"Crawling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stone I was seated upon; but every one assured us they were harmless. Animal life is so infinitely abundant, and in forms so various, and so novel to European eyes, that it is absolutely necessary to divest oneself of all the petty terrors which the crawling, creeping, hopping, and buzzing tribes can inspire, before taking an American summer ramble. It is, I conceive, quite impossible for any description to convey an idea of the sounds which assail the ears from the time the short ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... saw very little, except of the lizards. These are sure to attract the attention of the newcomer from Northern Europe, by reason of their strange appearance, great numbers, and variety. The species which are seen crawling over the walls of buildings in the city are different from those found in the forest or in the interior of houses. They are unpleasant-looking animals, with colours assimilated to those of the dilapidated stone ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Hole in the Wall. It is practically impregnable. It is entered by a narrow passage which one man could hold against an army. It can be approached at night by riding down the valley, dismounting, and crawling over the mountain until you are above the Hole in the Wall, when every man can be wiped out by ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... swinging round, for the river was running the wrong way. At last I ran right up on that island, and then I got out, for my foot had gone to sleep. You see I hadn't dared to move, the canoe wabbled so. And then I went to look at some critters that were crawling around in the water,—they looked like tennis-racquets, only their tails weren't ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... through it he heard the howls of rage that announced the discovery of the silent one lying by the little stream, and knew that a desire for vengeance would add swiftness to the feet of his pursuers. His own seemed weighted with lead, and he felt that he was crawling; but though he could not realize it he was still running splendidly, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... proceeded. At least, he made them understand something of the grim resolution which had animated Wyllard. He pictured, in terse seaman's words, the little schooner plunging to windward over long phalanxes of icy seas, or crawling white with snow through the blinding fog. His companions saw the big combers tumbling ready to break short upon the dipping bows out of the dark, and half-frozen men struggling for dear life with folds of madly thrashing sail. The pictures were, however, necessarily somewhat blurred and hazy, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... He lay for some minutes listening. A threatening silence, like the hush before a storm, permeated the wilderness. He peered out from his covert; but, owing to its location in a little hollow, he could not see far. Crawling to the nearest tree he rose to ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the others in that horrible vault; nothing can save me," and again the present slipped away from me and my mind became again clear as glass; the present is only subconscious; were it not so we could not live. I have said all this before; again I seemed to myself like a fly crawling up a pane of glass, falling back, buzzing, and crawling again. Every expedient that I explored proved illusory, every one led to the same conclusion that the dead are powerless. "The living do with us what they like," I muttered, and I thought of all my Catholic relations, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... he declared. "Haven't had any exercise for this big body of mine all day. Sitting in that car has made me as cramped as a bear just crawling out of his den in ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... an hour they returned. Eight French sentries had been surprised and killed, the Portuguese crawling up to them until near enough to spring upon and stab them without the slightest alarm being given. The company now moved silently forward again until within a hundred yards of the village, when they halted until the church clock struck ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... tragedies of war enacted there. A wagon, or a bunch of horses, or a stray man, or a couple of men, would get there just in time for a shell. One would see the absolute knock-out, and the obviously lightly wounded crawling off on hands and knees; or worse yet, at night, one would hear the tragedy—"that horse scream"—or the man's moan. All our own wagons had to come there (one every half hour in smart action), be emptied, and the ammunition carried over by hand. Do you wonder ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... enough that man should want to travel on the road he knows and likes best. The philosopher uses his logic and analysis and synthesis. The introspectionist wants to get at the riddle of the universe by crawling into the innermost depth of his own self-scrutiny, even at the risk—to use a homely phrase—of drawing the hole in after him and losing all connection with the objective world. The physicist follows the reverse ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... but kept crawling all around, looking for the rabbits. He was careful to keep away from the muskrat, for, in spite of her soft name, Nurse Jane Fuzzy-Wuzzy had very ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... and Quitters began crawling out of Side Doors, but most of the Loyal Sons of Old Bohunkus propped themselves up ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... taciturn that his absence was felt as a relief. When on duty with the corps, however, he was always in good spirits. He seemed to delight in action and was ever ready to volunteer for any dangerous work, such as crawling up close to the German outposts to ascertain their precise positions. He had so many narrow escapes that his comrades declared that he held a ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... found in their winter quarters. The application of bands of burlap or "tanglefoot," or of other substances often seen on the trunks of elm trees is useless, since these bands only prevent the larvae from crawling down from the leaves to the base and serve to prevent nothing from crawling up. Scraping the trunks of elm trees is ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... the laughing response. "I've got all I can carry. Not that I'm going to let you beat me, but I'm always a stroke or two off in my play when the sun's too bright, as it is now. However, I'm not crawling." ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... the island, they knew not the use of flesh for food, but they had abundance of fish, and they ate besides whatever creeping or crawling thing they happened to find. These with the yucca from which they made their casabe or bread, maize, yams, and other edible ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... the wild, stormy dawn broke, however, they saw her, apparently in an evil case, labouring away upon their starboard bow, and by noon came to within a furlong of her, so that they could see the sailors crawling about on her high poop and stern. Yes, and they saw more than this, for presently two women ran from some cabin waving a white cloth to them; then were hustled back, whereby they learned that Margaret and Betty still ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... so good," grunted the old man, crawling out on hands and knees, the scent-bottle between ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... his astonishment and dismay he found this "scientist," whom he had looked up to, entirely ignorant of the meaning of the terms he employed. They were just arbitrary terms to him. The little hopping and crawling creatures might as well have been numbered, or called x, y, z, for any significance their formidable nomenclature held for him. Yet this man had been keenly sarcastic about the Noachian deluge and had jeered from the height of his superiority at hoary records which he knew only at second-hand ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... character is not written impartially, but by one who has had occasion to know some of the baser parts of it, and regards him accordingly with shuddering abhorrence, and just so much fear as he deserves. In him is to be dreaded the crawling of the centipede, not the spring of the tiger—the venom of the reptile, not the strength of the animal—the rancour of the miscreant, not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... stretching like a thread, united one bank to the other. Three miles below was a suspension-bridge, across which a train was crawling from the ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... announced, in a high tone, the crust of his fine manners giving to the pressure of the volcano within. "I can't stand the connection, if you can. Carey was bad enough, but he had some claim beside his coat to rank as a gentleman. This crawling ass, who would lick your boots for sixpence, to have him patting me on the back and calling himself my brother—Good God! it's ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... were as noisy and importunate as in the worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms and liveries of every charitably disposed grandee in the neighbourhood, and as soon as his lordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in crowds to persecute him. These disorders lasted, in spite of many accidents, and of some legal proceedings, till, in the reign of George the Second, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was knocked down and nearly killed in the middle of the Square. Then at length palisades were set up, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and just as it was growing dark he set her down at Madam Conway's gate, where, half fearfully, the bewildered woman gazed around. The windows of Margaret's room were open, a figure moved before them; Margaret might be there; and entering the hall door unobserved, she began to ascend the stairs, crawling upon her hands and knees, and pausing several ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... way through it. Whither it led, he had no idea, but he obeyed Sam's injunction to follow it, though he did so with great difficulty, as in many places sticks were in the way, which it required his utmost strength to remove. The passage through which he was crawling so painfully, was one which Sam and his companions had made by dint of great labor, during their residence in the tree root cavern a year before. It led from the main alley way to their post of observation on top ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... births in the cabin were completely occupied by females). As we were going down the ladder, the appearance of so many recumbent persons, faintly distinguishable by the light of a solitary taper, reminded us of a floating catacomb; here, crawling under a cot which contained two very corpulent priests, upon a spare cable, wrapt up in our own great coats, we resigned ourselves ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... distribute them, two Men to a hut. Possibly two or three of the Malays may come down to the village before morning, either to fetch valuables they may have left behind, or to see whether we are still here. They may come tonight, or they may come some time tomorrow, crawling through the plantations behind the houses. At any rate, I will wait here a day or two ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... curious animal laid under one of the stalls. The children's attention was drawn to it. "Do see, mother, what is that!" "It is a Turtle," replied their mother. So they went and looked at it near by. It laid on its back to prevent its crawling away. The fisherman was kind enough to let the young visiters look at it till they were tired—and then away they went to another part of the market. But we will first show them a picture of a Turtle: see there he ...
— Susan and Edward - or, A Visit to Fulton Market • Anonymous
... made its edge sweep in towards him; and once a ship's light flashed out of it for half a second. He swung along steadily, and after a time found himself traversing a great, dusky stretch of land. He had the feeling of crawling over it like an insect, so vast was his sense of this flat earth; he seemed just a bit of it moving on it and thinking about it, as if it had attained through him to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... will-o'-the-wisps in every direction, told of the search going forward, and she determined to stay in the summer-house and wait for what news might come. It was very obscure there, and she knew not what loathly insects might be crawling on the seats and table, but, at any rate, it was shelter from the rain, which now again ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... that will at all convey the feelings of a high-caste vegetarian at the very idea of drinking after a low-caste carrion-eater. If from the lowest, filthiest, and most poisonous dens in London, you were to take a man, reeking with beer and tobacco, and with his clothes crawling with vermin, and presenting, in short, every appearance of foulness, dirt, and disease; if you were to take that man and place him between two ladies at the administration of the Holy Communion, I do not say that ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... Beausejour, carrying a flag, and followed by several men in uniform, wading through the sea of grass that stretched beyond the Missaguash. When the tide was out, this river was but an ugly trench of reddish mud gashed across the face of the marsh, with a thread of half-fluid slime lazily crawling along the bottom; but at high tide it was filled to the brim with an opaque torrent that would have overflowed, but for the dikes thrown up to confine it. Behind the dike on the farther bank stood the seeming officer, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of all but the exhilaration of rushing wind, of back-whirling hedgerows and trees, on and on until before us was a hill up which a chaise was crawling. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... process. To evolve such an animal as a greyhound from its remote ancestors, according to Mr. Darwin, needs immense tracts of time; and if the evolution of some feeble animal crawling on the surface of this planet is slow, shall the stately evolution of the planetary orbs themselves be hurried? It may be that we are able to trace the history of the solar system for some thousand million years or so; but for how much longer time must it not have a history—a history, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... around a sacrifice, in the uncertain moonlight. He looked down again, to see after his faithful Skovmark. Fear had likewise most wondrously changed him. On the ground in the middle of the road were lying dead men's bones, and hideous lizards were crawling about; and, in defiance of the wintry season, poisonous mushrooms were growing up ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... bucket gathering evidence against the defenseless mosquito for the sanitary department to gloat over—was found not to fit the model even in hue. Moreover, "mosquito men" are not accustomed to carry their devotion to duty to the point of crawling under trunks ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of bitterness was now full to overflowing. Crawling out of the stream, he sank down on the bank in a species of lethargic torpor, from which he awakened next morning in a raging fever. Delirium soon rendered him insensible to his sufferings. The sun rose like a ball of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... of honour conferred on him were exactly the same as those conferred on any one of their own superior chieftains. The grotesque description given by some of the missionary writers of the whole population crawling after him on hands and knees as a mark of adoration is utterly untrue, for Mr. King, who was ashore almost the whole time of the ship's stay, and was continually with Cook, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... these interviews with his skin crawling with modest apprehension. His was a retiring nature, and the thought of Zulus sprinting down the Strand shouting "Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy it! Buy it!" with reference to ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... carelessly about, and others again coming and going in haste, with faces full of care and calculation. I looked about for the friend of my boy-hood the capiji, and almost began to fear that he too had closed his door, when I perceived his well-known figure crawling quietly along with his earthen water-pipe, seeking his bit of charcoal ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... germ, Why are you joyful? What do you sing? Have you no fear of that crawling thing, Him that has so many legs? ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling out of the windows, and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods; and living, or rather not dying till their time should come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing town, melted into one, would hardly ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... monsters of selfishness. They are the logical outcome of our predatory social system. They are like the insects which we are told will some day triumph over other forms of life. At least, I think of them as such when I encounter them rushing thither and yon over the face of the earth, crawling up mountains and flying through the air, their shiny wing-cases flashing in the sun and the sound of their progress making a buzz in the newspapers. Well! as I said, it was curious. Curious I should have found my girl in such surroundings, growing there ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... o'clock, without further incident than a report from Abrams that the spies of the enemy got off the train at every station and watched for our landing. Yet when we stood on the platform of the bare little station at Livermore and saw the yellow cars crawling away on their eastward journey, we looked in vain for the men ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... rise from the bed of Straw, and exercise my limbs in the narrow limits, to which the length of my chain permitted me to move. Though exhausted, faint, and weary, I trembled to profit by the approach of Sleep: My slumbers were constantly interrupted by some obnoxious Insect crawling ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... money, inexperienced and presumptuous; ignorant, jealous, or ill-disposed ministers; subalterns lavish of their blood on the battle-field and crawling at court before the distributors of favors—such are the instruments we employed. The small number of those who had not approved of the treaty of Versailles declared loudly against it; after the campaign ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to risk crawling out here, Jed," I said finally, "for I shall surely stick fast if I go up another ten feet. Do you suppose you can squeeze through ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... his awkward, crawling progress up the ladder into the conning tower just above, Keith helping from behind. When they stood before the exit port on the lee side, Wells shot back its bolts and the door swung open, revealing the black emptiness of the water chamber. The commander ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... a brute!" he said. "I'm glad of it! Brutal things need to be said to clear the air. There's been too much sickly nonsense. You despise men, don't you? You like to see them crawling? You need a lesson! You shall be mine, and mine only and you ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... "Your arrogance Awakes my patience from its trance; Recalls to mind your humble birth, Born from the lowliest thing on earth. Nine times has Phoebus, with the hours, Awakened to new life, new flowers, Since you were a vile crawling thing! Though now endowed with painted wing, You then were vilest of the vile— I was a snail, but housed the while; Was born a snail, and snail shall die; And thou, though now a butterfly, Will leave behind a baneful ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... me yet!" he muttered, as he looked about him; and, crawling on hands and knees, crept under the trunk of a fallen tree half a dozen yards away, where he lay down ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... to discover, but they went by in companies of small flies, with now and then a great one that rustled past on gauzy wings. And the bees were coming and going from their hive in the rocks, incited by the fragrance of the flowers, and Joseph watched them crawling over the anemones and leaving them hastily to bury their blunt noses in the pistils of the white squills that abounded everywhere in the corners, in the inlets and bays and crevices of the rocks. Butterflies, especially the white, pursued ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... worse to overcome than lions. They bite unseen, and escape by crawling. This Carrac is brave in words, but too craven to face fighting in the field. Our soldiers rarely reach these ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... action, but Mrs. Woffington's delivery has the compass and variety of nature, and her movements are free from the stale uniformity that distinguishes artifice from art. The others seem to me to have but two dreams of grace, a sort of crawling on stilts is their motion, and an angular stiffness their repose." He then cited the most famous statues of antiquity, and quoted situations in plays where, by her fine dramatic instinct, Mrs. Woffington, he said, threw her ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... without the formality of an enlistment. The captain of the ship, suspecting that some joke had been practised, or some mischief perpetrated, from the noise below, met the officer at the head of the gangway, and seeing the vermin crawling up his shoulders, and aiming at his head, with the instinct peculiar to them, exclaimed, 'Hoot mon! what's the maitter wi' your back!' * * * By this time many of them in their wanderings, had travelled from the rear to the front, and showed ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... crawling. Ah! Sarah, you are not his daughter. There, follow me! I cannot go so slow." And she set ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the party as they made their way across to the end of the field, where the tall stalks of maize were still standing, though the corn had been gathered weeks before. As soon as they reached the shelter they separated, each crawling through the maize until they arrived within fifty yards of the house. There were, as the sheriff had said, many stumps still standing, and each ensconced himself behind one of those, and began to reply to the fire that the defenders had kept up whenever ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... spent moments of the old year's midnight, were crawling into eternity, the fierce December wind was sighing out its wearied farewell over the frozen streets; the thick white frosts were gathering on the window panes, in crystal shrubs and icy forests; December was howling, in a spectral voice, the ominous cry of the "Banshee," in anticipation ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... a cautious pause, the crawling body drew steadily nearer. Though the intense darkness prevented him from seeing anything, Buck felt at last that he had correctly gaged the position of the unknown plotter. Trying to continue that easy, steady breathing, which had been ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... occasion, when sitting in a similar cabin, my gentle hostess, an officer's wife, whom I had known a few years before as a beauty in society, remarked that she had two large rattlesnakes in her ceiling, and that if we would be silent we might hear them crawling about. They could not be taken out without ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... me try the gittern," she said. "See, now will I charm this snaily from its cell with the air that Rene taught me," and together the two heads bent over one of the vicious little "desert snails of Egypt," which young Isabelle of Tyre had found crawling along ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... weather and strong wind from the south-southwest. Nordahl, who is cook to-day, had to haul up some salt meat which, rolled in a sack, had been steeping for two days in the sea. As soon as he got hold of it he called out, horrified, that it was crawling with animals. He let go the sack and jumped away from it, the animals scattering round in every direction. They proved to be sandhoppers, or Amphipoda, which had eaten their way into the meat. There were pints of them, both inside and outside of the sack. A pleasant discovery; there will ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the wood, when the Great Spirit whispered, 'Take care; a snake is crawling through the grass; he is called Hay-uta; he will strike his fangs through the moccasin of Deerfoot, unless he crushes him with his heel; Hay-uta was not brave, because he hid behind a tree, and he pointed his gun through the bushes, meaning to shoot ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... another that of the two animals nearest to them, perceived that the white bull farthest from him, but nearest to Humphrey, threw its head in the air, pawed with his foot, and then advanced with a roar to where Humphrey was on the ground, still crawling towards the tree, having passed the open spot, and being now not many yards from the tree. Perceiving the danger that his brother was in, and that, moreover, Humphrey himself was not aware of it, he hardly knew how to act. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... that simple, direct movement, like the movement of a point, forward and from here to there, one's thoughts advance like an army, sometimes extended over an enormous front, sometimes in echelon, sometimes bunched in a column throwing out skirmishing clouds of emotion, some flying and soaring, some crawling, some stopping and dying.... In this matter of Labor, for example, I have thought so much, thought over the ground again and again, come into it from this way and from that way, that for the life of me I find it impossible to state at all ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... gazed at the same knothole, but a hot flush was crawling up from under his collar. He took off his plug hat and scuffed his wrist ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the crawling tape in fascinated horror—Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-eight. It had spelled out for him another letter of that hideous word, Ruin. All the moisture of his body seemed to be on the outside; inside, he was dry and hot as a desert. If the price went no higher, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... nearly well, and gave me no trouble. It was a dark, cloudy night, and the Indians, grown careless in their fancied security, had relaxed their watchfulness. After they had all thrown themselves on the ground and the quiet of the camp proclaimed them all asleep I got up and crawling on my hands and knees, using the greatest caution for fear of making a noise, I crawled about 250 yards to where the horses were picketed, and going to the Indian pony I had already picked out I slipped the skin ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... keeps on his round, Creeping and crawling about on the ground; And mother still hears, as she goes on her way, "Come, gee up, my pony—don't wait here ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... go on here longer," she sobbed. "I'm sick, I'm really sick. I've been barely crawling about for the last two days. And she knew it and left ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... well-to-do stockbroker crawling about on his stomach in the underbrush, with his spectacles shining like gig-lamps. What is he doing? He is after a cariboo that isn't there. He is "stalking" it. With his stomach. Of course, away down in his heart he knows that the cariboo isn't there and never was; but that man read my pamphlet ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... became stupefied, when, in the silence of the night, his keepers were sunk in profound slumber, he, fully awake from dread of the misfortune impending over him, left his bed with noiseless steps, and crawling on his hands and feet, conveyed himself to a distance, and then, having found a rope which chance provided for the end of his life, he fastened it to a nail which was fixed in the wall, and hanging himself, escaped the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... kill a snake, it is no use hitting and trying to crush his head. The bones of the head are composed of the densest material, affording effectual protection to the brain underneath: a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render it very liable to be fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire length of the body; this being wounded, the animal is disabled or killed instanter. Strike therefore his tail, and not his head; for at his tail ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... without insect aid—a theory which closer study of its organs goes far to disprove—or that the carrion-scent, so repellent to us, is in itself an attraction to certain insects needful for cross-pollination. Which are they? Beetles have been observed crawling over the flower, but without effecting any methodical result. One inclines to accept Mr. Clarence M. Weed's theory of special adaptation to the common green flesh-flies (Lucilia carnicina), which would naturally be attracted to a flower ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers! Yet all this ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Britling seemed to gather confidence. The pace quickened. But whenever other traffic or any indication of a side way appeared discretion returned. Mr. Britling stalked his sign posts, crawling towards them on the belly of the lowest gear; he drove all the morning like a man who is flushing ambuscades. And yet accident overtook him. For God demands more from us than ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... He could scarcely believe it! Perhaps it was only a dream, and he'd wake up among the unhuman glittering cylinders of Saturn, shuddering and crawling with the iciness of their ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... office and departed in the direction of the Deputy Commissioners house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang through his nose, turning his head ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... Neither set has the least glimmer of the responsibility of the office, nor ever thinks that God has any say in choosing the king. Naked, undisguised selfishness animates both; only, as becomes their several ages, the one set recommends crawling and the other bluster. Think of Saul hiding among the staff, David going back to his sheep after he was anointed, Solomon praying for wisdom to guide this people, and measure the depth of descent to this ignoble scramble for the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... their cold bath, the worms, crawling along the ground behind the still-house, arrived at the back of another building, called the test-room; and here each one, making a sharp turn to enable him to enter, was pierced at the angle thus formed, and a vertical pipe some ten feet in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... hands straining upon the warp, the schooner was floated off, and under touch of the lightest airs drew almost imperceptibly away from the land. They were quite an hour crawling out to the heads of the bay. But here the breeze was freshening. Moran took the wheel; the flying-jib and staysail were set; the wake began to whiten under the schooner's stern, the forefoot sang; the Pacific opened out more and more; and by 12:30 ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... dead (and afterwards the ancient people, according as the poets hold for sure, were restored by seed of ants), than it was to see the spirits languishing in different heaps through that dark valley. This one over the belly, and that over the shoulders of another was lying, and this one, crawling, was shifting himself along the dismal path. Step by step we went without speech, looking at and listening to the sick, who could not lift ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... ye men, a full thousand years of age today, but I have never seen a dead creature, male or female or of ambiguous sex, revive after death. Some die in the womb; some die soon after birth; some die (in infancy) while crawling (on all fours); some die in youth; and some in old age. The fortunes of all creatures, including even beasts and birds, are unstable. The periods of life of all mobile and immobile creatures are fixed beforehand. Bereaved of spouses and dear ones ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... did, did you? Well, you couldn't prove it, anyhow. But what do you think of yourself spreading reports about me like that, and then crawling to me for help the moment you are in trouble? What sort of a ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... address, I knew to hit each courtier's passion, And flattered every vice in fashion. 30 But Jove, who hates the liar's ways, At once cut short my prosperous days; And, sentenced to retain my nature, Transformed me to this crawling creature. Doomed to a life obscure and mean, I wander in the sylvan scene. For Jove the heart alone regards; He punishes what man rewards. How different is thy case and mine! With men at least you sup and dine; 40 While I, condemned to thinnest fare, Like those ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the dismounted Indians now tried to work round to the flanks, crawling like snakes through the grass and taking shelter behind bush and boulder. But the sharp-eyed frontiersmen quickly detected them, and ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... sight on the trees beyond, but made no demonstrations, although they saw the young one crawling and swinging on ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Omdurman. Pending the answer, we waited; and looking back northwards, across the front of the zeriba, where the first attack had been stopped, perceived a greyish-white smudge, perhaps a mile long. The glass disclosed details—hundreds of tiny white figures heaped or scattered; dozens hopping, crawling, staggering away; a few horses standing stolidly among the corpses; a few unwounded men dragging off their comrades. The skirmishers among the rocks of Surgham soon began to fire at the regiment, and we sheltered among the mounds of sand, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... and mono-railways and feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless, low agglomerations beside it. Its port reached to its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen from above it was alive with crawling trains and cars, and at a thousand points it was already breaking into quivering light. New York was altogether at its best that ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... approached the cavern step by step, he approached also the Englishman's box. In spite of himself, the lion-tamer, fascinated by terror, could not take his eyes from the large green eyes of this man, and it seemed as if every one of the abrupt movements which he made in crawling along, was produced by a species of magnetic attraction, caused by the fixed gaze of the fatal wagerer. Therefore, the nearer Morok approached, the more ghastly and livid he became. At sight of this pantomime, which was no longer acting, but the real expression ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... sea like the fabled polyp the Kraken, had cast her tentacles over Brittany, Normandy, l'Ile de France, part of Picardy, the entire North, the Interior as far as Orleans, and crawling forward left in her wake towns ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... "behavior" arise before those which political and religious restraints cause is yielded by the fact that, besides preceding social evolution, they precede human evolution: they are traceable among the higher animals. The dog afraid of being beaten comes crawling up to his master clearly manifesting the desire to show submission. Nor is it solely to human beings that dogs use such propitiatory actions. They do the like one to another. All have occasionally seen how, on the approach of some formidable ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of them faced the open door; neither one of them saw the crawling, slinking figure, the pale, fear-stricken face, and the staring eyes which appeared in the doorway, clung there for a moment and then vanished again as noiselessly as they had come. Neither of them, had they seen, could have imagined the fearful ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... closely together and over each other; but even if there were a small space among them which one might creep through, it would be impossible, on account of all the slimy toads and snakes that are always crawling and forcing themselves through. Into this place little Inger sank. All this nauseous mess was so ice-cold that she shivered in every limb. Yes, she became stiffer and stiffer. The bread stuck fast to her, and it drew her as an amber bead draws a ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... stalk 'em this time," he whispered to the men; "you keep on crawling till I say 'Go!' Then drop it on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... their narrowness but because of their length. Remember that for each load of honey brought the worker is obliged to move backwards twice. She enters, head first, to begin by disgorging the honey-syrup from her crop. Unable to turn in a passage which she blocks entirely, she goes out backwards, crawling rather than walking, a laborious performance on the polished surface of the glass and a performance which, with any other surface, would still be very awkward, as the wings are bound to rub against the wall with their free end and ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... any further mischance, and succeeded in crawling in at the window without making any sound loud enough to wake ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... a tone of severe reproof. "Oh, Cousin Caroline, aren't you ashamed to call my grandma an ant! a little ugly black thing, crawling on the ground. She isn't an ant, now! ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... wounded men there, but two of them, badly hurt, were so terrified at the bombardment that they had crawled away in the night. The priest thought that they were probably dead. Think of the poor wounded wretches, unable to stand, crawling away in the darkness to find some spot where they could die in peace. Two remained, and these we took with us on the car. The priest and the two nuns, the sole occupants of the monastery, absolutely refused to leave. They wished to protect the monastery from sacrilege, and in that cause they ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... bound to attract attention. Still unable to comprehend the reason of the whole affair, De Launay was crawling between legs and making a more or less undamaged progress to the door, while his enemies battered one another. He had almost reached it, and was rising to his feet, when a new element was injected into the riot. A couple of uniformed policemen threw ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... trying to do so, and soon he was crawling up the edge of the cliff. As the rocks were slippery from the rain, it was by no means an easy or sure task. But he advanced with care, and soon joined Fred and Hans ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... But in transactions of this kind you are dealing with what is not your own. A gentleman should shrink from the possibility of having to come on others, even on his own father, for the fulfillment of his obligations, as he would from a lie. I would sooner see a son of mine in his grave than crawling on through life a slave to wants and habits which he must gratify ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... has taught me . . . it has whispered to my heart Things all you stay-at-homes will never know. The white man and the savage are but three short days apart, Three days of cursing, crawling, doubt and woe. Then it's down to chewing muclucs, to the water you can EAT, To fish you bolt with nose held in your hand. When you get right down to cases, it's King's Grub that rules the races, And the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... sunshine-day, The house and the yard couldn't hold me; A meadow I found, on my back I lay, And sang what my spirit told me; Then snakes came crawling, a fathom long, To bask in the sun,—I fled ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... weak though it was, grew quite angry in tone, and it seemed to Leo as if it were accompanied by the stamp of a foot; but he saw nothing, not so much as a spider crawling over ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... painfully, tearing itself away with regret from that superb spectacle for which Paris had been waiting four days, rolled back up the avenue, into Rue Montaigne, and down Boulevard Malesherbes, at an unwilling, crawling trot, to the Madeleine. There the crowd was greater, more compact. In the heavy mist, the brightly lighted windows of the church, the muffled strains of the funeral chants behind the black hangings, which were in such profusion ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... get his breakfast. His light shirt was blood-stained in the back,—seemed to be soaked. "What's the matter with your shirt, it's soaked with blood?" some one asked. "Then that durned Daisy Belle has been crawling in with me, that's all," he said. "Blame his bleeding snoot. I'll punch it and give it something to ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... July, I was up at a large spy-glass mounted on a tripod, which Colonel Poe, United States Engineers, had at his bivouac close by our camp. I directed the glass on Kenesaw, and saw some of our pickets crawling up the hill cautiously; soon they stood upon the very top, and I could plainly see their movements as they ran along the crest just abandoned by the enemy. In a minute I roused my staff, and started them off with orders in every direction for a pursuit ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... embankments, and its wide streets and its finely placed statues. But of the smoke which nullifies and destroys all these things, not a word! Yet, as he was speaking, outside the Mansion House the people of London were almost feeling their way about, scarce knowing where they were, timidly crawling across motor-infested roads with their hearts in their mouths, all the time permanently ingraining their lungs with black filth. An able man, Lord Curzon, skilful to gauge the British Idealist, ever so absorbed in his own ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... is where we start crawling," Yetsko said. "Your father's people seem to be holding the store basement against a gang in ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... had made his mistake. Thinking that he had passed beyond it and that, therefore, it was between him and the beach of Ringmanu, he had worked back toward it when in reality he was penetrating deeper and deeper into the mysterious heart of the unexplored island. That night, crawling in among the twisted roots of a banyan tree, he had slept from exhaustion while the mosquitoes had ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... some wild beast with a mortal wound in its breast slowly crawling to the water to die. Every few yards he thought the stream was reached and dipping his mouth to drink, cut his lips oh the granite. He had come to the level ground banking the creek, and was almost at the edge of the basin, when a figure appeared on the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... days of the antediluvians, all now converted into sound stone, by the petrifying qualities of the soil in which they are imbedded. Here are lobsters, crabs, and nautili, presenting almost the same reality as those we now see crawling and floating about; branches of trees, too, in as perfect order as when lopped from their parent stems; and trunks of them, twelve feet in length and two or three diameter, fit, in all appearance, for the operations of the saw, with great varieties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... for taking an interest in the beautiful works of creation, and so have their first intelligent inquiries and aspirations chilled at once; when a little care and sympathy would get rid of the unpleasantness of having white mice or lizards crawling about the house, without putting a stop to the young beginner's longing for more knowledge of the wonderful and beautiful world in whose ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something threadlike. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... broke off suddenly and leaped to his feet. "Great Christopher! Look there!" Stane looked swiftly in the direction indicated, and as the veil of snow broke for a moment, caught sight of a huddled form crawling ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... like a scarf. His undertakings, like the ballast His common sense, like a buzzing of a galleon. of bees. His understanding, like a torn His imagination, like the chime breviary. of a set of bells. His notions, like snails crawling His thoughts, like a flight of star- out of strawberries. lings. His will, like three filberts in a His conscience, like the unnest- porringer. ling of a parcel of young His desire, like six trusses ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... but I have had enough of fighting bears on the edge of a precipice. There is as much meat as we can carry ready for us below. Besides, the hour is late and the men will be getting uneasy. Moreover, we are but half armed; and we cannot get at her without crawling through that hole, which is scarce three feet high. Altogether, we had best ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... 'Crawling at your feet,' said the Gnat (Alice drew her feet back in some alarm), 'you may observe a Bread-and-Butterfly. Its wings are thin slices of Bread-and-butter, its body is a crust, and its head is ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... no cheerful blaze had sparkled there, Or glanced on coat of buff or knightly metal; The slug was crawling on the vacant chair,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... north; but the Commander Group is as completely cut off from both Asia and America as if it were in another world. The climate was not intensely cold; but it was so damp, the very clothing rotted; and the gales were so terrific that the men could only leave the mud huts or yurts by crawling on all fours; and for the first three weeks after the landing, blast on blast of northern hurricane swept over ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... him with dreaming eyes, and suffered herself to be led away by the arm. In Chancery Lane, Tarrant hailed a crawling hansom. When they were driving rapidly southward, Nancy began to question him about the date of his departure; she learnt that he might be gone in less than ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... at Niagara Falls were beginning to draw so much water from above the great Horseshoe Falls as to bring into speculation the question of how soon America's greatest scenic asset would be a coal-pile with a thin trickle of water crawling down its vast cliffs. Already companies had been given legal permission to utilize one-quarter of the whole flow, and additional companies were asking for further grants. Permission for forty per cent of the whole volume of water had been granted. J. Horace McFarland, as ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... noon Her Majesty took a small cup filled with spirits of wine, and added a kind of yellow powder (something like sulphur). She took a small brush and dipped it into the cup and made a few spots of this yellow paint under our nostrils and ears. This was to prevent any insects from crawling on us during the coming summer. The reason why it was also called the Dragon Boat Festival was because at the time of the Chou Dynasty the country was divided into several parts. Each place had a ruler. The Emperor ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... itself. Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates. I waited for an outbreak, motionless, dazed, muttering words that did not mend the case at all. "What a pity! Oh, I'm so sorry! If I had only known—" The student of the Early ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... directions. We reconnoitred the British garrisons in the Lydenburg district with the object of striking at their weakest point. A number of my officers and men proceeded under cover of darkness right through the British outposts, and gained the Lydenburg village by crawling on their hands and knees. On their return journey they were challenged and fired on several times, and managed only with difficulty to return to camp unhurt. The object of the reconnaissance was, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... matter to keep out of sight, for the walls of the cave were very uneven at this point. They got behind a projection, and by crawling up a rocky ledge managed to reach a point above and to one side of the runabout and not over a ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... rushed across the river to overtake and catch her, but she eluded them by crawling into the hollow limb, of a large fallen sycamore. They searched around for her some time, frequently stepping on the log which concealed her; and encamped near it that night. On the next day they went on to the Ohio river, but finding no trace of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... what infinite trouble have I had With Bandinello, and that stupid beast, The major-domo of Duke Cosimo, Francesco Ricci, and their wretched agent Gorini, who came crawling round about me Like a black spider, with his whining voice That sounded like the buzz of a mosquito! Oh, I have wept in utter desperation, And wished a thousand times I had not left My Tour do Nesle, nor e'er returned ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that the tree would soon be in a blaze, and unless they jumped and ran within the next minute or two they would be surrounded by fire. They hoped that the Grizzly would weaken first, but he showed no signs of an intention to leave. When the flames began crawling up the windward side of the tree and the heat became ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... eastern coast of the island, beyond Arta. It is called the Hermit's Cave, and the people of Palma consider it the principal thing to be seen in all Majorca. Their descriptions of the place, however, did not inspire me with any very lively desire to undertake a two days' journey for the purpose of crawling on my belly through a long hole, and then descending a shaky rope-ladder for a hundred feet or more. When one has performed these feats, they said, he finds himself in an immense hall, supported by stalactitic pillars, the marvels of which cannot be described. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... or Governments either; and my most admirable and efficient staff (now grown to one hundred people) permit few letters and telegrams to reach me. There never was a little rest more grateful. The quiet sea out my window shows no sign of crawling submarines; and, in general, it's as quiet and peaceful here ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... They had noticed me, but evidently thought I was one of their own number. Divining the situation in a moment, I walked carelessly on until near the crest of the hill, where I suddenly came upon a dozen more Indians, crawling along on their hands and knees. One of them gruffly ordered me down, and I am sure I lost no time in dropping into the grass. Crawling carefully along, for I knew it would not do to stop, I still managed to keep a good way behind and off to one side. We at last ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was very indignant at being addressed in this familiar way by a miserable, crawling creature who not only could not fly, but who could not sing a note, and did not know do from fa. Besides, it made her angry to think that he knew her secret and talked aloud about it so that any one ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... and was a king. So, worthily, he acted o'er The endless miracle once more. Facing immense adventures daily, He strove still onward, weeping, gaily, Conquered or fled from them, but grew As soil-starved, rough pine-saplings do. Till, one day, crawling seemed suspect. He gripped the air and stood erect And splendid. With immortal rage He ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... us feel quite at home. Everyone seems to know everyone else out here, and if they don't they very soon do, and all seem sworn to make the best of each other, and make things "go." It is so admirable; even though you may feel as a newcomer, a little uncomfortable crawling out of the shell of reserve you have brought all the way ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... in a transport, had fallen to his knees, was crawling forward to the statue abjectly, mouthing phrases of worship and self-abnegation. Close on his heels came Polter and Noldi, eyes rapt, movements mechanical. I stopped, some last remnant of sense remaining in my head, and by a strong effort of will ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... washed him on shore, while pieces of wood, iron, and the limbs of torn men were splashing round him in the water. He managed to crawl out of the mud. Something had hit him while he was swimming and he thought he would die. But life stirred in him. He had a message for you. For a long time he went on crawling under the big trees on his hands and knees, for there is no rest for a messenger till the message is delivered. At last he found himself on the left bank of the creek. And still he felt life stir in him. So he started to swim across, for if you were in this world you were on the other side. While ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the furnace room only made the contrast more positive. Still, those eager boys possessed sharp vision, and almost instantly both William and his fellow scout discovered a moving figure at the other side of the gymnasium crawling out from under a wilderness of blankets and tents that had fallen ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... began to take on the nature of Helen's long-yearned-for adventure. Some of the party even grew merry in a subdued way. Then, gradually, one by one they tired and went to bed. Helen vowed she could not sleep in a place where there were bats and crawling things. Madeline fancied, however, that they all went to sleep while she lay wide-eyed, staring up at the black bulge of overhanging rock and beyond ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey |
