked at us with beady eyes, but the Indians said it would not harm a man. A thousand, thousand ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... starts for the fire-cock to which it is ordered, and the first which gets into play is of course held to have beat the other. The call to stop is then given, and both parties return to their former station, with their hose coiled up, and everything in proper travelling order; the first which arrives being ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... 'professionals,' including an unusually prepossessing likeness of Schneider, decked the walls. Satin tights, exquisitely pink, hung out of a half-open trunk. The danseuse was seated at a small table, her own profuse golden hair coiled after an indolent fashion, while her diamonded fingers were hard at work saturating some superb yellow tresses in a saucerful of colorless fluid, a bleaching agent for continuing the lustre of blond hair. A clamorous parrot trolled a bar or two of 'Un Mari Sage' overhead, and a shaggy poodle ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... some such mischief-maker as the author of the odious letter which received official recognition. Mr. Motley had spoken in one of his histories of "a set of venomous familiars who glided through every chamber and coiled themselves at every fireside." He little thought that under his own roof he himself was to be the victim of an ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... speckled, of a dirty brown colour, and can scarcely be distinguished from the ground or stump on which he is coiled up; he grows to the length of about eight feet and his bite often proves fatal ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... walked across the lawn, his steps noiseless on the velvet sward, and passed between the maples; and the moon gleam—for the flying clouds, rear-guard of the routed storm, were flung wide apart, dispersed—fell upon a coiled and huddled little figure all in white, that was quite still and motionless upon the ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... surly the mere mould Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept, This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold What while we, while we slumbered. O then, weary then why should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered, When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care, Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder A care kept. Where kept? ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... slowly and with evident pain, lifting its head every few seconds high above the water, to see which way it was going. On reaching the bank it coiled itself up, throwing up blood and water. I took it up carefully, carried it home, and nursed it. It soon got better, and has been a pet ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... logs, crashing into rotten stumps, and ruthlessly destroying whole acres of moss and water-reeds. It had all been just as lovely as Elizabeth had dreamed, but there were other things upon which she had not reckoned. There were black water-snakes coiled amongst the rushes, and horrible speckled frogs sitting up on water-lily leaves; frogs with awful goggle eyes that looked at you out of the darkness of your bedroom for many, many nights afterwards. There were mud-turtles that paddled their queer ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... had done her so much good. Then, too, Phil and Lillian had persuaded her to cease to wear her heavy, light hair in an English bun at the back of her neck. Lillian had plaited it in two great braids and had coiled it around her head like a dull golden coronet. She had a faint color in her cheeks, and, instead of looking cross and tired, she was as merry and almost as light-hearted as the girls. The lines of her head were really beautiful, ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... he was thus clambering, he was on the point of seizing hold of a shrub to aid his ascent, when something rustled among the leaves, and he saw a snake quivering along like lightning, almost from under his hand. It coiled itself up immediately, in an attitude of defiance, with flattened head, distended jaws, and quickly-vibrating tongue, that played like a little flame about its mouth. Dolph's heart turned faint within him, and he had well-nigh let go his hold, and tumbled down the precipice. The serpent ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... by men in hiding. But its most singular and most romantic aspect was the well-known fact, that many women essayed the breaking of the border blockade. Almost all of them were successful; more than one well nigh invaluable, for the information she brought, sewed in her riding-habit, or coiled in her hair. Nor were these coarse camp-women, or reckless adventurers. Belle Boyd's name became historic as Moll Pitcher; but others are recalled—petted belles in the society of Baltimore, Washington and Virginia summer resorts of yore—who rode through night and peril alike, to carry ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... could have spared time to make a facsimile of it. There are also figures of the four Evangelists, in the usual style of art of this period; the whole in fine preservation. The capital initials are capricious, but tasteful. We observe birds, beasts, dragons, &c. coiled up in a variety of whimsical forms. The L. at the beginning of the "Liber Generationis," is, as usual in highly executed works of art of this period, peculiarly elaborate ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... offended you, Miss Nell. Perhaps it was beastly bad taste. I see it now. But just put yourself in my place——" He slid over the thwart in his eagerness, and coiled himself at her feet. "Supposing you had broken your confounded arm—I beg your pardon!—your arm, and had been taken in and tended by good Samaritans, and nursed and treated like a prince for weeks, and had been made to ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... hearthrug, by the small crackling fire—which, in deference to the chilliness of an English June evening, had been lighted—stood a tall, fair, slender girl, with pale complexion, and soft, loosely-coiled masses of golden hair. She was dressed in pure white, a soft loose gown of Indian silk, trimmed with the most delicate lace: it was high to the milk-white throat, but showed the rounded curves of the finely-moulded arm to the elbow. She ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... knee, my rain coat rolled behind my saddle, my camera dangling handily, my rope coiled and lashed, I called out, "Are ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... coiled himself up by the side of his chum; and soon they were fast asleep. Paul woke up at daybreak, and having expressed a hope that he would see Stanley back in his place that day, returned without mishap to his dormitory. The light was only just stealing into the room as he entered. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... wary, and Lollie had now to exercise the greatest caution to get near enough to club them, the need of eggs became imperative. One day Jean and Harlan were racing along the beach headed for the south cliffs to make their accustomed search. A rope coiled about the young man's waist held to him a bucket which dangled and bobbed as he ran. The afternoon was sunny and a fresh sea wind lifted the hair on their bare heads. The surf ringed the grey sands at their feet ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the tattered blankets, sat upright, rubbed her eyes with her hands, looked about her as if to recall her scattered senses, and then, as thought returned, crept stealthily out of the hole in which she had lain, that she might not wake the children, who, coiled together, slumbered on, still closely clasped in the ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... nephridia or renal canals, and the formation of a vertical brain or cerebral ganglion. It is now usual to distinguish four classes of Platodes: the two free-living classes of the primitive worms (Platodaria) and the coiled-worms (Turbellaria), and the two parasitic classes of the suctorial worms (Trematoda) and the tape-worms (Cestoda). We have only to consider the first two of these classes; the other two are parasites, and have descended from the former by adaptation ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... noticed that one was burly and clean-shaven, and wore some insignia across his shoulders. At the near side were the backs of two ladies, silken clad and slashed with crimson, their white jewelled necks visible under their coiled hair and tight square cut caps. And in the centre sat a pair, a man and a woman; and on these he fixed his eyes as the boat swept up not twenty yards away, for he knew ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... the valve cap, coiled the pump tube and stowed it away in the tool box, opened the gas tank, and looked in—and right there he did something else; something that would have spelled disaster if either of them had seen him ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... head impatiently. A hand stole forth from beneath her veils, slender, long-fingered with nails like rosy pearls; above the wrist was coiled a golden dragon with wicked little crimson eyes. The slender white hand touched Ruth's head, turned it until the strange, flecked orbs looked directly into the misty ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... frown puckering her brows. He saw the frown as she spoke and it checked his words, but he continued to watch her steadily, noting the graceful, yet seemingly unstudied way in which the wavy mass of her luxuriant hair was coiled on her head, the clear whiteness of her skin, the heavy fringe of her drooping lashes. Even as he watched she raised her eyes ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... Brussels lace was fastened at her neck with the amethyst pin, inlaid with gold and surrounded by baroque pearls. The ends of the bertha hung loosely and under it she had tied an apron of sheerest linen, edged with narrow Duchesse lace. Her hair was coiled softly on top of her head, with a string of amethysts and another of pearls ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... water, was all that ensued. Presently, however, Juno's glossy black head emerged from the water; and, to my delight, began to make rapid progress toward me, and landed safely. The poor brute, wet and shivering, coiled herself up at my feet, with her bright hazel eyes fixed on mine with ineffable satisfaction. Poor Juno subsequently fell a victim to the Muggers, when her master was not at hand to succor her. I mention these facts, to show that the diabolical ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... mollusks we must note the evolution of the cephalopods. The primitive straight Orthoceras has now become abundant. But in addition to this ancestral type there appears a succession of forms more and more curved and closely coiled, as illustrated in Figure 285. The nautilus, which began its course in this period, crawls on the bottom of ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... and as I could not penetrate the bush, I called the dogs off. They joined me almost immediately, looking rather scared. It now occurred to me that they might have found a snake, as a few days ago I had heard Merry barking in a similar manner, and upon joining him I had discovered a snake coiled up with head erect in an attitude of defence. I had killed the snake and scolded the dog, as I feared he would come to an untimely end, should he commence snake- hunting in so prolific a field as Cyprus. Since that time all the dogs hunted the countless lizards which ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... faint purple bloom showed up a little to the left. Under a sudden attack of botanical zeal, I struck across lots to investigate, and after much tacking among the paddy dykes found, to my surprise, on reaching it, that the flowers came from a huge wistaria that had coiled itself up the tree. The vine must have been at least six feet round at the base, and had a body horribly like an enormous boa that swung from branches high in air. The animal look of the vegetable parasite ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... bandage which blinded him and made him helpless. Now and then he reared a little and came down on prancing forefeet, and Bull noted the spring and play of the fetlock joints. The whole running mechanism of the horse, indeed, seemed composed of coiled springs. Once released, what would the result be? And the first hope entered his mind, the first hope since he had seen the ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... in the city's empty thoroughfares. Flowers rioted in the unkept gardens. The cicada's frying note fried hotter than ever. Dazzling thunder-heads towered in the upper blue and stood like snow mountains of a vaster world. The very snake coiled in the shade. The spiced air gathered no freshness from the furious, infrequent showers, the pavements burned the feet, and the blue "Yank" (whom there no one dared call so by word or look), so stoutly clad, so uncouthly ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the box and crouched, his big frame ready to be released like a coiled spring. Miles backed up and fingered the trigger on the ray gun. "Come on, stupid," he snarled. "Come on, I'll give it to you again, only ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... rapids. The "skiff," as they whimsically termed the steamboat's great, clumsy tender—its official name of "sturgeon-head" was more descriptive—was brought alongside; and a half-mile of hawser, more or less, patiently coiled in the bottom. The end of this rope was made fast on board the steamer, and the skiff, pushing off, was poled and tracked up the rapids with heart-breaking labour, paying out the hawser over her stern as she went. The other end of the rope was made fast to a great ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of the bank; the other end he made fast to the stern of the canoe—not to the point of the stern, but to the stern-thwart where it joined the gunwale. This was designed to hold the canoe at an angle against the current that would keep her out in the stream. The slack of the line was coiled neatly on ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... All coiled down, and it's time for us to go, Every sail's furled in a smart harbour stow, Another ship for us an' for her another crew; An' so long, sailorman. Good luck ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... terrified at rats, but she smothered her terror in her husband's presence and maintained a smiling front. They laid down poison for the rats, who died horribly in inaccessible places, making her wonder if they were not almost preferable alive. And then one night she discovered a small snake coiled in a ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... had taken his automatic from his belt and pointed it, and in that instant the girls saw a black and yellow skinned snake coiled, its head poised with darting tongue, ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... constellations four great draconic or serpent-like forms. Chief of these is the great dragon coiled round the pole of the ecliptic and the pole of the equator as the latter was observed some 4600 years ago. This is the dragon with which the Kneeler, Hercules, is fighting, and whose head he presses down with his foot. The second is the great watersnake, Hydra, which ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... dress was on she had sent Mary flying down to the drawing-room to bring up some carnations she had noticed there. When these had been tucked into her belt, and the waves of her brown hair had been somehow pinned and coiled into a kind of order, and she had discovered and put on her mother's pearls, she was pleased with herself, or rather with as much of herself as she could see in the inadequate looking-glass on the toilet-table. A pier-glass from somewhere was of course ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... intricate, complicated, perplexed; labyrinth, labyrinthic[obs3], labyrinthian[obs3], labyrinthine; peristaltic; daedalian[obs3]; kinky, knotted. wreathy[obs3], frizzly, crepe, buckled; raveled &c. (in disorder) 59. spiral, coiled, helical; cochleate, cochleous; screw-shaped; turbinated, turbiniform[obs3]. Adv. in and out, round and round; a can of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... change to pay the driver?" asked a vision of stern loveliness floating into the room. With the winter's glow in her cheeks and eyes and the bronze sheen on her splendid hair, which was brushed in rippling waves from her forehead and coiled in a severely simple knot on her neck, she might have been a wandering goddess, who had descended, with immortal calm, to direct the affairs of the household. Her white shirtwaist, with its starched severity, suited her austere beauty ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that she was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante. But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body. There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face, and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long, yellow hands clasped one ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... wells, but purple in the sun. And She, their mistress, of the heart unstormed, Stood taller than they all, supreme, and still, Perfectly fair like day, and crowned with hair The color of nipt beech-leaves: Ay, such hair Was mine in years when I was such as these. I let it fall to cover me, or coiled Its soft thick coils about my throat and arms; Its color like nipt beech-leaves, tawny brown, But in the sun a ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the transmitter glowed into life and the scientist manipulated the controls rapidly. Lina was watching the robot with fascinated awe. Its arms moved in obedience to the controls, tentacles waved and coiled; the humming of its internal mechanisms filled the room. The locomotion controls had no effect, as the scientist had predicted. Eddie drew a sigh ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... struck into the path they had followed from the swamp to the woods, when suddenly a warm, yielding, coiling thing slipped under Mickey's feet. With a wild cry he leaped across the body of a big rattlesnake that had been coiled in the path. As he arose, clear cut against the light launched the ugly head and wide jaws of the rattler, then came the sickening buzz of its rattles in mad recoil for ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... all for lost. He drew in his legs, shut his eyes, and coiled himself up in as small a space as possible, hoping that O'Grady would do the same. He heard a man stop and lean against the tree, as if looking in. Fortunately a cloud at that moment passed across the sun, and prevented the man ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... busy with this and ain't had much sleep. I found something that'll interest you. Mr. Matthews said you'd be along pretty soon, so I waited. Here, Professor—" He leaned over and, from behind the chair he had occupied on their arrival, he took a coiled rope. He dropped it with a soft ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... have nothing to worry you, nothing in the worl'. I am goin' to assassinate my poor mustachio—also remove this horrible black peruke, and emerge in my own hair. Behol'!" He swept the heavy curled, mass from his head as he spoke, and his hair, coiled under the great wig, fell to his shoulders, and sparkled yellow in the candle-light. He tossed his head to shake the hair back from his cheeks. "When it is dress', I am transform nobody can know me; you shall observe. ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... he could see there were initials, which he could not make out, engraved on the back of the case. The ring, too, was of gold. It was one of the most gruesome ornaments Aldous had ever seen. It was in the form of a coiled and writhing serpent, wide enough to cover half of one's middle finger between the joints. Again the eyes of the two men met, and again Aldous observed that strange, stunned look in the old hunter's face. He turned and walked back toward the tent, MacDonald following him slowly, still staring, ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... drawing-room. Here, at least, there were signs of human life and occupation. A little tea-table had been set in one window, though the tea was cold. The greyhounds came and laid their slender noses on her gown, and one small Italian one coiled himself up on her lap. Miss Mewlstone's work-basket stood open, and a tortoise shell kitten had helped itself to a ball of wool and was busily unwinding it. The dogs were evidently frightened at the storm, for they ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... a buka sobo snake came out and asked why she was crying, and when she told it, it said that it would coil itself round the leaves in place of a rope. So it stretched itself out straight and she piled the leaves on the top of it and the snake coiled itself tightly round them and so she was able to carry the bundle home on her head. Her sisters-in-law ran to see how she managed it, but she put the bundle down gently and the snake slipped away unperceived. Still they resolved to try again; so the next day they sent her to fetch ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... tells us what we may all be. There is no heart without its deity. Alas! alas! for the many listening to me now whose spirits are like some of those Egyptian temples, which had in the inmost shrine a coiled-up serpent, the mummy of a monkey, or some other form ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... ready to slip it on. He wasn't expecting Bogue so soon, and he turned about with a jump, but not before Bogue had sight of his back and a great picture tattooed across it—Adam and Eve, with the tree between 'em, and the serpent coiled around it complete." ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... half-dozen men and two very resplendent women. One of these was slight and little, very dark and vivacious with eyes full of a malicious humour. The other, of very noble proportions, of a fine, willowy height, with coiled ropes of hair of a colour such as I had never dreamed could be found upon human being. It was ruddy and glowed like metal. Her face and neck—and of the latter there was a very considerable display—were of the warm pale tint of old ivory. She had large, low-lidded ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... sheets coil up in their fiery anguish and start one from another. I helped the fire to the very vitals of the mass by poking the brittle heap, and at last the sacrifice was over, the flames turned from pink to blue and died out, the red glow gave place to black, little luminous red streaks coiled across the charred sheets and vanished at the margins, and only the ashes of my inspiration remained. The ink was a lustrous black on the dull blackness of the burnt paper. I could still read this much of my indiscretion remaining, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his book which I would exchange for mine, the work and the gift of one of the most imaginative of American artists, the late Edwin A. Abbey. It represents a very fine gentleman of about 1610, walking in broad sunlight in a garden, reading a little book of verses. The name is coiled around him, with the motto, Gravis cantantibus umbra. I will not presume to translate this tag of an eclogue, and I only venture to mention such an uninteresting matter, that my indulgent readers may have a more vivid notion of what I call my library. Mr. Abbey's fine ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... in the United States, and he looked like nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow. He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were always in some ungainly attitude, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... recovered its shock, and my eyes looked dizzily round, the charge of the beasts had swept by; and of all the wild tribes which had invaded the magical circle, the only lingerer was the brown Death-adder, coiled close by the spot where my head had rested. Beside the extinguished lamps which the hoofs had confusedly scattered, the fire, arrested by the water course, had consumed the grasses that fed it, and there the plains ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... or wading boots, worn by a Marquis of Savoy, and removed by means of a tug-of-war team and a rope coiled round ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and then folded once more, and Kay's mighty sweeps were slashing phantom limbs from phantom bodies; and lopping off tentacles that curled and coiled, and put forth caricatures of hands and fingers, and then, uniting with other slashed off tentacles, began to mould themselves into the likeness of dwarf monsters. Kay's struggle was like that of a man fighting a fog, for again and again ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... flea was a mad flea, and that she shall die of hydrophobia. (As it happens, the flea is not a flea at all, but a grain of snuff.) However, the Black Doctor is sent for, and finds the King as affable as usual, but Mlle. de Coulanges coiled up on a sofa—like something between a cat and a naughty child afraid of being scolded—and hiding her face. On being coaxed with the proper medical manner, she at last bursts out laughing, and finally they all laugh together, till ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Turkish pipes in cherry-stick and jessamine, with amber mouthpieces; while a great serpent hookah, from which Frank could no more have smoked than he could have smoked out of the head of a boa constrictor, coiled itself up on the floor; over the chimney-piece was a collection of Moorish arms. What use on earth ataghan and scimitar and damasquined pistols, that would not carry straight three yards, could be to an officer in his Majesty's Guards is more than I can conjecture, or even ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... down the centre of the street under the sheds. On either side at the entry of the market odd business was being plied, the traders being mostly colored women with bright chintz dresses and richly-colored bandanna handkerchiefs coiled turban-like above their dark faces. There were rows of roses in red pots, and venders of marsh calamus, and "Hot corn, sah, smokin' hot," and "Pepperpot, bery nice," and sellers of horse-radish and snapping-turtles, and of doughnuts dear to grammar-school lads. Within the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... revel in guilty joys, and drink deep of the nectar in the gilded cup of unhallowed pleasures—beware! Though the draught be delicious as the wines of Cypress, and though the goblet be crowned with flowers, fragrant as the perfume of love's sighs—a coiled serpent lurks in the dregs of the cup, whose deadly fang will strike deep in the heart and leave there the cankering sores of remorse and dark despair. Ye who bask in the smiles of beauty, and voluptuously repose on the soft couch of licentiousness—beware! ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... century, show the trees with a meandering growth entirely characteristic of those of heavier kind which appear in later embroideries, these trees also are undoubtedly intended to represent the Tree of Life, for round one is coiled a serpent, while beneath the scanty but large leaved boughs, incidents in the story of the expulsion from Paradise are to be descried, as also the ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... of a yellow colour which would weigh about 4 lbs. the tails was seperated with a deep angular nitch like that of the white cat of the missouri from which indeed they differed only in colour. when I awoke from my sleep today I found a large rattlesnake coiled on the leaning trunk of a tree under the shade of which I had been lying at the distance of about ten feet from him. I killed the snake and found that he had 176 scuta on the abdomen and i'7 half formed scuta on the tale; it was of the same kinde which I had frequently ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... little venerable emblem of aristocracy, which still bore its weather-stained head so conspicuously aloft, and, resolving to humble it with the dust, they got a stout hawser from a vessel in the adjoining harbour, which a sailor lad, climbing up, coiled round the body of the little turret, and the rabble seizing the rope by both ends tugged and pulled, and laboured long to strangle and overthrow the poor old turret, but in vain, for it withstood all their endeavours. Now that is exactly the condition of my poor stomach: ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... their rather narrow mouths with a sort of cord or strap-handle, attached to two loops or eyes (Fig. 503 a) woven into the basket, to facilitate handling when the vessel was filled with hot water. In the manufacture of one of these vessels, which are good examples of the helix or spirally-coiled type of basket, the beginning was made at the center of the bottom. A small wisp of fine, flexible grass stems or osiers softened in water was first spirally wrapped a little at one end with a flat, limber splint of tough wood, usually willow (see Fig. 504). ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... director of the Hemenway southwestern archeological expedition, found a number of these structures and excavated some of them. From remains thus found he concluded that they were sun-temples, as he termed them, and that they were covered with a roof made of coiled strands of grass, after a manner analogous to that in which pueblo baskets are made. A somewhat similar class of structures was found by the writer on the upper Rio Verde, but these were probably thrashing floors. ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... you put those boats back see to it that every line is free and coiled and every cover loose. It costs a lot of good money if you kill off passengers in these days." Then he hurried away. "I'll see you before sailing-time," ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and giving a couple of turns round, he coiled himself up, and in a moment was fast asleep. I do not think that he had been asleep ten minutes before he jumped up, wagged his tail, and ran forward, as ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... come out of the ground head foremost, coiled up like a watch-spring, and are designated as "fiddle-heads," or crosiers. (A real crosier is a bishop's staff.) Some of these odd young growths are covered with "fern wool," which birds often use in lining their nests. This wool usually disappears later as the crosier unfolds into the broad ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... covered the path, and always had to be climbed over "by hand," the girls scrambled up, then down, and when Grace gave a necessarily vigorous tug at her rope it sprang up to her face in a real caress! In fact it actually coiled around her like ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... sinuous trunk uncurled, coiled about the lad's waist and the next instant Phil felt himself being lifted ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... recuperative faculty of boyhood that day after day I would forget the horrors of that hour, and be happy in climbing over the decayed chalk acclivities of Whitby, picking up the fossil shells that nestle there. Yonder on my table, as I write, lies a coiled ammonite found there; it had been there ten thousand years or ages before I detached it from its bed, and, for aught I know, my remotest posterity may use it, as I have done, for a paper-weight. Thanks to eternal justice, the bathing-machines and the bathing-women ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of ratlin-stuff, indiscriminately applied—without stripping the victim—at any time, and in any part of the ship, at the merest wink from the Captain. By an express order of that officer, most boatswain's mates carry the "colt" coiled in their hats, in readiness to be administered at a minute's warning upon any offender. This was the custom in the Neversink. And until so recent a period as the administration of President Polk, when the historian Bancroft, Secretary of the Navy, officially interposed, it was an almost ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... thought this might keep me afloat until some of the fleet should pick me up. To clear this gang-board, then, and get it into the water, was my first object. I ran forward to throw off the lazy-painter that was coiled on its end, and in doing this I caught the boat's painter in my hand, by accident. A pull satisfied me that it was all clear! Some one on board must have cast off this painter, and then lost his chance of getting into the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... dolphin's moods, since he must somehow get on shore on the dolphin's back. Captain Welsh could not perceive in Temple the personifier of Alcibiades, nor Telemachus in me; but he was aware of an obstinate obstruction behind our compliance. This he called the devil coiled like a snake in its winter sleep. He hurled texts at it openly, or slyly dropped a particularly heavy one, in the hope of surprising it with a death-blow. We beheld him poring over his Bible for texts that should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... shore, the remainder half-way there. The ponies are picketed in a line on a convenient snow slope so that they cannot eat sand. Oates and Anton are sleeping ashore to watch over them. The dogs are tied to a long length of chain stretched on the sand; they are coiled up after a long day, looking fitter already. Meares and Demetri are sleeping in the green tent to look after them. A supply of food for ponies and dogs as well as for the men has been landed. Two motor sledges in good working order are safely ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... panicky that she ran upstairs with the telegram and tapped at grandmother's door. Rhoda Knox came in answer. She was a large woman of a fine presence, red cheekbones with high lights, and smooth black hair brushed glossy and carefully coiled. She was grandmother's attendant, helplessly hated by grandmother but professionally unmoved by it, a general who carried on intricate calculations to avoid what she called "steps." In the matter of steps, she laid bonds on high and low. A deed that would have taken her five minutes to do she ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... he could not bear was the tyranny of clothes, and he wore even less than is usual in India. His chief joy was to sit and bake in the morning sun, and to be coiled up in the shade during the hottest part of the day. Now and then he came over and sat in one of our verandahs for a little while, and he would wander into church and gaze round with admiration. He was always smiling, or laughing, or talking, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... polarization of a ray of light in opposite ways. If their atoms are conceived to have the power of motion in the fourth dimension, it would be easy to understand why they differ. Certain snails present the same characteristics as these two forms of sugar. Some are coiled to the right and others to the left; and it is remarkable that, like dextrose and levulose, their juices are optically the reverse of each other when ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... naow? want me tew address the meetin', hey? I'm willin', only the laugh's ruther ag'inst me, ef I tell that story; expect you'll like it all the better fer that." Flint coiled up his long limbs, put his hands in his pockets, chewed meditatively for a moment, and then began, with his ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... he would sit for hours, his fish-legs coiled up under him, singing to the wondering ears of the Indians upon the shore the pleasures he experienced, and the beautiful and strange things he saw, in the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories with these words, shouted at the top of his lungs: ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... minutes, after the messenger had been stowed away, the cables coiled in the tiers, and the ropes flemished down on deck, the captain made his appearance, and directed the first lieutenant to send aft the newly-impressed men. In few words he pointed out to them the necessity of their servitude; ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track 280 Was a flash ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was shadow, for the more gradual, but not less curious, formation of a street in what seemed to be space; for the sudden creation of windows in dead walls, for the turning of fantastic shadows into palpable carts, baskets, piles of wood, and the like; and for the discovery of a number of coiled-up dogs (and one or two coiled-up men) who had weathered ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... knew he could not touch me while the snake was coiled around him. At first I thought I would let the boa kill him, but he looked so awful with his eyes sticking out of his head, as the snake squeezed him tighter and tighter, that I felt sorry for him; so I began to play the ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... would burden her with a certain corpulence, but now she was graceful and alert. Her brown skin had an exquisite translucency and her eyes were magnificent. Her black hair, very thick and rich, was coiled round her head in a massive plait. When she smiled in a greeting that was charmingly natural, she showed teeth that were small, even, and white. She was certainly a most attractive creature. It was easy to see that the captain was madly in ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... parted her hair and brushed it satin-smooth and coiled it neatly on the nape of her white neck with the same big carved coral Spanish comb tucked into the shining mass that Octavia had worn when she sat for the portrait. Sometimes she wore the lovely black lace shawl, sometimes the creamy white ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... to translate; and finding her own reply. "Ah, yes, the Medusa!" then, as more than one exclaimed in indignant dismay, she said, "No, not the Gorgon, but the beautiful winged head, with only two serpents on the brow and one coiled round the neck, and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little opportunity for indulging in sentimen, as he quits his native shore; and few, I fancy, have the disposition. As regards the opportunity, anchors are to be got in off the bows, and stowed; cables are to be unbent and coiled down; studding-gear is to be hauled out and got ready; frequently boom-irons are to be placed upon the yards, and the hundred preparations made, that render the work of a ship as ceaseless a round of activity as that of a house. This kept us all ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a whale-boat. In the after-part is an upright rounded post, called the loggerhead, by which to secure the end of the harpoon-line; and in the bows is a groove through which it runs out. It is furnished with two lines, each of which is coiled away in a tub ready for use. It has four harpoons; three or more lances; several small flags, called "whifts," to stick into the dead whale, by which it may be recognised at a distance when it may be necessary to chase another; and two or more "drogues," four-sided ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... black as the crown of my hat. It feared me much that murder would be the upshot, the webs being all heeled over, both of broad cloth, buckram, cassimir, and Welsh flannel; and the paper shapings and worsted runds coiled about their throats and bodies like fiery serpents. At long and last, I thought it became me, being the head of the house, to sound a parley, and bid them give the savage a mouthful of fresh air, to see if he had anything ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... of Europe and America form necessarily a thin relief. Extremely picturesque are the compradore and taipan in costumes of the richest of silks, more so than is the poor coolie in dirty short trousers and jacket, pigtail coiled for convenience about the head, whose face is none too familiar with soap and water. In and out of the ever-moving multitude glide the tall, bright-eyed sons of India, the Sikhs, who are everywhere in the East. Soldiers in regimentals; jack tars of many nations; ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... events, they did not know what to do for it. It did not pass. It grew worse. But I hid it, talking very little, never telling anybody how I felt. They said I was depressed and needed cheering up. All the while there was that black snake coiled around my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter. But my body grew stronger every day. The wounds were all healed. I was walking around. In July the doctor-in-chief sent for me to his office. He said: 'You are cured, Pierre ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... rope to the grapnel, and then Rectus stood back while I made ready for the throw. It was a pretty big throw, almost straight up in the air, but I was strong, and was used to pitching, and all that sort of thing. I coiled the rope on the ground, took the loose end of it firmly in my left hand, and then, letting the grapnel hang from my right hand until it nearly touched the ground, I swung it round and round, perpendicularly, and when it had gone ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... Bluish smoke coiled up from the censer and bathed in the broad, slanting patch of sunshine which cut across the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seemed as though the soul of the dead woman were soaring into the sunlight together with the smoke. The coils of smoke like a child's curls eddied ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was coming towards me. It was thirty cubits (45 feet) in length, and its beard was more than two cubits in length, and its body was covered with [scales of] gold, and the two ridges over its eyes were of pure lapis-lazuli (i.e. they were blue); and it coiled its whole length up before me. And it opened its mouth to me, now I was lying flat on my stomach in front of it, and it said unto me, "Who hath brought thee hither? Who hath brought thee hither, O miserable one? Who hath brought ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... land-forms of mollusca, but the bulk of the class and of the whole sub-kingdom are aquatic animals, such as the whelk (Buccinum), periwinkle (Littorina), limpet (Patella), &c. The Gasteropods generally possess spirally coiled shells (like the cowry or whelk), but some kinds have their shells in the form of simple cones—like a Chinaman's cap—as, e.g., the limpet. There are a few Gasteropods in which the shell consists of a series of similar segments as is the case with Chiton, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... cylinder, passed successively through the other three, the diameters of which were of proportionately decreasing sizes, viz., 8.2 in., 5 in., 3.5 in., and 2 in., and the air on leaving each cylinder passed on its way to the next cylinder through a coiled pipe immersed in flowing water to remove the heat generated. This cooling surface amounted to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... in Jim coiled it smoothly down into an empty tub on a stand in the bow. The first ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... disturbed by the dogs, who gnawed at the bullock-hides, till a coat of tar laid over them prevented them. Not so, however, with another visitor, a huge Patagonian, who walked in with the words, "I go sleep," and leisurely coiled himself up for the purpose, unheeding Johnstone's discourse; but the Captain, pointing with his finger, and emphatically saying "Go," produced the desired effect. Then followed the erection of seventeen skin tents, all in a row, set up by the women. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... looking up at Philip Alston with love—unmistakable love—in her face. The sight brought back all the helplessness that he always felt when forced to realize her fondness for the man. He felt as he might have done had he seen some deadly thing coiled about her so closely that he could not strike it without wounding her tender breast. The trouble had been like that from the first and it was like that now—perhaps it always would be. He did not know what to do or say, with her blue eyes appealing from him to Philip Alston. He was glad when William ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... of this family, coiled by misfortunes like that of the Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more curiosity than benevolence. This sick woman, surrounded by luxury in the midst of such direful poverty, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... stain of a mean action never rested on his conduct. But,"—and her hand involuntarily tightened around mine,—"he has qualities fatal to the peace of those who love him,—fatal to his own happiness; suspicion haunts him like a dark shadow,—jealousy, like a serpent, lies coiled ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... One of them dismounted, and at the command the horse backed up and kept the rope tight while the man went up to the prostrate beast and cut its throat. As soon as it had ceased struggling, they loosened their ropes and coiled them up: they came to us and pointed to the dead heifer in a way ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Dawson were bench grafted in the greenhouse on especially grown stocks. I have two trees on my place from Thomas Meehan & Sons, Germantown, Pa., propagated in the same way and, when received, the long tap roots were coiled up like springs showing that the trees had been grown in pots. These trees, however, have grown well since I planted them out though they were very small and feeble when set out. These grafted Hales trees at the Hales place bore nuts in eighteen to twenty years after grafting. They ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... fragile, and exquisite, her features and outline not unlike her mother's, but frailer, softer, more delicate. The golden light struck one half of her high-bred, sensitive face, and glimmered upon her thickly-coiled flaxen hair, striking a pinkish tint from her closely-cut costume of fawn-coloured cloth with its dainty cinnamon ruchings. One little soft frill of chiffon nestled round her throat, from which the white, graceful ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Barwonleigh, in Victoria, states: "When riding past a bull-oak tree about twenty-five feet high, with either a magpie's or crow's nest on top. I noticed the nest looked very bulky, and had something red in it. On going nearer I saw a large fox coiled ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... was very pale, for she seldom went out of doors, and never farther than the church or meeting. Her comely face contrasted pleasantly with the full chin, which bore a trace of the commanding expression of her mother. She wore her hair quite smooth, with plaits coiled round the ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were, Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully round ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... was missing, and a portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the second finger of the left hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give the full list ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... lady" just expressed it. She was, when she came to our home, only thirty-seven years of age, and looked not more than twenty. Her complexion was that of a perfect blonde; her hair was light and wavy, clear to the parting; she had a luxuriant mass of it, and coiled it about her shapely head, fastening it with a beautifully carved shell comb. Her eyes were very dark for blue, large and expressive; she had teeth like pearls, and a mouth, whose tender outlines were a study for a painter. She seemed to me a living, breathing picture, and I almost coveted the ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... while he came riding into the yard in front of the bunk house on a lively little pony. He made the animal race up and down and, while doing this, the cowboy swung his coiled rope, or lasso, about his head, and sent it in curling rings toward posts and benches, hauling the latter after him by winding the rope around the horn of his saddle ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... their ships for two nights; a very unusual as well as inconvenient and uncomfortable circumstance for the ancients. We have already described their ships as either having no deck, or only a kind of half-deck, below which the cables were coiled. Under this deck there might be accommodation for part of the crew; but in cases where all were obliged to remain on board at night, the confinement must have been extremely irksome, as well as prejudicial to ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... a very warm day, and she was clad in a fine white robe, richly embroidered and garnished with pale lavender ribbon. If she had but realized it, she was exquisitely beautiful herself, with her glossy, brown hair carelessly yet gracefully coiled at the back of her head, the color beginning to tinge her cheeks, that smile of happiness upon her sweet lips, and the holy mother-light shining ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... hat, and her hair was coiled close about her exquisite head. White and black, regular, significant, antique—like a cameo of some Greek woman, long dead. She stood by a little table, one hand on it, the other like some butterfly against her gown.... It was like a pose—but ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know. Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and her ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... burst from every pore, his knees shook, and his eyes, fixed on the snake by a fascination that controlled his will, felt bursting from their sockets. After preserving its attitude for a short time, the snake, as if taking Holden under its protection, coiled itself around his feet, and lay with its head resting on his shoe, looking into the fire. As the snake turned away its bright eyes the spell that bound the Indian was dissolved. An expression of the deepest awe overspread his countenance, his lips moved, but emitted ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... a tall, sturdily built woman of the out-of-door, squiress type. Her fine-shaped head was crowned by a wealth of grey hair, simply coiled in a big knot on the nape of her neck and contrasting rather attractively with her very black, arched eyebrows and humorous dark eyes. Those same eyes were now regarding Sir Philip with a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... to him again, his wife crawled forward painfully and swiftly coiled herself about his legs. He struggled, still dizzy from his fall, bent over and tore at her twining arms, but the more he pulled the tighter she clung, fastening her misshapen fingers in the lacing of his shoes. He swore! And he became panic-stricken. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... proud ceremony for our wedding? Will you not tie up with a wreath your tawny coiled locks? Is there none to carry your banner before you, and will not the night be on fire with your red torch-lights, O Death, ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... the movement the snake coiled, rattle sticking up in the center, head poised, tongue licking wickedly. And aiming his best, ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... all, her compassion went out to Sandro. He was so gay, so boy-like, that he acquired ascendancy over her sympathies in spite of her judgment. And by the time her maid had coiled her great golden waves of hair and helped her into a short, heavy skirt, a pair of stout boots, a plain shirt-waist, and a rough, short coat and cap, her feeling of resentment against him had passed. She drew on a pair of dogskin ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... stood with foot upon the Serpent, that lay coiled on the apex of the globe. She had crushed the Destroyer; the world was free of its monster. Beneath her shone the crescent moon, whose horns were sharp as swords. Rays of blessing, streaming from her hands, revealed the Mother of grace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... an idol, a hideous thing on which frogs and snakes squatted and coiled. It was a fitting piece to accompany the gruesome occupant of the little room in his long, last vigil. In fact, it almost sent a shudder over me, and if I had been inclined to the superstitious, I should certainly have concluded that this was retribution for having disturbed the lares ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... reminding one of the rush of water round the interior of a hollow sphere on its way to a jet or fountain. Deep fissures or indentations showed themselves all over the sphere; and then at the end of ten or more minutes all interior action ceased, and the sphere had segmented into a coiled mass. There was no trace of an investing membrane; the constituent parts were related to each other simply as the two separating parts of an ordinary fission; and they now commenced a quick, writhing motion like a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... coiled hair's brown crown, for that sweet and seemly way, The straight thoughts, the eager words, the dazzle of your day, Shall I turn base then and learn to whine and curse? Not though daggers of ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... one of the nomad tribes, and a man not only of high spirit and valiant, but in understanding, also, and in gentleness, superior to his condition, and more of a Grecian than the people of his country usually are. When he first came to be sold at Rome, they say a snake coiled itself upon his face as he lay asleep, and his wife, who at this latter time also accompanied him in his flight, his country-woman, a kind of prophetess, and one of those possessed with the bacchanal frenzy, declared that it was a sign portending ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... House; he is lawyer enough to know he must not furnish any ground for malice. He is a miserable, malicious and worthless wretch, infinitely egotistical, imagines that he did a great deal toward the election of Garfield, and upon being refused the house a serpent of malice coiled in his heart, and he determined to be revenged. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... seemed at first that he was confronted by a stranger. The woman who entered in a perfectly white gown of some clinging material, with a single row of pearls around her neck, with ringless fingers and plainly coiled hair, seemed like the ghost of her own girlhood. It was only when she smiled, a smile which, curiously enough, seemed to bring back something of that aging sadness into her face, that he found himself able to readjust his tangled impressions. Then he realised that ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fellowship with Nature, liking even its wildest, most uncouth forms. The snakes, with shining skin and sinuous movement, glistening like streams of water, or lying coiled like stagnant pools amid the rank luxuriance of grass and flowers, were as eagerly watched by her as the most brilliant butterfly that ever fanned a blossom. She had a faculty for tracing resemblances in the material creation, akin to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... was a girl coming aboard. An arch-light over the incline showed her clearly when she was half way up. A girl with her hood pushed back; her face framed in thick black hair. I saw now it was not a man's cut of hair; but long braids coiled up under the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... view, an effective appearance was quite indispensable. As a finish to the ornament, a little gold clasp was needed; fortunately I possessed it in the fastening of my sole necklace; I duly detached and re-attached it, then coiled compactly the completed guard; and enclosed it in a small box I had bought for its brilliancy, made of some tropic shell of the colour called "nacarat," and decked with a little coronal of sparkling ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... to bed a beauteous maiden, and rose up a Laidly Worm. And when her maidens came in to dress her in the morning they found coiled up on the bed a dreadful dragon, which uncoiled itself and came towards them. But they ran away shrieking, and the Laidly Worm crawled and crept, and crept and crawled till it reached the Heugh or rock of the Spindlestone, round which it coiled itself, and lay there basking ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker chair.—"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column first when the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Heilbron. Range 1,500 yards. Entry, 2-1/2 inches below the right anterior superior iliac spine; the bullet traversed the groin superficially in the line of Poupart's ligament, emerged, and crossed both penis and scrotum. The trooper was in the saddle when struck, and the penis probably somewhat coiled up. Three wounds were found, one at the junction of the penis and scrotum which opened the urethra, a second one about 3/4 of an inch along the under surface of the penis, and a third on the left side of the base of ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... four horsemen just making the first descent from the top. He shouted a wordless greeting, and heard their answering yells. In another minute or two they were pulling up at the house, where he had hurried to meet them. Val, tucking a side comb hastily into her freshly coiled hair, her pretty self clothed all in white linen, appeased ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... assembled at Philadelphia, and early in January, 1776, Esek Hopkins, commander in chief, stepped on board of one of them and took command. As he did so, Lieutenant John Paul Jones hoisted a yellow silk flag on which was the device of a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake and the motto "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever displayed on an American man-of-war. Ice delayed the departure of the squadron; but in February it put to sea, went to the Bahama Islands, captured the forts on the island of New Providence, and ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... strictest; and at midnight rules arch-fiend—men call him DON LUIS GARCIA. He is Don Ferdinand's murderer! He sought Senor Stanley's death and mine; but instead of a victim, he has found an accuser! His web has coiled round himself—flee him! avoid him as ye would a walking pestilence, or visible demon! Minister as he may be of our holy father, the Pope, he is a villain—his death alone can bring safety to Spain. Ha! what is this? ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... an improvised flagstaff on top of the court-house. One was the flag of the State, with its pillars, its sentinel, and its legend of "Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation." The design of the other was entirely new to Little Compton. It was a pine tree on a field of white, with a rattlesnake coiled at its roots, and the inscription, "DON'T TREAD ON ME!" A few hours later Uncle Abner Lazenberry made his appearance in front of Compton's store. He had just hitched his horse to the ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... father hung at his left hip, his bow and his quiver of arrows were slung across his shoulders, while around his chest over one shoulder and beneath the opposite arm was coiled the long grass rope without which Tarzan would have felt quite as naked as would you should you be suddenly thrust upon a busy highway clad only in a union suit. A heavy war spear which he sometimes carried in one hand and again slung by a thong about his neck so that it hung down his back completed ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... until in obedience to his suggestion Betty had withdrawn to a safe distance toward the ranchhouse. Then with Kelton holding the black's head he placed the saddle on, then the bridle, working with a sure swiftness that brought an admiring glint into Betty's eyes. Then he deliberately coiled his rope and fastened it to the pommel of the saddle, taking extra care with it. This done he turned with a cold grin to Kelton, nodding ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer |
