"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face grew convulsed with rage. "Wretch!" he roared forth, "darest thou unslip thy hound-like malignity upon great Bungey? Knowest thou not that he could bid the walls open and close upon thee; that he could set yon serpents to coil round thy limbs, and yon lizard to gnaw out thine entrails? Despise not my mercy, and descend to plain sense. What good didst thou ever reap from thy engine? Why shouldst thou lose liberty—nay, life—if I will, for a thing that has cursed ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... glass tube from which all the air, down to one-millionth of an atmosphere, has been exhausted after the insertion of a platinum wire in either end of the tube for connection with the two poles of a battery or induction coil. When the discharge is sent through the tube, there proceeds from the anode—that is, the wire which is connected with the positive pole of the battery—certain bands of light, varying in color with the color of the glass. But these are insignificant in comparison with the brilliant ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... the quick glow of Spring's first smile Is unto the renewed spirit,—even As that abundant gush of wine from Heaven Loosens the dreary grasp of Cares which coil Round the lone heart like serpents,—the sweet toil Of draining the dear dream-cup thou hast given Is unto me,—and thoughts which long have striven With joyousness, flit far away the while My lips are prest to it. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... hurry I helped Mr. Rogers and Mr. Goodfellow to furl sail, coil away ropes, and tidy up generally. After these tedious weeks at sea I was wild for a run ashore, and, with the green woods inviting me, grudged even ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... with the conversion of 10-inch smoothbore guns into 8-inch rifles by lining the former with tubes of forged steel or of coil wrought iron. Fifty guns will be thus converted within the year. This, however, does not obviate the necessity of providing means for the construction of guns of the highest power both for the purposes of coast defense and for the armament ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... and sprung up the ladder that led to the deck. (Each room had one.) I followed a little later and had the satisfaction of seeing Madame Margaretto Gordon, commonly called "Maggie" by her husband and "Maw" by her son Patrick. She was seated on a coil of rope, her son on the boards at her feet. An enormous dog crouched beside them, with his head against Maggie's knee. The mother and son were surprisingly clean. Maggie had on a simple brown calico dress and an apron of blue ticking. A big red kerchief was ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... pistols of the British dragoons. All that he could do in this dreadful predicament was to wave his hand in a gentle manner towards the snake, which caused it to stop its course and throw itself into a coil, preparatory for battle. Fortunately, just at this time, the British dragoons made their welcome departure, and Elliott moved out of the way ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... curled and frizzed high on her forehead, and confined by narrow bands of red velvet; her back hair was rolled in an immense coil, and held ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... he reaches these first branches. When he gets so far I'll tell you what to do." I put my arm through the coil of rope, and, slinging it snugly over my shoulder, began to climb the pine. It was the work of only a moment to reach the ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... instanter. Tom flung the coil of rope below, then followed it. Hazelton and Dalzell, an instant later, were ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... cloud-masses crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood of dragons; now creeping along the ledges of the rock with sinuous self-adjustment to its turns and twists; now launching out into the deep, repelled by battling winds, or driven onward in a coil of twisted and contorted serpent curls. In the midst of summer these wet seasons often end in a heavy fall of snow. You wake some morning to see the meadows which last night were gay with July flowers huddled up in snow a foot in depth. But fair weather does not tarry long to reappear. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... mostly drink. Then you see a group of children at play, some as black as coals, some brown and very pretty. A little black girl, about R-'s age, has carefully tied what little petticoat she has, in a tight coil round her waist, and displays the most darling little round legs and behind, which it would be a real pleasure to slap; it is so shiny and round, and she runs and stands so ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... brought him to know that he loved her better than his own will, that his wish for her happiness was stronger than his pride; it was enough that he was now somehow brought to give proof of it. Beaton could not be aware of all that dark coil of circumstance through which Dryfoos's present action evolved itself; the worst of this was buried in the secret of the old man's heart, a worm of perpetual torment. What was apparent to another was that he was broken by the sorrow that had fallen upon him, and it was this that Beaton ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... complexity; complexness &c. adj.; complexus[obs3]; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication[obs3]; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c. (convolution) 248; sleave[obs3], tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl[obs3]; webwork[obs3]. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c. 704. V. complexify[obs3], complicate. Adj. gnarled, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... easy way out of the whole coil that we planned it out. And yet it seemed to me that it was a pity that Havelok knew not more of what seemed to us so sure now. So, seeing that things were fairly straightened by this last thought, ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... masquerade, the fashionable wine-cup and the costly apparel. Let me affectionately exhort the members of the Christian home to keep all these at a distance. Touch not, taste not, handle not! They will poison the spirit and the affections, and encircle you with a viper's coil from which there is no hope of escape. Here parents have a right, and it is their duty, to interfere. They can do so effectually by not allowing such filthy match-making intruders to pass the threshold of their homes. What can you expect ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... 'Your imagination is all right, and New York is neither heaven nor the other place. The fact is, I'm spooking, and I can tell you, Austin, it's just about the finest kind of work there is. If you could manage to shuffle off your mortal coil and get in with a lot of ghosts, the way I have, you'd be playing ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... I was going to see that nest. Creeping up cautiously when the mother bird was away, so as not to scare her, and carefully parting the mallows, I looked in. Yes, there it was, a beautiful little sage-green nest of old grass laid in a coil. I felt as pleased as if having a right to share the family happiness. After that I watched the small worker gather material with new interest, knowing where she was going to put it. She worked fast, but did not take the first thing ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II., No. 5, November 1897 - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... all the confusion Ken kept his head. Catching sight of a coil of line on the deck close by the forward hatch, he sprang for it, made one end fast to a bollard, and with a shout ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... a large stone in her arms which she places on the edge. She has the coil of rope thrown over her shoulder. Laughs]. So you haven't gone yet! [Takes the spade and starts to dig.] Don't you think I can do without you now? I will dig a deep, deep hole. Then I'll tie one end of the ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... the lever NP, pivoted at P, thus enabling a strong spiral spring G to lift a stout brass wire L out of mercury, and to break at the surface of the mercury a strong current that has circulated round the primary circuit of a Ruhmkorff's induction coil; this produces at the surface of the mercury a bright self-induction spark in the neighbourhood of the splash, and it is by this flash that the splash is viewed. The illumination is greatly helped by surrounding the place where the splash and flash are produced by a white cardboard ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington
... moments Pepper was too fascinated to move, as he watched the strangest combat that he had ever seen going on beneath him. A combat in which neither of the combatants seemed desirous of assuming the aggressive. Lying in a close coil, with its head rising from the center, its forked tongue darting in and out, and emitting every now and then an angry hiss, the snake, swaying its head from side to side, closely followed in its movements those of the dog, which circled about it barking ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... embarrassment to a merely human family. But her mother could see her truth, honour, purity—call it what you will—in every feature, every movement. As she stood there, giving injunctions to Vereker to look alive or he'd be late, her huge coil of sea-soaked black hair making her white neck look whiter, and her white hands reestablishing hair-pins in the depths of it, she seemed the very incarnation of non-inheritance. Not a trace of the sire her mother shuddered to think of in the music of her voice, in ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... plank was raised, 'Amen!' the corpse dropped into the ocean. Down in its deep mysterious caves she sunk to sleep with fishes, While a few bubbles rose from her and burst as if in mockery of human wishes. 'Up with your helm; brace round; haul out your bowlines; Clear up the deck; keep her full; coil down your tow-lines!' The ship was on her course, and not a word said to remind us Of the melancholy fact that we had left one of our number behind us. 'Shocking affair!' I remarked to Madame's partner, who looked ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... gulf beneath, guarded by the imaginary spikes of an invisible railing. Jack would have laughed at this difficulty; but then he had more experience in the craft than I, and was provided with all necessary appliances. As for me, I had stupidly forgotten even my coil of rope. The governor's house, I found, had either no balcony at all, or it was too far apart to be reached. Presently I heard a footstep on the trottoir, a little way off. It was approaching with slow and measured pace: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... had discovered a coil of rope and some blocks, which had evidently been used for lowering the casks into the vault. The seamen were not long in fitting up a tackle to hoist them out. While one of the men was sent off as proposed, the rest worked ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... looking at it there by the light of the lantern, he suddenly caught a glimpse in the corner opposite, on a coil of nets, of a face which exactly resembled the seal's. For an instant it grinned savagely at him and the light, its mouth all the time growing larger and larger; and then a big man whisked out of the door, not so quickly, however, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... 'it is very egotistical of you to interrupt your story with prophecies about the mood in which you will probably shuffle off the Gudgeon coil and take to Gudgeon wings. It is the shiny Quaker ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... to let fate take charge of that. When a man gets himself so entangled in a coil of barbed wire that he trips whichever way he turns, his only resource is to stand still. That's my case." He poured himself out another glass of cognac, and tasted it before continuing. "Olivia goes over to England, and gets herself engaged to a ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... chaplain palaver one day About souls, heaven, mercy, and such; And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay; Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch; For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see, Without orders that come down below; And a many fine things that proved clearly to me oft That Providence takes us in tow: For, says he, do you mind me, let storms ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... instant, what we have all dreamed on summer Sundays when the bells ring, or at night when we cannot sleep for the desire of living. They think it will sober and change them. Like those who join a brotherhood, they fancy it needs but an act to be out of the coil and clamour for ever. But this is a wile of the devil's. To the end, spring winds will sow disquietude, passing faces leave a regret behind them, and the whole world keep calling and calling in their ears. For marriage is like life in this—that it is a field of battle, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bunting dress, was of the color, popularly dominated "navy-blue," and the linen collar and cuffs were scarcely whiter than the round throat and wrists they encircled. The burnished auburn hair clinging in soft waves to her brow, was twisted into a heavy coil, which the long walk had shaken down till it rested almost on her neck; and though her heart beat furiously, the pale calm face might have been marble, save for the scarlet lines of her beautiful mouth, and the steady glow of the dilated pupils in her great ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the changes that had occurred of late in the kingdom, and in particular of the coil there was betwixt the cures who had taken the oath and the nonjuring cures. She knew likewise there had been wars and famines and portents in the sky. She did not believe the King was dead. They had contrived his escape, she would have it, by a subterranean passage, and had handed over ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... hair, drawn back from her low brow into a loose coil behind, is enriched here and there with little sunny tresses, while across her forehead a few wavy locks—veritable love-locks, in Molly's case—wander idly, not as of a set purpose, but rather as though they have there drifted of their ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... be forgotten the taste of the morning river air; never to be forgotten the grain of the stone on which his elbows leaned, or the tawny coil of the waters below him; never to be forgotten the purple dome and dark cross of Paul's, with its edge of gold on one side and the rosy east away and away ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... after a long chase managed to reach a tree, which he quickly climbed, with the aid of his claws, snugly ensconcing himself in the deserted nest of a crow. In vain the hunters sought for him, till his long, annulated tail, which he had forgotten to coil up within the nest, was seen pendent below it; and the poor raccoon was quickly brought to the ground ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... go. We're wasting time. But first I'll have to take off some of these clothes." So she dropped her skirt and stood in her short petticoat. "There!" And she fastened her hair tighter in a coil. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... coil, the hundred and fifty feet of seine came down out of the loft as the bear rolled and pitched and tumbled. The more he tore and threshed, the more meshes there were to enwrap ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... saw his way out of the coil. "I can tell you, quite as frankly as you ask, that Miss Gerald isn't engaged ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... she had gone away in search of some plant, or plants, with which to compound the medicine she was making for me. She returned early in the forenoon, carrying a small basket in which I saw a coil of the long creeping vine called 'At 'At by the natives, and which grows only on the sandiest ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... come on deck and hastily fling something overboard. At least, that was the intention, apparently, but as a fact, either through agitation or a bad aim, the packet did not go overboard, but landed on a coil of rope on the lower deck forward. It proved to be a small canvas bag containing seven of these bits of rock, or, at any rate, pieces like them. Now, the man on the watch is not inclined to swear to it, but he ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... slept, despite the noise about him. Dressed in clean clothes, brought by the lady of the morning, and shaved by the skilful hand of Big Abel, he buried himself in the fresh straw and dreamed of Chericoke and Betty. The coil of battle swept far from him; he heard none of the fret and rumour that filled the little street; even the moans of the men beneath the surgeons' knives did not penetrate to where he lay sunk in the stupor of perfect contentment. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... bending them and slipping them through his fingers with the pleasurable feeling that he was inspecting and testing as an expert would have done. He read the label on a tin of "dope," unwrapped a coil of wire cable and felt it, went at a parcel of unbleached linen, found the end and held a corner up to the light and squinted at it with his head ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... multitude, and yet there is no likeness. None, except where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that bare peak which tilts against the sky, nor like that serpent twine of another which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. Oh, I wish you were here. You would enjoy the shade of the chestnut trees, and the sound of the waterfalls, and at nights seem to be living among the stars; the fireflies are so thick, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... boiling pot tossed the meat to and fro, or "waved" it (the priest's work), and that he himself was giving away the meat he lifted off the fire, the "heave-offering," which was the priest's perquisite. This is the confusion or "level-coil" to which ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... fair, who would fain have done with the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and duties and tasks and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I believe, for my part, that, after all, the deepest longing of men—though they search for it through toil and effort—is for repose. As the poet has taught us, 'there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... kisses will not soil; Her tears are pure as rain; Her hair—'tis Love unwinds the coil, ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... a billow of flame, But its light, like thine, is done: Life's tangled coil, with all its toil, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... be sheathed with ice; but if ever the structure had been glazed in her time, when she lay hard and fast far to the north of Spitzbergen, for all one could tell, nothing was now frozen; there was not so much as an icicle anywhere visible about her. The decks were dry, and on my kicking a coil of rope that was near my feet the stuff did not crackle, as one could have expected, as though frosted to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... I let them worry me? I won't! I am here! I am alive! I am only eighteen! I am going to manage my life for myself—and get out of this coil. Now ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... They numbered seven or eight, and they were certainly very near. They had spread out a little and whenever Old Jack veered a yard or two from the pursuers some one gained. He saw a coil of rope fly through the air and he bent forward again. It struck Old Jack on the saddle and fell to the ground. Ned wondered why they did not fire now, but he remembered that their rifles or muskets, too, might be empty, and suddenly he felt a strange ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... give him something on account," shouted a voice in bitter blasphemy. "Well climbed, Jan, well climbed," and they looked up to see, sixty feet above their heads, seated upon the arm of the lofty Rood, a man with a candle bound upon his brow and a coil ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... strong and he had this much at heart, but the other had the super-human strength of the crazed. Even as they struggled the machine began to slow down and within a few hundred yards came to a standstill. In destroying the coil box he had reached ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... stimulating and fragrant, but said nothing as he returned to the cupboard. Here he drew forth an apparently endless piece of stout rope. This he wound in a thick coil and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... was watching that tortoise-shell of yours on the houseboat. She was creeping along the roof, behind the flower-boxes, stalking a young thrush that had perched upon a coil of rope. Murder gleamed from her eye, assassination lurked in every twitching muscle of her body. As she crouched to spring, Fate, for once favouring the weak, directed her attention to myself, and she became, for the first ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... war is done you'll hear her speak To France in cannon tones that will make quake Napoleon on his throne! That great mock-god. Who seeks to free all men that he may fit Their necks to his own yoke! (With growing intensity) That adder who Would coil about the world! That serpent scruffed With white deceit and low ambition's slime, That crept into the garden of my dream And cankered bud and root, nursed by my toil, Fed with my dearest blood! Ay, ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... Magungo to purchase Simbi (the cowrie-shell); he says that a white man formerly arrived there annually, and brought a donkey with him in a boat; that he disembarked his donkey and rode about the country, dealing with the natives, and bartering cowries and brass-coil bracelets. This man had no firearms, but wore a sword. The king of ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... language more eloquent than words can utter. I was carried with my mother on board the ship. The sails were unfurled, while we were grouped on the quarter-deck. Most of the family went into the cabin; but my father sat on a coil of ropes, and I stood between his knees, encircled by his arm, and looking up in his face, which was occasionally convulsed with marks of strong but suppressed feeling. The vessel bounded over the waves of the German Ocean. My father spake not. His eye was still bent on the rocky cliffs ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... down from his box, threw on the coil switch and ran to the front. He turned the engine over the compression, but no explosion followed. He repeated the effort a dozen times. Then, grasping the starting handle with a firmer grip, he "whirled" ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... abound. Slaters of an immense kind, and spotted, and small mahogany-coloured Blattidae, are found under stones, which also conceal hordes of predatory beetles and scorpions, which bristle up at you as you expose them; and nests of tiny snakes, that coil and cuddle together, from the size of crowquills to the thickness of the little finger. During June and July, the monotonous Cicadae spring their rattles in the trees around, and one comes at last even to like their note, in spite of its sameness. A little later, flies and wasps send ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... with water and add about a teaspoonful of sulphuric acid. Set in this a piece of copper and a piece of zinc, but do not let them touch. Make a coil by winding insulated wire around a block of wood about ten times. Remove the wood and place a compass in the centre of the coil. Join the ends of the wire to the two metals in the tumbler. The sudden ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of the thing was that it was frequently being lost. Suspecting herself, maybe, as an unpractical dreamer in a world filled with robbers, she would cart it about with her for safety, sit down behind a coil of rope and fall into a fit of abstraction; be recalled to life by the evolutions of the crew reefing or furling or what not, rise to superintend the operations—and then suddenly find ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... us in imaginary grandeur; in those plaintive notes that make us in love with woe; in the tones that utter the lover's sighs, and fluctuate the breast with gentle pain; in the noble strokes that coil up the courage and fury of the soul, or that lull it in confused visions of joy; in short, in those affecting strains that find their way to the inmost recesses ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... complexness &c adj.; complexus^; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication^; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c (convolution) 248; sleave^, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl^; webwork^. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c 704. V. complexify^, complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled^. complex, complexed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vortex of such questioning "corporals" rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... sheriff, whose name was Gilson, opened a small square door in the wall of the corridor, and dragged forth a coil of hose. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... 'Beware a woman's hair— A serpent's coil of gold.'" "Then will I shear the cruel locks That crushed ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... that nasty few minutes in the study reminded him of Graham. Another coil. Jason Bolt would have some bitter comment on the wisdom of firing a useful man with no substitute in sight; Jason had a rough tongue at times for all his good-nature. That would be still another quarrel—and he ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging." ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... none would have thought him capable, looking at his thick-set and rather stout figure, he had rushed in a second to his own cabin, which was near aft; and, dragging out a couple of railway rugs and a coil of rope had pitched them below to the Irishman, concluding his operations by jumping down alongside him, to aid in releasing the injured man from his perilous position—telling the passenger as he quitted him to "sing out" ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... way with each tack. The breeze hummed through the rigging. The man at the helm humped a shoulder to the sting of the spray, and the rest of the crew, seven or eight in number—tarry, pigtailed, outlandish sailor men—crouched under the windward rail. The skipper sat with a companion on a coil of rope on the dry side of the skylight, and at the moment at which our story opens was oblivious alike of the weather and his difficulties. He sat with his eyes fixed on his neighbour, and in those eyes a wondering, fatuous admiration. So might a mortal look if some strange ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... changed her pink kimono for a white shirt-waist and had fluffed her hair into a smooth coil on the top of her head. Weary thought she looked very nice. She could make excellent lemonade, he discovered, and she proved herself altogether different from what the messages she sent him had led him to expect. Weary wondered, until he became too ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... wood; but he was confronted by a figure that at first he scarcely recognized. Yet—it was Katinka! the young girl of the cabin, who had sent him the gold. She was dressed differently—perhaps in her ordinary every-day garments—a bright sprigged muslin, a chip hat with blue ribbons set upon a coil of luxurious brown hair. But what struck him most was that the girlish and diminutive character of the figure had vanished with her ill-fitting clothes; the girl that stood before him was of ordinary height, and of a prettiness and grace of figure that he felt would have attracted ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... outside the door, and as we stood and waited, we examined with interest the mounts of the English cavalry regiment lined up in the street awaiting their riders. George and Leon were eagerly fingering a long coil of rope thrown on the pommel of one saddle, when a deep ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... mule," said Revailloud, with a smile, and he helped Sylvia to mount it. "To lead mules to the Montanvert—is not that my business? Simond has a rope," he added, as he saw Chayne sling a coil across ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... to prevent me, but I pushed her away, not too gently I am afraid, and clambered forward to the bow, where the anchor lay upon its coil of line. I threw it overboard. The line ran out to its very end and I waited expectantly for the jerk which would tell me that the anchor had caught and was holding. But no jerk came. Reaching over the bow I tried the line. It was taut ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... all he said to her, as they were plunged into the water; but as he saw the waves closing about them, he heard a cry from the sailors—a cry of joy, of welcome—and he felt a strong hand reached out to him, and a coil of rope flung about them. He had his arm under the fainting Ilda, but surely he had seen the face of the brave fellow who took Hanne in his arms from Ilda's clasp. He could not think; he only knew that they were saved at last—that a dozen ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pelt and the bounty. In his uncertainty he waited, hoping that the trapper might come soon; and by way of practice for the serious enterprise that would come later, as well as to direct the prisoner's mind a little from his painful predicament, Kane began trying to lasso him with a coil of heavy cord which ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the work of taffy-making was taken up again. Cary was fed with choice titbits until he was fairly satisfied and had to beg for quarter. Then, taking up a large roll of the tire, Zulma twisted it into a series of elegant and intricate plaits. The long coil flashed like a beautiful brazen serpent, as she held it up to the light, and set it beside her ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... snatched a billet out of the pile. And when she met them, she sought to throw her arms about their necks. And Kay placed the log between her two hands, and she squeezed it so that it became a twisted coil. "O woman," said Kay, "if thou hadst squeezed me thus, none could ever again have set their affections on me. Evil love were this." They entered into the house and were served; and soon after, they all went forth to amuse themselves. Then the woman opened a stone chest that was before the chimney-corner, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... would be taken captive in the net thou weavest with thy hair, and she answered: not yet; for my business is in yon garden, but into it I can find no way. Wilt lend me thy sinewy shape, Lucifer? for in it I shall be able to glide over the walls and coil myself into the tree of forbidden fruit, and I shall persuade Eve as she passes to eat of it, for it will be to her great detriment to do so. But of what good will that be to me? Lucifer answered, wouldst thou leave me without a shape whilst thou art tempting Eve? Thy ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... up. The sky was hidden by the thick darkness. No ray of silver or gray showed anywhere, but the Onondaga knew where lay the star upon which sat his patron saint with the wise snakes, coil on coil, in his hair. He felt that through the banks of mist and vapor Tododaho was watching over him, and, as long as he tried to live the right way taught to him by his fathers, the great Onondaga chieftain would lead him through ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for again, and found Julia sitting on the couch by the side of her mother, and he at once acknowledged to himself that he had seldom seen a fairer woman. She was tall, and her figure was full and well proportioned. Her glossy hair was wound in a coil at the back of her head, her neck and arms were bare, and she wore a garment of light green silk, and embroidered with gold stripes along the bottom, reaching down to her knees, while beneath it a petticoat of Tyrian purple ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the young Shawanoe. It looked as if he had turned his head to one side that he might catch the music made by the twang of the string when it should dart forward with the speed of the rattlesnake striking from its coil. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and felt himself to be precisely the workman that had so long been wanted. Cool, incisive, fearless, artful, he united the unscrupulous audacity of a condottiere with the wily patience of a Jesuit. He could coil unperceived through unsuspected paths, could strike suddenly, sting mortally. He came prepared, not only to smite the Netherlanders in the open field, but to cope with them in tortuous policy; to outwatch ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he. Then, after a while of battlin', he whispers again, 'Little girl, I don't want to die. Death is a cold end. But I reckon you shall save me an' your name as well. Take the rope, coil it as you run, and hang it back in the linhay, quick! Then run you to the hen-house an' bring me all the eggs you can find. Be quick and ax no questions, for it's little longer I can hold up. It's above ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of this series were issued in coil form for use in automatic vending machines. These were first issued in November, 1912, perf. 8 vertically and imperforate at top and bottom. In October, 1913, the 1c was issued perf. 8 horizontally and imperforate at the sides and ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... Paul, springing to his side with a coil of rigging. With a few rapid turns he knitted himself to his foe. The wind now acting on the sails of the Serapis forced her, heel and point, her entire length, cheek by jowl, alongside the Richard. The projecting cannon scraped; the yards interlocked; but ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... warn Grammont off," he retorted. "Could I believe St. Quentin such a lack-wit as to forgive these two because they were his kin? You did better than you knew when you shut the door on me. You tracked me, you marplot, you sneak! How came you into the coil?" ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... hair must be long enough, but not too long, remember, for everything unduly accentuated spoils a woman. It should hang about five inches below the waist, when unfastened, and be thick enough to make a noticeable coil. There should be sufficient to hide her face and her lover's when he takes her in ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... flesh that my mother gave me, my works were not leonine, but of the fox. The wily practices, and the covert ways, I knew them all, and I so plied their art that to the earth's end the sound went forth. When I saw me arrived at that part of my age where every one ought to strike the sails and to coil up the ropes, what erst was pleasing to me then gave me pain, and I yielded me repentant and confessed. Alas me wretched! and it would have availed. The Prince of the new Pharisees having war near the Lateran,[2]—and not with Saracens nor with Jews, for every enemy of his was Christian, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... exquisitely small, her features childlike and indefinite, except her little coral mouth, which was as clearly outlined with color as a doll's and as mobile as a fluttering leaf. She had wide blue eyes and hair that was truly golden. Strangely, she had not bobbed it but wore it bound into a shining coil around her head. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... jumbled together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of the river's bank. A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it: and here and there an oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first, to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of the articles thus ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... have been half an hour later when another sea swept the deck. Jim took shelter under the stump of the mast and held on for dear life. Charlie got inside the coil of the derrick-fall and so was saved, while the others dived into the cabin. When that sea had passed they found no one at the tiller. Poor King had been washed overboard. Nothing whatever could be done for him, even if he had been seen, but the greedy sea had ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... the hot light, for he was very fair of skin, sprang suddenly out of the water on to the turf above where his breeches and shirt had been left; he was in haste, for he had heard his mother calling to him from their fields; an adder started out of a coil of bindweed and would itself round his ankle as he ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... the use of a permanent horse-shoe magnet and the second (Fig. 54) an electro-magnet consisting of an iron rod with a coil or spool magnet at the outer end. In either case the magnet should not be allowed to become heated but ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... away, As being much incens'd to leave her play, A western, mild and pretty whispering gale Came dallying with the leaves along the dale, And seem'd as with the water it did chide, Because it ran so long unpacified: Yea, and methought it bade her leave that coil, Or he would choke her up with leaves and soil: Whereat the riv'let in my mind did weep, And hurl'd her head into ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... coil hit Tad on the top of his head, nearly knocking him down. He scrambled from under while from above there sounded a peal ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... you'll allow me to stick to my text. Well, then, here's coil away again. Ben, you see, what with his jealousy and what with a whole quartern at a draught, became somehow nohow, and he walked down to the jetty with the intention of getting rid of himself, and his wife and all his trouble by giving ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Having discovered a coil of new rope, I hauled it on deck, and soon made fast my little boat to the ship. Then I made a hasty rope ladder which I threw over, and Mrs Reichardt was in a very few minutes standing by my side. Her knowledge was necessary to ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... tortoise or "dry land terrapin," the common toad, and some salamanders burrow into the dry earth, usually going deep enough to escape frost; while snakes seek some crevice in the rocks or hole in the ground where they coil themselves together, oftentimes in vast numbers, and prepare for their winter's sleep. In an open winter this hibernation is often interrupted, the animal emerging from its retreat and seeking its usual summer haunts as though ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... joints, resounded for a moment in the obscurity. The revolver, fortunately, had fallen to the floor in the struggle. Cabasse's choking, inarticulate voice was heard exclaiming: "The cords, the cords!" and Ducat handed to Sambuc the coil of thin rope with which they had had the foresight to provide themselves. Scant ceremony was displayed in binding their hapless victim; the operation was conducted to the accompaniment of kicks and cuffs. The legs were secured first, then the arms were firmly ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... limits; which, perhaps with regrets enough, his natural veracity and practicality would lead him quietly to admit and stand by. He was not the man to grapple, in its dark and deadly dens, with the Lernaean coil of social Hydras; perhaps not under any circumstances: but he did, unassisted, what he could; faithfully himself did something—nay, something truly considerable;—and in his patience with the much that by ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... monster, and then a yell, as of the lost, resounded from height to depth, and a huge round, black, writhing, coil came bounding rapidly to the ground, and there, the next instant, lay a mangled mass of flesh, in which perhaps at one time two souls ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... charge the disbanding snow. All power is bound In quickening refusal so; And silence is the lair of sound; In act its impulse to deliver, With fluctuance and quiver The endeavouring thew grows rigid; Strong From its retracted coil strikes ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... situation it had sprung on its back. The cat beat a hasty retreat into the arms of its protector who replaced it under his coat. Once in safety it stuck out its head and swore at the cock, which, perched on a coil of rope, crowed victoriously. Both had been the companions of the men in the trenches, and ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... now produced his watch—an immense affair that would have made a load for a small child. He pried open its gigantic case and showed the dazzling array of brass wheels and the glittering coil of steel. It could not but be attractive to a savage mind, and the Indian's eyes sparkled as he looked ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... wretch! It is you who put shackles on me when I want to fly! Like a snake you coil yourself around my legs. Let ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... not because of any particular difference in the messages, but because of the more romantic character of their new motives and surroundings. Even the multitude of static interferences that swarmed the atmosphere on this, the first oppressively hot day of the season, were combatted with tuning coil, condenser, and detector, so confidently, although with poor success, that Mr. Perry pronounced them ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... over Nick's shoulder to a merry group which stood near the entrance to the music-room, and his amazed eyes rested upon Katrine Dulany. A new Katrine, yet still the old. She wore white lace. Her black hair was parted and rippled over the ears into a low coil. There was even more the look of an August peach to her than he remembered: dusky pink with decided yellow in the curve of her chin, as he had once laughingly asserted. But the softness and uplifted expression of the misty blue eyes were the same, and added to all was the repose of manner ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... love in women of a certain—let us not say age, but youth," says the professor. "An electrical current passing through a coil of wire makes a magnet of a bar of iron lying within it, but not touching it. So a woman is turned into a love-magnet, by a tingling current of life running round her. I should like to see one of them balanced on a pivot properly adjusted, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... fearing wrong; Because I am in love with Love, And the sole thing I hate is Hate; For Hate is death; and Love is life, A peace, a splendor from above; And Hate, a never-ending strife, A smoke, a blackness from the abyss Where unclean serpents coil and hiss! Love is the Holy Ghost within Hate the unpardonable sin! Who preaches otherwise than this Betrays his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he said rather quietly, in English. "Give me the halter, please!" he said to Clare, without looking up. "It's hanging to the shaft there in a coil." ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... for the gangway. A torch-basket of pine-knots blazing under the bow covered flood and land with crimson light and inky shadows. The engines had stopped. The boat swept the shore. A single stage-plank lay thrust half out from her forward quarter. A sailor stood on its free end with a coil of small line. The crouching earthwork and its fierce guns glided toward them. Knots of idle cannoneers stood along its crest. A few came down to the water's edge, to whom Anna and Hilary, still paired alone, were ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... becomes narrower and the stream less, though running more swiftly; and here there is a marshy spot with willows, and between them some bulrushes and great bunches of bullpolls. This coarse grass forms tufts or cushions, on which snakes often coil in the sunshine. Yet though so rough, in June the bullpoll sends up tall slender stalks with graceful feathery heads, reed-like, surrounded with long ribbons of grass. In the ditches hereabout, and beside the brook ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the Prairie, we call him in the trade—he don't seem to ha' much amiss with him, do he now, miss?—he had a bit of a fall—only on them pads—a few minutes ago, the more shame to the Sarpint, the rascal!" Here he pretended to hit the Sarpint, who never moved a coil in consequence, only smiled. "But he ain't the worse, never a hair—or a scale I should rather say, to be kensistent. Bless you, we all knows how to fall equally as well's how to get up again! Only it's the most remarkable thing, an' you would hardly ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... is wrong, and mighty wrong,' said Magsie. 'Come along this minute, Master Jasper, and bring wi' ye a coil o' rope and as many other strong lads as ye can find in the school. Be quick, for it is Miss Hollyhock, no less, that we are ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... was no miracle. The strangling coil of rope which shut off the wind of Alcatraz had also kept any water from passing into his lungs, and as the air now began to come back and the reviving oxygen reached his blood, his recovery was amazingly ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... that he knew, and his mind weighted anyway with the menacing mystery of the strange happenings of the night before, he sat down on a coil of rope, just in the lee of the forward smokestack, to think the whole matter over ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... apparatus consists of a Bunsen pile worked with bichromate of potash, which makes no smell; an induction coil carries the electricity generated by the pile into communication with a lantern of peculiar construction; in this lantern there is a spiral glass tube from which the air has been excluded, and in which remains only a residuum of carbonic acid gas or of nitrogen. When the apparatus ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... city.—This invention consists, first, in a magnet having a centrally bored iron core, surrounded by a magnetic coil, which is enveloped by an iron shell that is concentric with the central core, and is attached to a flange formed on the lower end of the said central core. One side of both shell and core are split for the purpose of obviating residual magnetism. The invention ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... shell; he cannot digest it in that condition, and the muscles of his stomach are not strong enough to break it. The snake often finds himself in this condition, and is then accustomed either to strike his body against hard objects or to coil himself around them until he has broken the envelope of the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Captain sang out; "all of yer better take hold ... one of yer coil up that rope ... now! all together! ... now! ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... him to dispatch and rid: The Lord will not see all things; something may be hid. But as for these misers[278] within my father's tent, Which to the supplanting of me put their consent, Not one, but I shall coil them, till they stink for pain, And then for their stinking coil them off fresh again. I will take no days[279]; but, while the matter is hot, Not one of them shall 'scape, but they shall to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... on the shore, in a clump of flowering, semi-tropical bushes, crouched two men. On the ground with them lay a metal cylinder some two feet long and seven inches in diameter. There was also a coil of wire and a boxed ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... pulled a coil of rope out of the capacious pocket of his tattered coat. Kennard could not see what he was doing, but felt it with supersensitive instinct all the time. He lay quite still beneath the weight of ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Boys! the toast we have to drink is—Erie." The boys laughed loudly, being the right, sort, And said, "Why, Admiral! you're hard a port." One time, when GOULD and I were on the cars, I thought th' officials of the train were tars; Told them to "Coil that rope and clean the scuppers, And then go down below and get your suppers." This must be changed, or my good name will suffer, And folks will say, JIM FISK is but a duffer. To feel myself a fool and lose my head, Too, takes the gilding off ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... on briskly for a full hour, anxiously watching both sides of the road for a cabin or cabin smoke. By that time night had come fully, though fortunately it was clear but very cold. He saw then on the right a faint coil of smoke rising against the dusky sky and ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... group above the cliff, and were sidling down its face cautiously, for the hurricane now flattened them back against the rock, now tried to wrench them from it; and all the way it was a tough battle for breath. The foremost was Jim Lewarne, Farmer Tresidder's hind, with a coil of the farmer's rope slung round him. Young Zeb followed, and Elias Sweetland, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... clearly that all that was needed was an explanation. Then as I saw their faces, I realised that an explanation was impossible. Just here it was that our resemblances were not going to bridge our differences. Well, I wasn't going to walk the plank, anyhow. I slipped my wrist very quickly out of the coil of chain that was loose, and then began to twist my wrists in opposite directions. I was standing nearest to the bridge, and as I did this two of the Selenites laid hold of me, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... each provided with a long coil of grass rope, with a noose at the end—now called a lariat or lasso—used by the Indians for casting over the horns of the elks and buffaloes, or the necks of the wild horses, that they desired to capture. These they carried in such a manner as to be ready ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... I never see her more, for in my hatred I might kill her. But mark you, Arthur, I will find my child; she is now the only tie that binds me to humanity; the only link that chains me to this mortal coil which men call life. I must have my darling child. The day after to-morrow I will return here to know where she is secreted; if that be divulged to me, I swear by all that men hold as sacred, whether in heaven or earth, to depart in peace, and leave ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the rocket-closet, hung the key on the nail and rearranged a coil of rope which had been displaced. "Things have to be shipshape when the lives of a crew may depend on a missing match or wet powder. The houses," he added as we came out of the door and he stopped to close it, "are built every three miles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... ten minutes than he had had in all his previous life; but realistic experience does not do one much good at the end of a rope on top of a Wyoming mountain. Then, after a little, they deftly threw the coil of rope over the limb of a tree, and hung him up, and left him. They did not shoot him full of holes, as is the usual custom. He had been a funny horse-thief, so in return they were lenient. Severne kicked. "Dancin' good," they observed, as they ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... know how to use this, senor?" Nicolas asked, as he passed over a small coil of stout ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... will draw up with itself a barrel pen, or any light iron or steel object. (See Fig. 4.) This is not a true solenoid, but it is generally known by that name. In a true solenoid one of the terminals is passed back through the center of the coil. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... unknown, or some other great evil should approach me from without. What these two honest and affectionate fellows meant by thus maintaining their post, I did not know, it is true; but such was my conjecture. At length Neb disappeared, and was absent an hour. When he retained, he had a coil of rope over his shoulder, when the two took a station at a safe distance from my prison, and began to measure off fathoms, to cut, knot and splice. I was amused with their diligence, which made no abatement until it was interrupted by myself. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... destroyed the harmony of the profile outline. The head itself was nobly rounded, and sternly classic as any well authenticated antique, but it was no marvel that it habitually bowed under the heavy glittering mass of silver hair, which wound in coil after coil and was secured at the back by a comb of carved jet, thickly studded with small silver stars. The extraordinary lustrousness of these waves of gray hair that rippled on her forehead and temples like molten metal, lent a weird and wondrous effect to the straight, regular, rigid features,—daintily ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... for it was a very solemn truth she had spoken. The coil of steel with which the North had belted in the South was beginning to press tighter and tighter during that memorable winter. At every Southern port the Northern fleets were on guard, and the blockade ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... evidently wrapped in an ecstasy of devotion, earnest in all she did, quite calm and composed as if nothing important was to happen. In short, she was then at her matins, anxiously awaiting the hour when this mortal coil should be put off. My uncle was lying a corpse in the adjoining room. It appeared to me that all the women assembled were admiring the virtue and fortitude of my aunt. Some were licking the betel out of her mouth, some touching her forehead, in order to have a little of the sindur, or vermilion; ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... forest offers a bar to civilization nearly as great as its sterility in the African deserts. A macheta is a necessary predecessor: the moment you land (and it is often difficult to get a footing on the bank), you are confronted by a wall of vegetation. Lithe lianas, starred with flowers, coil up the stately trees, and then hang down like strung jewels; they can be counted only by myriads, yet they are mere superfluities. The dense dome of green overhead is supported by crowded columns, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... I looked in he was missing, but while I was watching he sprang through a hole in the roof, alighting in the fire, from which he walked out gingerly, shaking his feet as if he had just been out in the wet. I shot away every cartridge I had at him, but in the middle of the shooting he would just coil up before ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... the pole, took a turn round the sternmost thwart with it, and pulled on the anchor line. As the great, big, wet hawser came in it soaked you to the skin: I was the sternest (used, by way of variety, for sternmost) of the lot, and had to coil it—a work which involved, from its being so stiff and your being busy pulling with all your might, no little trouble and an extra ducking. We got it up; and, just as we were going to sing "Victory!" one of the guys slipped ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enquiries into Indian conditions. They too turned for the most part on his facile exasperation at any defiance of his deep-felt desire for human brotherhood. At last indeed came an affair that refused ultimately to remain trivial, and tangled him up in a coil that invoked newspaper articles ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... shooting out, Devouring all they coil themselves about, The flaming furies, mounting high and higher, Wrap the frail structure in a cloak of fire. Strong arms are battling with the stubborn foe In vain attempts their power to overthrow; With mocking glee they revel with their prey, Defying ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... spare their lives, for a time at all events, and while Hassan and Denviers led the captives across the plain, I brought from the tent part of a long coil of rope which we had and followed them. As soon as we neared the river bank we selected two suitable trees from a clump growing there and lashed the prisoners securely to them, threatening instant death if they attempted to signal their whereabouts to any of the hill-men ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... bedroom. Katherine was still in bed, waiting for Audrey to be dressed before her. Audrey was sitting at the dressing-table brushing her hair, twisting it into the big coil that shone like copper on the surface, with a dull dark red at the heart of it. She had on Katherine's white dressing-gown and Katherine's slippers. She had laughed when she put them on, they were so ridiculously large ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... opening to get aboard unobserved," I replied, loosening as I spoke the slender rope coil from about my waist. "Nor would it be any trick if the light were a trifle better. As it is, I may miss a throw or two in getting firm hold. It would prove risky business attempting to pass across a line insecure at one end. Lie down now, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... time overshadowed, as it were, by a gloomy presentiment of some change, which disturbed and depressed their hearts. They slept, however, in peace and tranquillity, free from those snake-like pangs which coil themselves around guilt, and deaden its tendencies to remorse, whilst they envenom its baser ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... or five yards from him. All around her was a golden cloud of sand; it seemed to have been stirred up by her startled movement on seeing him. For a moment she was still, resting thus close, and he could see distinctly that around her white shoulders there was a coil of what seemed like glistening rounded scales. He could not decide whether the brightness in her eye was that of laughing ease or of startled excitement. Then she turned and darted away from him, and having put about ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... of a woman to her ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest that this rope"—he fished up a coil from the corner—"appears to have been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell |
