"Coiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with yellow, blue, even red cutting into the general verdant carpet of treetops. Another chain of heights and then open land, swales of tall grass already burnt yellow by the steady sun. There was a river here, a crazy, twisted stream coiling nearly back upon ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... on the palm of her hand. Behold, it glowed in the dusk of the chamber as a live ember glows among the ashes of the hearth. Red it glowed and green, and white, and livid blue, and its shape, as it lay upon her hand, was the shape of a coiling snake, cut, as it were, in ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... the young chieftain was bending over an uncovered box, holding in one hand the shaft of an arrow, on the end of which was a piece of freshly killed dog; in the other hand he held a willow wand, sharpened. Beneath him, crawling and coiling and singing, were ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... wandering disease, and unappeased famine, and unsatisfied hope. So you have, on the one side, the winds of prosperity and health, on the other, of ruin and sickness. Understand that, once, deeply,—any who have ever known the weariness of vain desires, the pitiful, unconquerable, coiling and recoiling famine and thirst of heart,—and you will know what was in the sound of the Harpy Celaeno's shriek from her rock; and why, in the seventh circle of the "Inferno," the Harpies make their nests in the warped branches of the trees that ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... of a 'goaded bull the German attempted to fling forward. But men-at-arms, in steel and leather, who had come up quietly behind him, seized him now. Impotent in their coiling arms, he was borne away to his doom, that thereby he might complete the reparation of his hideous offence, and deliver Sapphira from the bondage of a wedlock which Charles of Burgundy had never ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... ringlets! Ev'ry dainty clasp That shines like twisted sunlight in my eye Is but the coiling of the jewelled asp That smiles to see ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... brilliant green tree-snake of extraordinary length was taken from its box by the keeper, and Eden wound it twice round her waist; and looking down on that living, coiling, grass-green sash, knowing that it was a serpent, and yet would do her no harm, she experienced a sensation of creepy delight which was very novel, and curious, and mixed. The kangaroos were a curious people, resembling small donkeys with crocodile tails, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Could it be that Denis—Denis even—Ah, no! She remembered what he had been to poor Arthur; she understood, now, the vague allusions to what he had tried to do for his brother. He had seen Arthur down there, in that coiling blackness, and had leaned over and tried to drag him out. But Arthur was too deep down, and his arms were interlocked with other arms—they had dragged each other deeper, poor souls, like drowning people who fight together in the waves! Kate's visualizing habit gave a hateful precision ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... devil were laughing somewhere in the room. They had caught him, they had caught him, there at the very gates of deliverance. They were dragging him back to his place of torment. He could hear the clanking of the chains which he had so nearly burst asunder, could feel them coiling cold about his heart. For he also was bound by a promise, the keeping of which meant utter destruction to all he held good ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... Abolition Has been coiling on for years; We have reasoned, we have threatened, We have begged almost with tears: Now, away, away with Union, Since on our Southern soil The only union left us ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... structures in Yucatan, we are told they were sometimes "adorned with elegant cornices and stucco designs of flowers and animals, which were often painted with brilliant colors. Prominent among these figures was the coiling serpent." After pointing out, by many citations, that the evidence always was that these houses were occupied by many families, Mr. Morgan concludes, "They were evidently joint tenement-houses of the aboriginal American model, each occupied by a number of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... looks. Another time he showed some address in extricating himself from the water-butt—a common child-trap. He did not fear ghosts or thunder; instead of that, his early-developed landscape feeling showed itself in dread of foxglove dells and dark pools of water, in coiling roots of trees—things that to the average English ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... gave him one of those shy, timid glances he had noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers, with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... skill. If I might be allowed to hazard a supposition, I should imagine that those filmy threads, when first shot, might be entangled in the rising dew, and so drawn up, spiders and all, by a brisk evaporation into the region where clouds are formed: and if the spiders have a power of coiling and thickening their webs in the air, as Dr. Lister says they have [see his Letters to Mr. Ray], then, when they were become heavier than the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the watch on deck's "turning-to" at day-break and washing down, scrubbing, and swabbing the decks. This, together with filling the "scuttled butt" with fresh water, and coiling up the rigging, usually occupies the time until seven bells, (half after seven,) when all hands get breakfast. At eight, the day's work begins, and lasts until sun-down, with the exception of an hour ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... sprang up, and going over to where the chain was hanging, took it from its place, and coiling it up into a knot, returned to George's side. The chain was made of large iron links, with several sharp, square swivels in it, and these Abdu so placed that they projected from the rest. Having arranged it to his fancy, he seized ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... will lap and scratch As I swallow it down; And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, Coiling and twisting in my belly. His snortings will rise to my head, And I shall be hot, and laugh, Forgetting that I have ever known ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Transfigured in the golden mist of love. Spread, spread your wings, ye angel guardians bright, And shield these dazzling phantoms from her sight! But no; days passed, matins and vespers rang, And still the quiet Nuns toiled, prayed, and sang, And never guessed the fatal, coiling net Which every day drew near, and nearer yet, Around their darling; for she went and came About her duties, outwardly the same. The same? ah, no! even when she knelt to pray, Some charmed dream kept all her heart ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... father was nearer than either of them dreamed. At that very moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the house. It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling arms, with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung there, tense, then sped to the door of the room, set ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... she stood poised, one foot on the ground, the other on the stool, both hands gripping the high shelf, she felt the reptile whipping, writhing, jerking, lashing, flogging at her ankle and instep, coiling round her leg.... And in the fraction of a second the thought flashed through her mind: "If its head is under my foot, or too close to my foot for its fangs to reach me, I am safe while I remain as I am. If its head is free I am doomed—and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... leaping into the south-west, the wind on her quarter and all her sheets to starboard. Without pausing for breath, though my heart was beating like a trip-hammer from my exertions, I sprang to the topsails, and before the wind had become too strong we had them fairly set and were coiling down. Then I ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... relations with this churchyard would not only do credit to his own reputation, but would gratify the best friends of Mademoiselle Joliet and at least one other lady. To attain these proofs he had to step over the coiling, writhing bodies of a whole nest of rumors. When he seized by the throat the especial slander that he himself was the husband of the babe's mother, he found written on its crest the signature of John Kranich. He sought the aunt. This lady ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... blood's reek ascends of the downfallen and the dying. Clandonuil, still my darling theme, is the prime of every clan, How oft the heady war in, has it chased where thousands ran. O ready, bold, and venom full, these native warriors brave, Like adders coiling on the hill, they dart with stinging glaive; Nor wants their course the speed, the force, —nor wants their gallant stature, This of the rock, that of the flock that skim along the water, Like whistle shriek the blows they strike, as the torrent of the fell, So fierce they gush—the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... up to his middle in mud and water. He seized the prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs. Slimy things touched his torn flesh; whirring ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... fantastically about her. She went to her seat, which she had moved a short distance apart from the rest, and, sitting down, began playing listlessly with her gold chain, as was a common habit with her, coiling it and uncoiling it about her slender wrist, and braiding it in with her long, delicate fingers. Presently she looked up. Black, piercing eyes, not large,—a low forehead, as low as that of Clytie in the Townley bust,—black ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thoughts intended to be conveyed by the spotted aegis and falling chiton of Athena, eighteen hundred years before. Greek and Venetian alike, in their noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind and congealed hail in heaven—saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed softly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, ruling these, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, which ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of unhewn rock, round, as near as might be, eighteen or twenty feet across, and gay with rich variety of fern and moss and lichen. The fern was in its winter still, or coiling for the spring-tide; but moss was in abundant life, some feathering, and some gobleted, and some with fringe of red to it. Overhead there was no ceiling but the sky itself, flaked with little clouds of ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... thinking the matter worth further argument, and at that moment the Bee woke up shivering, drew the red snake from her head-dress and coiling it about her throat wrapped herself again ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten the profane;—a pillared shade, Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Upstairs, front and back, verandas again, balustraded so that little girls could not forget themselves and fall off. The pillars of these verandas at the rear of the house were connected by a network of wires, and trained up the pillars and branching over the wires were coiling twisting vines of wisteria as large as Gabriella's neck. This was the sunny southern side; and when the wisteria was blooming, Gabriella moved her establishment of playthings out behind those sunlit cascades of purple and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... Like a twisted snake; Coiling itself, preparing to raise its head, Above the long grasses of ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... forthcoming from Moore. His silence compelled her to turn to him. The cowboy's face had subtly altered; it was darker with a tinge of red under the bronze; and his lower lip was released from his teeth, even as she looked. He had his eyes intent upon the lasso he was coiling. Suddenly he faced her and the dark fire of his eyes gave ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... A serpent coiling, And with fury boiling, From Germany coming with arm'd wings spread, Shall Britain fair subdue From the Lochlin ocean blue, To where Severn rolls ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... he asked at length, amazed at his own temerity, and because he knew instinctively the answer in advance. It rose through these layers of coiling ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Trixy, coiling a rope at the saddle horn, and strapping a slicker behind the saddle. At this moment came Pete from the cottage, bringing the revolver and cartridge belt, which Haig buckled on while Farrish led Trixy out in front ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... reproachful with herself. She was deeply troubled by the thought that a darker shade to her brows might enhance the brilliance of her eyes. She hesitated before, but finally resisted, a temptation to use a touch of pencil to gain the effect. She was exceedingly querulous over the coiling of her tresses into the crown that added so regally to the dignity of her bearing. The selection of the gown was a matter for profound deliberation, and ended in a mood of dubiety. That passed, however, when at last she surveyed ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... to do the hauling and myself the waist for coiling, and it was a grand sight to see him heave in on that heavy gear on that December morning. Many men follow the sea, but not many are born to it. Hugh Glynn was. Through the gurdy he hauled the heavy lines, ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... floated down reach, crossing, and bend, without light or signal. In olden days that would have been suicide. Now the river was deserted and no steamers passed him up or down. His cabin-boat, but a rectangular shade amidst the river shadows, drifted like a leaf or chip, with no sound except when a coiling jet from the bottom suckled around the corners or rippled along ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... until we could see that it was a hundred men abreast, marching swiftly towards us, with high fur hats upon their heads and a gleam of brasswork over their brows. And behind that hundred came another hundred, and behind that another, and on and on, coiling and writhing out of the cannon-smoke like a monstrous snake, until there seemed to be no end to the mighty column. In front ran a spray of skirmishers, and behind them the drummers, and up they all came together at a kind of ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... understand why I must not, till the earth gives up her dead. You tremble, because only one more link can be added to the chain that is coiling about my neck, and that link is the testimony of the man whose name you expect to bear. Miss Gordon"—she stooped closer, and whispered slowly: "Do not upbraid your lover; be tender, cling to him; and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... if you are satisfied, I am, though you are not very good-natured about it. Next time you want to hit me over the head with the mail-bag, just remember that when I am awake I keep my eyes open," I replied, coiling up the lash of my whip. "When I told you I had stood this thing long enough, I got myself ready for anything that might come. I'm ready for anything more, and I shall be ready the next time you ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... to force him close enough to Pard so that she might flip off the loop. Pard himself caught the excitement and snorted and galloped wildly round and round the enclosure, but Jean did not mind that; what brought her lips so tightly together was the performance of the sorrel. While she was coiling her rope, he was making half-hearted buck jumps across the corral. When she swished the rope through the air to widen her loop, he reared and whirled. She jabbed him smartly with the spurs, and he kicked forward ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... their mother's tail. The Opossum is the only animal in this country the young of which are carried around in the mother's pocket, and the only one which has a prehensile tail; that is, one used for coiling around and clinging to branches, and the like. Its food is various, consisting of both animal and plant material—insects, young birds, pawpaws, persimmons, etc. In the food devoured the Opossum probably does more ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... mathematician, at once saw that this fact could be utilised as a telegraph, and Ampere, acting on his suggestion, published a feasible plan. Before the year was out, Schweigger, of Halle, multiplied the influence of the current on the needle by coiling the wire about it. Ten years later, Ritchie improved on Ampere's method, and exhibited a model at the Royal Institution, London. About the same time, Baron Pawel Schilling, a Russian nobleman, still further modified it, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... His stockings were of cotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfully doffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band or feather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was now revealed for the man's own lustrous coiling ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... said the soldier, coiling it in his hand and then throwing it towards the barque. But the coil fell short of the mark, and ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... in the forest not far from Beaulieu. It was a forest of magnolia, willow, and cypress, and of oaks, from which hung great solemn festoons of moss. A deep still bayou cut across it, and here and there were pools of stagnant water, in which coiling black ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... on the deck of the steamer were very busy. They were overhauling and coiling down what looked like a long rubber hose. An officer, a young man in a smart uniform, was directing the work. When the boat was near the steamer, the officer hailed and asked in German what boat it was. Kalliope was rowing vigorously. Before any answer could be made to the hail the ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... him better than I did." Juli had a fidgety little way of coiling the links of the chain around her wrists ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... doorway, and looked up the mountain-valley, to which he had been brought in his declining years to share his married daughter's home, the detail in that tragedy of his childhood, which pictured itself in his mind's eye more clearly than any other, was the shadow of the spreading, coiling puffs of smoke, which had first caught his childish attention, blurring the bars of sunlight on the floor of the Dame's kitchen. Perhaps it was on account of the likeness to the pattern now made by the sun, as it shone through the casement between ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... same time the serpents, not far above his face, kept continually coiling their long viscous bodies round the branches, and rapidly uncoiling them again—equally uneasy at the presence of the man ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... his task of coiling up a rope of wet cowhide, and then, producing a dirty pipe, he took a live ember from the fire and placed it on the bowl. He sucked slowly at the pipe-stem, and soon puffed out a great cloud of smoke. Sitting on ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... an old woman bending over us—a noble-faced old woman, with gray hair, and a queenly way of carrying the head? Have you any remembrance of a woman like that? Do you remember a hot, red fire, streams of water gushing over it, a ladder, a crowd, and great pipes coiling like a tangle of huge snakes along a street full of people? I do—and this no one has ever ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... this world the anchor is to-morrow); he would be able to guide his course by the sun, and would come all right. He resolved to spend the night in a tree near his fire for fear of wild beasts, and selected a fine branching cedar for his dormitory. Laying his gun securely in one of the forks, and coiling himself up as snugly as possible, where four boughs radiated from the trunk, about twenty feet from the ground, he settled himself to sleep as in an arm-chair, with the great hushing silence of the forest around him. Unusual as his circumstances ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... his pinto pony, off a little way, coiling his rope in readiness as he did so. Then, wheeling quickly, and with a wild, inspiring "Yip-yippi!" the young rancher came riding fast toward a low, broad stump the two other lads had, more or less ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... cry of man's anguish went up unto God: "Lord, take away pain— The shadow that darkens the world thou hast made, The close-coiling chain That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs On the wings that would soar— Lord, take away pain from the world thou hast made, That ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... eating bonbons. The board is drawn in— the moorings are cast off—the wheels revolve—the bell rings—the engine squeals, and away speeds the steamer down the calm waters of Lake Ontario. Little children and inquisitive young ladies are knocked down or blackened in coiling the hawser, by "hands" who, being nothing but hands, evidently cannot say, "I beg your pardon, miss." There were children, who always will go where they ought not to go, running against people, and taking hold of their clothes with ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... broad, bright, river, and putting out from the shore, went into the middle, and shortly the elephant gently dropped down and was entirely submerged, moving majestically along, with not a bit of his huge bulk visible, the end of his proboscis far ahead, writhing and coiling like a water snake every now and then, the nostrils always in sight, but having no apparent connection with the creature to which they belonged. Of course we were sitting in the water, but it was nearly as warm as the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... presently the man Fowler was at work again. Rising and stepping, with wonderful lightness for a thick-set heavy man, he spread his open blanket over the smoke, and then quickly drew it away. He repeated the operation at least twenty times and at least twenty great coiling rings of smoke arose, sailing far up into the blue sky, and then drifting away over the forest, until they were ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... who "got Three Crowns in one year, and died the next;" whose posterity have ever since,—up to the lips in trouble with their confused competitive accompaniments, Hunniades, Corvinus, George Podiebrad and others, not to speak of dragon Turks coiling ever closer round you on the frontier,—been Kings of Hungary and Bohemia; TWO of the crowns (the HERITABLE two) which were got by Kaiser Albert in that memorable year. He got them, as the reader may remember, by ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... talked, Mildred saw and felt behind the mask the thoughts, the longings of his physical infatuation for her coiling and uncoiling and reaching tremulously out toward her like unclean, horrible tentacles. She was drawn as far as could be back into her chair, and her soul was shrinking ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... never once loses sight of their bearings upon each other—as the volition moves through every part of the body of a snake at the same moment, uncoiling some of its involute rings at the very instant it is coiling others. This faculty is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain couples or groups of parts, but all the parts of a noble work must be separately ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... over with them, when a fiery serpent, as it seemed, darted across from one side of the road to the other, directly in front. It was at the height of five or six feet, and coiling itself about a dry pine it shot horizontally toward another pine, wrapped with a flaming girdle, which sent out a line of fire to meet it, like the intense blaze seen when ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... insensate sport, Heard not the stealthy footstep of the fox; The gopher on his little earthwork stood, With folded arms, unconscious of the fate That wheeled in narrowing circles overhead, And the poor mouse, on heedless nibbling bent, Marked not the silent coiling of the snake. At length we heard a deep and solemn sound— Erupted moanings of the troubled earth Trembling beneath innumerable feet. A growing uproar blending in our ears, With noise tumultuous as ocean's surge, Of bellowings, ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... companion's hold loosen as he was lifted from the ground; there were other arms flailing about him—living, coiling things that seemed to fight one with another for this prize. Abruptly, blindingly, the scene was vividly etched before him: the strange trees, the ferns, the writhing and darting serpent-arms! They were illumined in a dazzling, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... little farther aft and they are to brace round. This finished, it is broad daylight, and the men set to work to coil up preparatory to washing decks—not that this would seem very necessary. Certainly there is no hose wanted this morning, and a general kind of tidying up and coiling down ropes is ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... words, and saw the sailor approaching whom the boy called Joe; and the boy himself immediately stepped down from the anchor, where he and Marco had been standing, and began coiling a rope upon the deck. Marco walked sorrowfully away towards the stern of the vessel, where he had ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... difficulty of vivisection underground; the desperate coiling of the victim: all these things tell me that the Cetonia-grub, as regards its nervous system, must possess a structure peculiar to itself. The whole of the ganglia must be concentrated in a limited area in the first segments, almost under the neck. I see this as clearly as though ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... with her finger westward, Spake these words to Hiawatha: "Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather, Megissogwon, the Magician, Manito of Wealth and Wampum, Guarded by his fiery serpents, Guarded by the black pitch-water. You can see his fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Coiling, playing in the water; You can see the black pitch-water Stretching far away beyond them, To the purple clouds of sunset! "He it was who slew my father, By his wicked wiles and cunning, When he from the moon descended, When he came on earth to seek me. He, the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... convincingly. After a little sojourn in that land you will believe them on their own account. It is a question whether it is not better to be bitten by the little horned snake of the desert that goes sidewise and strikes without coiling, than by the tradition of ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... drooped suddenly wan and colourless, as though stricken with mortal sickness, and wept sad tears. They stood bewildered, while the pallid folds grew thicker and thicker, lit from above with a strange spectral glare, and coiling about them like the trailing garments of an army of ghosts. From the unseen abysses all round came the growl and wash of wave on rock and shingle, from the cliff above Pegane came the frightened bleat of a lamb, and an invisible gull went squawking over ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... with one ounce of butter, one pint of milk or cream, four ounces of sugar, one teaspoonful of vanilla flavoring, and a saltspoonful of salt; simmer it gently while you line a well buttered three pint plain mould with the best pieces you have reserved, coiling them regularly in the bottom and up the sides of the mould; put what you do not use among that in the sauce-pan, and as soon as it is tender fill the mould with it, and set it in a hot oven for fifteen minutes; then turn it out on a dish, dust it with powdered ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... sun, as they wrapped about them their shroud- like foliage; meadows slipped away from the heights, plunging seaward, as if wearying for the ocean; and through the whole this line of green roadway threaded its path with sinuous grace, serpentining, coiling, braiding in land and sea in one harmonious, inextricable blending of incomparable beauty. One could quite comprehend, after even a short acquaintance with this road, that two gentlemen of Paris, as difficult to please as Daubigny and Isabey, should have seen ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... more smugglers leaped down upon the lugger; the gaskets were cast off the sails, a few ropes were flung clear. I saw one or two men coiling away the lines which had lashed us to the rocks. The dapper man waved his hands and skipped ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... "Ah!" said Kotuko, coiling up the lash, "I have a little one over the lamp that will make a great many howlings. SARPOK! ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... summer day the sky over New York was unflecked by clouds, and the air hung motionless, the waves of heat undisturbed. The city was a vast oven where even the sounds of the coiling traffic in its streets seemed heavy and weary under the press of heat that poured down from above. In Washington Square, the urchins of the neighborhood splashed in the fountain, and the usual midday assortment ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... Coiling the hide ripe about his middle, which was sadly cut by its chafing, he started with an uncertain gait, for he was still very weak. A few steps brought him to that rock on which he had discovered the head of the reptile, and he paused to examine ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... lady of), metamorphosed by enchantment into a serpent. Sir Lybius (one of Arthur's knights) slew the enchantress, and the serpent, coiling about his neck, kissed him; whereupon the spell was broken, the serpent became a lovely princess, and Sir Lybius made her his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... plowing along before the wind with not a rag set except the foretopmast-staysail and jib. Amidships was a man coiling up ropes, at the wheel was another man, and pacing the top of the after-house was Captain Williams, red-bearded, red-eyed, and truculent of gesture and expression. These three bore marks of hard usage, bruises, black eyes, swollen ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... big and white and tattooed in sailor fashion; her thick, muscular neck; her red face, with its pale blue eyes and almost massive jaw; and her hair, her heavy, yellow, fragrant hair, that lay over her shoulder and breast, coiling and looping in ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... slowly, at a snail's pace. The wheels sank into the snow; the entire body of the carriage groaned with creaks; the animals were slipping, puffing, steaming, and the driver's gigantic whip was cracking continuously, flying in every direction, coiling up and unrolling itself like a thin snake, and suddenly lashing some rounded back, which then stretched out under ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... undulations (by induction) in the current which is flowing through the wires wound round the soft iron centre of the magnet. The wires of the coil are connected with the lines that go to the receiving telephone, so that this undulating current, coiling round the core of the magnet in the receiver, attracts and repels the iron of the diaphragm in it, and it vibrates just as the transmitter diaphragm did when spoken into; the undulating current is translated ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... wanted to for once; for it was always there, only growing deeper and wickeder when she spoke or laughed. He could not see her eyes, for they were turned away, but he knew quite well the color; he had settled that point when he looked up from coiling his rope the day she came. They were big, baffling, blue-brown eyes, the like of which he had never seen before in his life—and he had thought he had seen every color and every shade under the sun. Thinking of them and their wonderful ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... countess' eldest daughter (who was four years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... eight tender nestlings, over which the mother bird spread her wings. Pitifully did the little ones cheep as the snake swallowed them all, and pitifully cried the mother as she fluttered over her nestlings. But of her, too, did the snake lay hold, coiling himself round her and crushing her life out. Then did the god who sent this sign show us that a sign from the gods in truth it was, for he turned the snake into stone. And Chalcas, our soothsayer, told us then the meaning of the sign. 'Nine years,' said he—for nine birds did the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... talked of you in his sleep? made you most valuable presents which a true woman would have refused? and in return, haven't you bestowed upon him your daguerreotype, together with a lock of your hair, on which you no doubt pride yourself, but which to me and my son seem like so many coiling serpents?" ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... deck I found nothing whatever mysterious in the management of the steamer. The captain met me with a bow in the gangway; seamen were coiling wet ropes at different points, as they always are; the mate was promenading the bridge, and taking the rainy weather as it came, with his oil-cloth coat and hat on. The wheel of the steamer ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... well for me and for old Bridget there? We have a hundred acres of good land, And sit beside each other at the fire, The wise priest of our parish to our right, And you and our dear son to left of us. To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... practiced long ago in China and in Borneo, and by which our own engineers have subdued vast districts of farthest India, were but in part also practiced here—here, in the oldest and proudest center of European arts, where Leonardo da Vinci—master among masters—first discerned the laws of the coiling clouds and wandering streams, so that to this day his engineering remains unbettered by modern science; and yet in this center of all human achievements of genius no thought has been taken to receive with ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... came forth a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand the sacrificial knife. He was followed by an apparition still more strange and shocking: Madam Mendizabal, naked also, and carrying in both hands and raised to the level of her face, an open basket of wicker. It was filled with coiling snakes; and these, as she stood there with the uplifted basket, shot through the osier grating and curled about her arms. At the sight of this, the fervour of the crowd seemed to swell suddenly higher; and the chant ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... into double quick pas-de-charge, or unmilitary running; to get the start; to station themselves on the outer staircase, and stand there with what of death-defiance and sharp steel they have; Salm truculently coiling itself up, rank after rank, opposite them, in such humour as we can fancy, which happily has not yet mounted to the murder-pitch. There will Bouille stand, certain at least of one man's purpose; in grim calmness, awaiting the issue. What the intrepidest of men ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Keskarrah followed a different plan; he stripped himself to the skin, and having toasted his body for a short time over the embers of the fire, he crept under his deer-skin and rags, previously spread out as smoothly as possible, and coiling himself up in a circular form, fell asleep instantly. This custom of undressing to the skin even when lying in the open air is common to all the Indian tribes. The thermometer at sunset stood ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... Sarah Williams presented a lively scene as Kate stood upon the little quarter-deck and gazed forward. The sailors were walking about and sitting about, smoking, talking, or coiling things away. There were people from the shore with baskets containing fruit and other wares for sale, and all stirring and new and very interesting to Miss Kate as she stood, with her ribbons flying in the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... was roused up the next morning to assist in getting the ship under weigh. We had been under weigh two or three hours, and were clearing the land fast, when the gentleman passenger came on neck; I was then coiling down a rope on the quarter-deck, and as he passed by me, I looked at him, and I recognised him immediately as your father. Years had passed—from a stripling he had grown a man, but his face was not to be mistaken. There he was, apparently a gentlemen ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... The yacht was backing out, and the bishop, coiling a rope in her bows, straightened up to wave farewell. Automatically Clark waved back, then, with the telegram crumpled in his palm, turned and walked slowly toward his office. Something the bishop had said began to sing in his brain. Could the best and the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... last within the broad shadow of the sanctuary, while far above him rose the tall spire, with the sunbeams coiling like a heaven-halo around it, pointing to the golden battlements of the far-off city, within whose blessed precincts nothing "which defileth shall ever enter." The massive church doors swung slowly open as one and another entered, and ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... quietly up to her, coiling the slack of the rope as he advanced. Without bothering to tighten the reins, but watching closely the look in the maverick's big brown eyes and the nervous twitching of her ears, he laid one hand ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... string of pennies looked like a great shiny bronze snake coiling back in the road for ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... roared, with a voice like that of the north wind. "Hand me that life preserver!"—turning to the mate who stood near him. The mate obeyed, and coiling the long rope ready for a throw the captain waited, while the steamer drew nearer to the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... a growth Of intertwisted fibres serpentine, Up coiling and inveterately convolved, Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks That threaten ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... you sacrifice your own life.' Sister Maddelena accepted the terms joyfully, wrote a last farewell to Michele, fastened the note to the rope, and with her own hands cut the rope and saw it fall coiling down to the valley ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... them. Once in the chair, she waggled her head dolorously, and moaned out against upstart vulgarians who, without a name or a shilling, insinuated themselves like vipers into households of honor, and, coiling themselves upon the very hearthstones, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the river had been frozen over for a month, even above the bridge and the mills, where the current was swiftest. Long lines of sawdust, which had been coiling and whirling in the eddies, or stretching across the black seething water, were caught in the ice, or blown about with the powdered snow ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... long ten minutes the pedestal of the statue was seen to become slightly blurred, as though an intervening mist were rising from the ground. This slowly developed into a visible cloud, coiling hither and thither, and constantly changing shape. The professor half rose, and held his glasses with one hand further forward on the bridge ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... he approached the table on which the medicines stood, looked at the watch, took up one of the phials and a cup, measured the draught, drop by drop, then he turned and looked round him stealthily, and then he drew from his breast a pale blue, coiling serpent, which he threw into the cup, and held it to the patient's lips, who drank, and instantly felt a numbness creep over his frame which ended in death. Edward fancied that he was dead; he saw the coffin brought, but the terror lest he should be buried alive, made ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... it disappeared at the edge of the flat, and then after coiling up the long lash of his bullock-whip in the dust until it looked like a sleeping snake, he prodded the small end of the long pine handle into the middle of the coil, as though driving home a point, and said in a tone ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... least did its work, and Mr. Pawket with unconcealed feelings of wonder and concern drew forth from the box the letter. It was a large, rich-looking letter. The envelope was thin and crackly, embossed with purple designs of twisted reptiles coiling around a woman's face, and in one corner were small purple letters forming the words "Hotel Medusa." The handwriting on the envelope was bold and black, and the dark seal bore impress of a small winged form that Mr. Pawket took to be a honey-bee. He regarded the letter suspiciously, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... horses, and before and behind her tore the savage, bloodthirsty mob with torches and pitchforks. There she stood in the midst of them with dishevelled, storm-tossed tresses like the Genius of War and Devastation rapt along on frantic steeds, with coiling snakes for hair, a terrible escort of evil beasts and semi-bestial men, and ruin and ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... if the eternal recurrence be truth, then must the great drama of the Redemption be repeated. Then will our foes be convinced of Christianity and its reality. But shall we be conscious in that far-off time of our anterior existence? Ah! hideous, coiling doubt. What a demon is this Nietzsche to set whirring in the brains of poor, suffering humanity such torturing questions! Better, far better for the world to live and not to think. Thought is a disease, a morbid secretion of the brain-cells. Ah! materialist that I am, I can no longer think without ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the rope he tied the middle part of it round himself, and, coiling the shorter end, he sent it, as if it had been a quoit, skimming over the ice towards the school-master. As it unwound itself it slid along, and after a struggle Mr. Wood grasped it. I fancy he fastened it round the lad's body; and got his own hands freer to break the ice before ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the workers as her best possession, and found among them a field for study in human nature and, in their work, matter for poetry and art. For were not all three Fates to be seen at their eternal business here? Clotho attended the Spread Board; the can-minders coiling away the sliver, stood for Lachesis; while in the spinners, who cut the thread when the bobbin was full, Estelle found Atropos, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts |
