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More "Coiled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his father hung at his left hip, his bow and his quiver of arrows were slung across his shoulders, while around his chest over one shoulder and beneath the opposite arm was coiled the long grass rope without which Tarzan would have felt quite as naked as would you should you be suddenly thrust upon a busy highway clad only in a union suit. A heavy war spear which he sometimes carried in one hand and again ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and on which hung fishing nets, drying and casting shadows as fine as cobwebs. A few large boats and a small one were drawn up beyond high-water mark, and the waves as they ran up towards them seemed as if they were calling to them. Gaffs, oars, coiled ropes, baskets and barrels lay about in disorder and amidst it all was a cabin built of yellow branches, bark and matting. Above the general chaos floated a red rag at the extremity ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... "he leaves a bad taste in one's mouth;" and he went to the table, took a pull at the tankard, and then threw himself down on the sofa again, as Jack jumped up and coiled himself round by his master's legs, keeping one half-open eye winking at him, and giving an occasional wag with the end of ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... mists which sweep over stretches of moorland, but its power of saturation was remarkable. It soaked Liverpool. It issued out of blackness and seemed to carry a blackness with it which descended into the very soul of the city and lay coiled there like ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... intentions. He went back to the canoe to fetch his gun; but upon telling the Ojibwes that he was about to kill a rattlesnake they begged him to desist. They then seized their pipes and tobacco pouches and returned with him to the place where he had left the rattlesnake, which was still coiled up ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... good authority that a lady, who during her pregnancy was struck with the unpleasant view of leeches applied to a relative's foot, gave birth to a child with the mark of a leech coiled up in the act of suction on ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Rick thought his pal had missed, then he realized what Scotty had done. The spear shaft was attached to a long wire leader, and the leader to a safety line coiled around a spool just ahead of the pistol grip. Scotty had deliberately fired ahead of the propeller, knowing that the wire leader would be caught and would wrap ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... together with a steam tender fitted with cooking appliances, berths and stores, for all hands engaged in the enterprise. We succeeded in attaching the hooks and chains by means of divers; the chains being ready coiled on deck. But the weather, which before seemed to be settled, now gave way. No sooner had we got the pair of big tanks secured to the after body, than a fierce north-north-easterly gale set in, and we had to run for it, leaving the tanks partly filled, ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... on the pier at Peter Churchtown intently watching what was going on beneath him on the deck of the Pretty Ruth, where our friend Will was busy at work over a brown fishing-line contained in two baskets, in one of which, coiled round and round, was the line with a hook at every six feet distance, and each hook stuck in the edge of the basket; in the other the line was being carefully coiled; but as Will took a hook from ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... titanic weight falling, miles away. They saw the puff of snow dust fly up in a toss of mist over the face of the distant upper crags. Then, a grinding tore the earth; something white glistening viscous crumpled—coiled with untellable furious speed, shaggy and formless, out from the upper peaks—coiled and writhed out like a giant python in titanic torture. For an instant, for less than the fraction of an instant, it poised and coiled and looped as ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... not seen the incident nor the entrance of the tilbury. Rastignac turned abruptly and saw her standing before him, coquettishly dressed in a loose white cashmere gown with knots of rose-colored ribbon here and there; her hair was carelessly coiled about her head, as is the wont of Parisian women in the morning; there was a soft fragrance about her—doubtless she was fresh from a bath;—her graceful form seemed more flexible, her beauty more luxuriant. Her eyes glistened. A young man can see everything at a ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... had now to exercise the greatest caution to get near enough to club them, the need of eggs became imperative. One day Jean and Harlan were racing along the beach headed for the south cliffs to make their accustomed search. A rope coiled about the young man's waist held to him a bucket which dangled and bobbed as he ran. The afternoon was sunny and a fresh sea wind lifted the hair on their bare heads. The surf ringed the grey sands at their feet with ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... in its old-fashioned furnishing. It was large and well lighted. The gray rag carpet—woven from rags sewed by Aunt Maria and Phoebe—was decorated with wide stripes of green. Upon the carpet were spread numerous rugs, some made of braided rags coiled into large circles, others were hooked rugs gaily ornamented with birds and flowers and graceful scroll designs. The low-backed chairs were painted dull green and each bore upon the four inch panel of its back a hand-painted floral design. On the haircloth ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... affect the reading. This may be accomplished by driving a small nail near each end of the beam, the exact location being on the neutral plane and vertically above each knife-edge support. Between these nails a fine wire is stretched free of the beam and kept taut by means of a rubber band or coiled spring on one end. Behind the wire at a point on the beam midway between the supports a steel scale graduated to hundredths of an inch is fastened vertically by means of thumb-tacks or small screws passing through holes in it. Attachment should be ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... you will find that whenever electricity flows through a wire that is coiled around a piece of iron, the iron becomes magnetized just as when it is ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... coiled to strike, and had, in accordance with their habit, sounded their rattles. This had aroused the whole den, many snakes appearing from under ground, or crawling from ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... battle of Lexington reached him, he offered his services to Congress. He was made First Lieutenant of the Alfred, and over this ship hoisted the first emblem shown on an American naval vessel. The design of this flag was a pine tree with a rattlesnake coiled at the roots and the motto, "Don't tread on me," on a background of ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... Esther enter, and for a moment the girl stood staring at her in blank amazement. She could not see her face, but she could see that the woman was small and slightly built, with a wealth of jet black hair coiled in becoming carelessness with a couple of yellow pins to ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... weird Druid held his mistletoe; There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright, The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low; And there the Western savage ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... years of his reign, he had a heavy, continual struggle, getting his finance and other branches of administration extricated from their strangling imbroglios of coiled nonsense, and put upon a rational footing. His labor in these years, the first of little Fritz's life, must have been great; the pushing and pulling strong and continual. The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it is the fruit of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... four feet bunched together and her great fiddle-head lost in their midst. And at the first jump Tresler shot a foot out of the saddle, lurched forward and then back, and finally came down where he had started from. And as he fell heavily into the saddle his hand struck against a coiled blanket strap behind the cantle, and he instinctively grabbed hold of it and clung to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... covered with satin, velvet, or brocade, about the lawn, with little tables before them on which was spread all the cooked food, apparently, that the castle contained. When their admiring relatives first caught sight of the twins, Angelica—who had coiled up her hair, and wore a long black dress, borrowed from her Aunt Fulda's wardrobe; a white apron with a bib, and a white cap like a nurse's, the property of one of the lady's maids—was pouring tea out of a silver urn, and Diavolo, in his shirt sleeves, with a serviette under ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... his university life here. Some of the cruel, practical jokes inflicted upon the timid and delicate nature sound like the modern days of "hazing freshmen." Among his other fancies and fears, Gray was known to be especially afraid of fire, and kept always coiled up in his room a rope-ladder, in case of emergency. By a preconcerted signal, on a dark winter night, a tremendous cry of fire was raised in the court below, which caused the young poet to leap out of bed and to hastily descend his rope-ladder into a mighty tub of ice-cold ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... like that little creature at her feet. But the poison seemed kindling afresh in her brain; her fancies grew wild and terrible; she was climbing mountains, sinking deep, deep, deep into the very bowels of the earth, where serpents coiled and hissed, and writhed with horrid joy as they saw her descend. Now she clung to the point of some sharp rock, holding on with her fingers, while those huge serpents trailed themselves upward, crawling slowly from the abyss from ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... first onset the mulatto had the best of it; his lithe dark limbs coiled about his adversary with paralyzing force: but soon the greater weight of the English youth began to tell; his young, well-knit figure straightened ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... text tells us what we may all be. There is no heart without its deity. Alas! alas! for the many listening to me now whose spirits are like some of those Egyptian temples, which had in the inmost shrine a coiled-up serpent, the mummy of a monkey, or some other ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... heard, she was not prepossessed in the lady's favor; but, curious to know why she was there at this early hour, she hastened the making of her toilet, and went down to the parlor, where Madam Conway sat, coiled in one corner of the sofa, which she had satisfied herself was covered with real brocatel, as were also the chairs within the room. The tables of rosewood and marble, and the expensive curtains had none of them escaped her notice, and in a mood which more common furniture would ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... forehead, and falls behind on her neck and shoulders; the eyes and eyebrows are black, and the ears are of extraordinary size; the bust is almost entirely bare. But the curious feature of the little figure is that around her are coiled three snakes. One, which is grasped in the right hand, passes up the arm, descends behind the shoulders and down the left arm to the hand, which holds the tail. Two other snakes are interlaced around her hips, and a fourth ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... may not necessarily be an ignorant man. The primitive hunter stood in the forest. For him to be a hunting-sage, was to know the weather, traps, weapons, the times, and the lairs and ways of beasts. He knew lions and monkeys, the coiled serpent and the serpent that hissed by the ruined wall; the ways of the wolf, the jackal, and the kite; the manners of the bear and the black panther in the jungle-wilds. Kipling is the brother of that early ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... might have called for more, but there came, on tiptoe, the steward, bowing, presenting a telegram on a tray of silver; and Crawford's heart stopped, and he stared at the bit of paper as though it concealed a coiled snake. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... lightly with a cool, sweet-smelling finger. Miss Honey smiled uncertainly, but Caroline edged away. There was something about this beautiful tall lady she could not understand, something that alternately attracted and repelled. She was grown up, certainly; her skirts, her size, and her coiled hair proved that conclusively, and the servants obeyed her without question. But what was it? She was not like other grown-up people one knew. One moment she sparkled at you and the next moment she forgot you. It was perfectly obvious that she wanted the General only because Delia had not wanted ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... strengthened by braces and a king-post to make it lighter and cheaper. The capstan consists of an upright shaft, upon which are fixed two drums; about which a rope may be wound up, and two levers or arms by which it may be turned round. There is also a screw of iron coiled round the lower part of the shaft, to show the properties of the screw as a mechanic power. The rope which goes round the drum passes over one of the pulleys near to the top of the frame, and under another pulley ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... than the other, and on his chest and on his body were pictures of birds, and beasts, and strange things. On his chest was a great inkoos with one eye covered, and on his back a hut with trees growing straight up into the air from it. On his loins was a lion of great fierceness, and coiled round his waist was a hissing mamba (snake). We were sore afraid, for the white baas told us he was bewitched, and that if harm came to either he would uncover the closed eye of the great inkoos upon his ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... sleeper!"—he smashed with his foot the hookah that sat on the marble floor, its long stem coiled like a snake—"While you busied over such, and ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... the invisible garment that had coiled itself about him. He tore it from him and became visibly a man ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the whole party made their way silently through the woods. Three men were sent round to the side of the castle opposite that from which Cuthbert was to shoot. The length of light string was carefully coiled on the ground, so as to unwind with the greatest facility, and so offer as little resistance to the flight of the arrow as might be. Then, all being in readiness, Cuthbert attached the end to an arrow, and drawing the bow to its full compass, let fly the arrow. All held their breath; but no ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... about her, appealing to old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in him. But it was a part of his business ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... they were amazed and horrified to see a spotted green snake coiled comfortably up in the pinafore. It didn't appear to like being looked at by them, for it raised its curious heart-shaped head and flicked its little ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... understand me, and giving a couple of turns round, he coiled himself up, and in a moment was fast asleep. I do not think that he had been asleep ten minutes before he jumped up, wagged his tail, and ran forward, as much ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... rusted, lay half buried in ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the black muzzle of the gun. The snake instantly re-coiled to repeat its venomous stroke, and though Donald could easily have killed it as he had scores of its kind, the presence of this hideous and sole representative of life in that place of the dead so filled him with horror that he turned and fled to his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the levity, cold, but none of the six could really believe it. However, after Hilton had coiled a twenty-penny spike into a perfect helix between his fingers, and especially after he and Temple had each chewed up and swallowed a piece of uranexite, there were no ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... caves black shadows lie That shall be lifted never more. Come, I Enter! Know thou what treasure by the sea I gathered other time." Therewith showed he Hid 'mong the high heaped rocks a dusky grot Where never sunshine fell. A dismal spot Where dank the sea-weeds coiled and cold the air Swept through. And stooping, Eblis downward rolled Before her webs of woven stuff, in fold Of purple sheen, enwrought with flecks of gold. Great wefts of scarlet and of blue, thick strewn With pearls, or cleft ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... what, then, has given rise to all those coiled plungings of the crest hither and thither, yet with such ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... trifles of our daily lives, the fleeting satisfactions of our animal nature, the shallow wisdom which bids us 'let sleeping dogs lie,' all conspire to mask, to many consciences, their unrest and their sin. We abstain from lifting the curtain behind which the serpent lies coiled in our hearts, because we dread to see its loathly length, and to rouse it to lift its malignant head, and to strike with its forked tongue. But sooner or later—may it not be too late—we shall be set face to face with the dark recess, and discover the foul reptile that has all the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... me last Wednesday. What a beauty she is! Such color in her cheeks! It was like the apricots when the sun was on them. Such shining black hair so wonderfully braided and coiled! Such sparkling, flashing black eyes! Such a tall, splendid figure! Such a rosy mouth! It seemed as if it was made for ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... ornaments for the ears and pendants for the neck, made of thin sheets of gold; turtles and human skulls cast in a single piece; and most curious of all, odd pieces of filigree where the gold-wire was coiled into strange human heads. One of these was made half of gold and half of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... two occupants, a variety of household goods, and a dog or two coiled and motionless, his sharp nose resting between his outstretched forepaws. The tame crow occupied an ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... men in hiding. But its most singular and most romantic aspect was the well-known fact, that many women essayed the breaking of the border blockade. Almost all of them were successful; more than one well nigh invaluable, for the information she brought, sewed in her riding-habit, or coiled in her hair. Nor were these coarse camp-women, or reckless adventurers. Belle Boyd's name became historic as Moll Pitcher; but others are recalled—petted belles in the society of Baltimore, Washington and Virginia summer resorts of yore—who ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... southwestern archeological expedition, found a number of these structures and excavated some of them. From remains thus found he concluded that they were sun-temples, as he termed them, and that they were covered with a roof made of coiled strands of grass, after a manner analogous to that in which pueblo baskets are made. A somewhat similar class of structures was found by the writer on the upper Rio Verde, but these were probably thrashing floors. ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... Hervey, who was not in a masquerade dress. He had laid a wager with one of his acquaintance, that he could perform the part of the serpent, such as he is seen in Fuseli's well-known picture. For this purpose he had exerted much ingenuity in the invention and execution of a length of coiled skin, which he manoeuvred with great dexterity, by means of internal wires; his grand difficulty had been to manufacture the rays that were to come from his eyes. He had contrived a set of phosphoric rays, which he was certain would charm all the fair daughters of Eve. He ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... then scampering off among the boughs; or a troop of monkeys would come chattering above our heads, not so easily put to flight. Birds of gay plumage flitted before us from bough to bough; and a huge snake, which had been coiled round a branch, giving a hiss at us, went off among the underwood into the depths of ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... mountains were no longer sterile-seeming. The road coiled up and up snakily, between rows of leering cactus; and far below the densely wooded heights lay lovely plains through which a great river wandered. There was a homely smell of mint, and the country did not look to Stephen like the Africa he had imagined. All ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... his soul, the stain of a mean action never rested on his conduct. But,"—and her hand involuntarily tightened around mine,—"he has qualities fatal to the peace of those who love him,—fatal to his own happiness; suspicion haunts him like a dark shadow,—jealousy, like a serpent, lies coiled ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... foot farther to gain the view which would reveal the truth of the situation. He extended his hand upward to secure the grip that was to raise his head above the level. As he did so he rested it on something cold and soft, which he instantly recognized as a coiled rattlesnake. ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... speaking of a rope that is made as its name suggests, and is very strong. If you have ever been in the West, you probably have seen a mounted cowboy carrying one of these thin but strong ropes coiled at the horn of his saddle, or dragging on the ground behind him to take ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... of additions and alterations, among which was an increase in the size and strength of the coiled springs that were used for hoisting purposes and running the dynamo. A powerful searchlight had been added, and the electrical appliances greatly increased. Among other things, he had a two horse power ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... to a girl of eighteen, and Quenrede, though she had put on a few airs to impress the schoolgirls at the Rainbow League sale, was at bottom woefully bashful. She was still in the stage when her newly-turned-up hair looked as if it were unaccustomed to be coiled round her head; she had a painful habit of blushing, and had not yet acquired that general savoir faire which comes to us with the passing of our teens. To be plunged for a whole evening into the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the Goddess of Good; the celebrated Mithras with a serpent coiled round him, between the folds of which are sculptured the signs of the zodiac; Medea and her children; a mile-stone, bearing the names of the Emperors Theodosius and Valentinian; a basso-relievo of the Muses; several sarcophagi, votive altars, cornices, pillars, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Cambridge decided, with solemn reservation. With a multitude of apologies and thanks, the two young men, more considerate and courteous in their forward and backward fashion than many a fine gentleman of the time, clambered up, and coiled themselves into corners, leaving a respectful void between them and the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... forget how cruel I was in forcing you back, where the deadly viper had been coiled; in making you take that dark, solitary walk in search of the sleeping Alice; and even last night I might have spared you your lonely night watch, if I would. Had I told you that you were too inexperienced and inefficient to be a good nurse, you would have believed me and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... rapidly entered a mark in a note-book. The boards seemed to move fairly of their own volition, like a scutellate monster of many joints, crawling from the cars, across the dock, over the side of the ship and into the black hold where presumably it coiled. There were six ships; six, many-jointed monsters creeping to their appointed places under the urging of these their masters; six young men absorbed and busy at the tallying; six crews panoplied in leather guiding the monsters ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... his light instrument from the battlemented parapet for safety, and now, pulling up his rope ladder, he coiled it on the floor. "I can drop down below if I wish to if the rain should drive me out of here," he cried as he curled ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... in the direction from which the sound proceeded, and there, coiled up behind a heap of barrels and boxes, and concealed by a sail-cloth which had been thrown over the goods to protect them from an expected shower, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... entrance to the passage, which was evidently that communicating with the pathway indicated by Ghamba as the one they were to approach by, were two powerful-looking men, stark naked, and as black as ebony, their skins shining in the light of the fire. Each man held a coiled thong in his hands, after the manner of a sailor about to heave a line. While they were looking, a woman, somewhat younger in appearance than any of those who sat by the fire, came out of the cave carrying a strong club ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... covering, that he perches on a little bamboo tower, six inches above his crown, tying down the whole concern by a string that passes behind his ears. When at leisure, he wears his long cue trailing to his feet; when busy, it is snugly coiled around his head and out of sight under his hat. The gentleman and mandarin, on the contrary, never ties up the cue, its flowing grace, like his long finger nails, being a badge of his superior condition ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the garden at sunset, her grandmother bustling in and out, talking, groaning, and, hurrying in her preparations for the anticipated undertaking, suddenly there was a rustling in the branches overhead, and a bouquet of rose-buds fell at her feet. Agnes picked it up, and saw a scrip of paper coiled among the flowers. In a moment remembering the apparition of the cavalier in the church in the morning, she doubted not from whom it came. So dreadful had been the effect of the scene at the confessional, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... by the window, tall, fragile, and exquisite, her features and outline not unlike her mother's, but frailer, softer, more delicate. The golden light struck one half of her high-bred, sensitive face, and glimmered upon her thickly-coiled flaxen hair, striking a pinkish tint from her closely-cut costume of fawn-coloured cloth with its dainty cinnamon ruchings. One little soft frill of chiffon nestled round her throat, from which the white, graceful neck and ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... star-tracks fogged, coiled, turned colorless worms of light, went into a single vast blur. Dimly Bart saw old Rugel slump forward, moaning softly; saw the old Lhari pillow his bald head on his veined arms. Then darkness took him; and thinking it was death, Bart felt only numb, regretful failure. I've ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... he saw her in Bond Street with her grandmother. She was on the opposite side of the street rather ahead of him, but he knew that easy strolling walk, the flat back, and proud carriage of the head: that head with its burnished hair coiled smoothly under a bewitching hat. They stopped to look in at Asprey's window, and he dashed across the road in the full stream of traffic. Two indignant taxi-drivers swore, and he reached the curb breathless, but uninjured, just as they went ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... leaned over the grille. His large hat with its tall wings sticking from the peak was green in the daytime. But now, illuminated only by a far off torchlight and by a glowworm coiled around the band, it ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... wrapped herself about his heart. Daily her wondrous love coiled its soft folds tighter around him, squeezing from his atrabilious soul, drop by drop, its sad taciturnity and inherent morbidness, that it might later fill his empty life with a spiritual richness which he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... dark and cold, threatening snow. We had an elephant of a horse, which kicked up his heels and frisked like an awkward bull-pup, dashed down the hills like an avalanche, and carried us forward at a rapid rate. We coiled ourselves up in the hay, kept warm, and trusted our safety to Providence, for it was impossible to see the road, and we could barely distinguish the other sled, a dark speck before us. The old horse soon exhausted ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... A coiled piece of cloth, dark and menacing, ran up the mainmast of the schooner, reached the top, and then burst out, streaming at full length in the strong wind, dark as death and heavy with threat. Robert looked up and shuddered ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... right," he resumed, casting a glance at the beggar-girl, as she coiled up under the shawl, "she's got ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the stranger. Then he moved toward the corral gate, the coiled riata in one hand, the bridle rein in the other. "I'll catch up a horse for you," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, as if ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... hung a great golden disc, representing the sun. At the far end, above a marble altar, coiled a dragon with tusks of ivory and scales of jade, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... shaking and shuddering in every limb, while the murderer poured out the whisky; and again that liquor turned to snakes, and they crawled around the glass, and on the bar, and hissed, writhed, and squirmed. Then in one instant they all coiled about each other, and matted themselves into one snake, with a hundred heads; and from every head glittering eyes gleamed, and forked tongues hissed at me. I rushed from the saloon, and started, I did not know or care where, so that I might escape my tormentors. I had walked ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Mrs. Beriah Dagon, an aunt of Mr. Lawrence Newt's? She was Cecilia Bunley, sister of Mary. When she was younger she used to go to the theatre with a little green snake coiled around her arm like a bracelet. It was the most lovely green—the softest color you ever saw; it had the brightest eyes, the most sinuous grace; it had a sort of fascination, but it filled you with ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Papers like the Youth's Companion circulated among the members, suggestions as to books in the Sunday School or public library, books loaned to the children and questions as to their reading may save many a soul from the slimy trail of the serpent coiled in the ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... splintered, and a ruby-red snakelike thing poured its thick length out upon the top of the old desk. It coiled and hesitated, and then began to swim a languorous way down the mahogany slant. At the angle it waved its sizzling molten head to and fro over the closed eyes of the man beneath it. Then, in a moment, with a ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... main gaff-topsail was next set, and the Josephine was then under full sail. With the wind fair, and everything drawing, she flew through the Goulet at the rate of ten knots an hour. Peaks was as busy as a bee, and in person saw that every rope was properly coiled up or flemished, that the cable was in order to run out when needed, and in general, that everything was ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... that pervarted they'll turn round an' eat their own aigs!" suggested the woodsman, spitting thoughtfully through the open window. The cat, coiled in the sun on a log outside, sprang up angrily, glared with green eyes at the offending window, and scurried away to cleanse ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... uplifted hands, a cold sweat burst from every pore, his knees shook, and his eyes, fixed on the snake by a fascination that controlled his will, felt bursting from their sockets. After preserving its attitude for a short time, the snake, as if taking Holden under its protection, coiled itself around his feet, and lay with its head resting on his shoe, looking into the fire. As the snake turned away its bright eyes the spell that bound the Indian was dissolved. An expression of the deepest awe overspread his countenance, his lips moved, but emitted no sound, and cautiously ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... faces blackened by dust and sun, and half savage figures—carried long lances adorned with scarlet pennons, and lazos hung coiled from the pommels of their saddles. These strange attendants gave to the group that singular appearance peculiar to a cavalcade of Mexican travellers. Several mules, pack laden, and carrying enormous valises, followed in the rear. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... in the bow of the skiff, with coiled painter ready, tossed it to one of the men. The boats were straightened out, the skiff drawn alongside, and in a moment Jimmy and Bobby were aboard, with ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... drum a wire cable was coiled, and a length of the cable stretched like a snake across the field to where it ended in a swivel, made fast to the bottom of the riding car. It was not, strictly speaking, a riding car. It was a straight-up-and-down basket of tough, light ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... entirely disappear. They differ, secondly, in shape. The typical form appears to be spherical or nearly so; but from this typical form they may vary, becoming irregular or elongated. They are sometimes drawn out into long masses looking like a string of beads (Fig. 24), or, again, resembling minute coiled worms (Fig. 21), while in still other cells they may be branching like the twigs of a tree. The form and shape of the chromatin thread differs widely. Sometimes this appears to be mere reticulum (Fig. 23); at others, a short thread which is somewhat twisted or coiled (Fig. 26); while in ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... "but I am well acquainted with them and I have been bitten by a big snake that lies coiled about the universe, striking at a heart whenever he ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... knife poised, and drove downward again. Geoffrey suddenly coiled his back muscles and heaved on his left arm, yanking himself up against Dugald's chest. He snapped his hips sideward, and Dugald's knife missed him completely for the third and fatal time. The Barbarian's knife slipped upward into Dugald's rib cage, and suddenly Geoffrey was drenched with blood. ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... cautiously and looked; and there, within less than a fathom of me, was Pete Fleming, lying flat on his back, fast asleep, with a snake coiled up like a cable right in the middle of his chest. The snake's head was resting upon the top flake of his coils, with his cold, cruel eyes gazing straight at us, and his long, black, forked tongue flickering in and out of his mouth in a most ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... and met a man with a covered basket on his arm. He asked her what she was going for, and she told him she was going home for what she forgot, and the man said, 'Look in the basket, and see if that is your switch.' She looked, and there was the hair coiled up. Then he asked her if he might put it on her head, and the girl said yes, and he put it on, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... one of those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know. Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... dilute sulphuric acid, and passing an electric current through the cell, the combination exhibited the ability to give back part of the original charging current, owing to the chemical changes and reactions set up. Plante coiled up his sheets into a very handy cell like a little roll of carpet or pastry; but the trouble was that the battery took a long time to "form." One sheet becoming coated with lead peroxide and the other with finely divided or spongy ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the trouble that you have brought upon us!" He put an arrow on his string and waited for them to come out, but they were cunning, and when the last animal, a big bull, was starting out the stick grasped him by the long hair under the neck and coiled up in it, and the dog held on by the hair underneath until they were far out on the prairie, when they changed into their true shapes and drove the buffalo toward ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... point of the stern, but to the stern-thwart where it joined the gunwale. This was designed to hold the canoe at an angle against the current that would keep her out in the stream. The slack of the line was coiled neatly on ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and coiled upon her head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her black blouse was a brocaded network jacket; her white belt, compressing her slim waist, dangled with tassels; and there were other tassels on the garters at ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... not a bad move, hanging myself a little—a very little," said the young prig. He hooked up his recovered treasure; and, though smarting all over, coiled himself up in it, and in three minutes forgot present pain, past dangers ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... directions—twisted and torn, with ends that stuck up, and stray strands uncut—was wire: thick and rusty it coiled in and out between the screw pickets—cut to pieces, but still there. Men picked their way over it gingerly, stepping with care and walking round the little ridges that separated the shell holes. Festoons of it lay in these holes, and in one large crater a dead Hun lay sprawled on a ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... represents the general anatomy of the rabbit, but is especially intended to show the alimentary ( food) canal, shortened to a certain extent, and with the proportions altered, in order to avoid any confusing complications. It is evidently simply a coiled tube— coiled for the sake of packing— with occasional dilatations, and with one side-shunt, the caecum (cae.), into which the food enters, and is returned to the main line, after probably absorbent action, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... a far-away expression in Mrs. Clyde's eyes, as if she were looking beyond Blue Bonnet—back into the shadowy past. She was: Blue Bonnet with her brown hair coiled low, curling about her neck and brow, was her ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... unshaken, and he forced Merlin on. He had not proceeded far, however, when the animal uttered a cry of fright, and began beating the air with his fore hoofs. The lightning enabled Richard to discern the cause of this new distress. Coiled round the poor beast's legs, all whose efforts to disengage himself from the terrible assailant were ineffectual, was a large black snake, seemingly about to plunge its poisonous fangs into the flesh. Again having recourse to the talisman, and bending down, Richard stretched ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... rode a Mexican. He was astride a wiry gray pony, and in the strong twilight Alaire could see his every feature—the swarthy cheeks, the roving eyes beneath the black felt hat. A carbine lay across his saddle-horn, a riata was coiled beside his leg, a cartridge-belt circled his waist. There was something familiar about the fellow, but at the moment Alaire could not determine ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... child. In a tree, just above the head of the man, is an ape. His hand is open and outstretched, both in a warning and threatening position. A serpent (can), her protecting spirit, is seen at a short distance coiled, ready to spring in her defense. Near by is another serpent, entwined round the trunk of a tree. He has wounded about the head another animal, that, with its mouth open, its tongue protruding, looks at its enemy over its shoulder. Blood is seen oozing ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the next table, in front of a pale young soldier in French-blue who resembled her extraordinarily. She had high cheek bones and a forehead in which the modelling of the skull showed through the transparent, faintly-olive skin. Her heavy chestnut hair was coiled carelessly at the back of her head. She spoke very quietly, and pressed her lips together when she smiled. She ate quickly and ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... side the hill, Uncared for, well nigh grown into the ground. The tower is grey, and brown, and black, with green Patches of mildew and of ivy woven Over the sightless loopholes and the sides: And from the ivy deaf-coiled spiders dangle, Or scurry to catch food; and their fine webs Touch at your face wherever you may pass. The sun's light scorched upon it; and a fry Of insects in one spot quivered for ever, Out and in, in and out, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... great violence, continued throughout the day. An inmate of an alarming description took up its lodging in our tent during the last night, probably washed out of its hole by the rain: a large diamond snake was discovered coiled up among the flour bags, four or five ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... plug and turning a crank—for Buckville's central switchboard was many years behind the times—he unceremoniously lifted the operator's head-set from her coiled hair and fitted it upon his own head. Several times she spun the little ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... nut-brown, and artfully and scrupulously interwoven and twisted together. It seemed to stand the solitary pride of a life claiming few things of which to be proud. Blake remembered how that wealth of nut-brown hair was daily plaited and treasured and coiled and cared for, the meticulous attentiveness with which morning by morning its hip-reaching abundance was braided and twisted and built up about the small head, an intricate structure of soft wonder which midnight ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... cockpit onto the catwalk. The cabin top was just chest-high, and he could hold on by grabbing the safety rails that ran along the sides of the large sun deck. He moved swiftly along the walk to the foredeck, a small semicircular deck used primarily for docking and anchoring. The anchor line was coiled on a hook on the curving front of the cabin, and the patent anchor was stowed on the deck itself. Rick took the coil and faked down the line in smooth figure eights so it would run out without fouling, then made sure the anchor was free ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... my interest arose to boiling point. I refilled my acquaintance's mug, pressed a sovereign upon him (in honesty I must confess that he was loath to take it), and departed with the pigtail coiled neatly in an inner pocket of my jacket. I entered the house in Wade Street by the side door, and half an hour later let myself out by the front door, having ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... the Hut, and by the time several masts were carried to the same place we began to warm to the work. One of Hannam's coils of frozen rope (one hundred and twenty fathoms) had become kinked and tangled, so we dragged it up the ice-slope, straightened it out and coiled it up again. Several 'dead men' to hold the stays were sunk into ice-holes, and, during the afternoon, one mast was dragged into position by a willing crowd. Rocks were sledged to and packed around the 'dead men' in the holes to make them compact. Towards sundown snow clouds filled the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... McNaught's indicator. Upon a movable barrel A, a piece of paper is wound, the ends of which are secured by the slight brass clamps shown in the drawing. The barrel is supported by the bracket b, proceeding from the body of the indicator, and at the bottom of the barrel a watch spring is coiled with one end attached to the barrel and the other end to the bracket, so that when the barrel is drawn round by a string wound upon its lower end like a roller blind, the spring returns the barrel to its ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... GLANDS are composed of coiled tubes which lie in the deeper portion of the skin, and send up a corkscrew-like duct to open on the surface of the epidermis. They are numerous over ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... was dumb again, although I wanted to speak and tried very hard. A snake was coiled around my neck, and choked me. There is no snake in ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... them half enough, and then one of the young officers of the ship found me—he was a midshipman, I believe—and he was very good to me. He took me up and down and round and about; and then I was trying to get a little bit of a piece off a cable that lay coiled up on the deck and could not, and he said he would send me a piece; and ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... novelties which I examined was the windlass, which had the handles shipped, but I did not observe that on the top of it was coiled a large quantity of iron chain out of the way to allow of the deck being scraped. I saw that the big thing was intended to go round, so I thought that I would try if I could move it by myself. I pressed with all my force against one of the handles, ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... isn't fair—not yellow or noticeable in colour—like those dyed beauties you see about. Her hair is dark, soft and cloudy looking. And she's got a small head set like—like a lily on its stem—and her hair is parted in the middle and coiled smoothly each side and into a sort of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room. His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon. Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands. I set it on the table; then patted him, and said softly, "Lie down!" ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... her hair and brushed it satin-smooth and coiled it neatly on the nape of her white neck with the same big carved coral Spanish comb tucked into the shining mass that Octavia had worn when she sat for the portrait. Sometimes she wore the lovely black lace shawl, sometimes the creamy white embroidered silk one, and always ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... sleep. I believe that I slept very soundly without stirring my legs or arms. At last my eyes slowly opened, and horrible indeed was the spectacle which met them. The embers of the fire were before me, and close to it, as if to enjoy its warmth, lay coiled up a huge rattlesnake not two yards from me. In an instant of time I felt that its deadly fangs might be fixed in my throat. What use to me now were my fire-arms? I dared not move my hand to reach my revolver. I knew that I must not wink even an eyelid, or the deadly spring might be made. The snake ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... the best-known surgeon in the United States, and he looked like nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow. He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were always in some ungainly ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... put out of the White House; he is lawyer enough to know he must not furnish any ground for malice. He is a miserable, malicious and worthless wretch, infinitely egotistical, imagines that he did a great deal toward the election of Garfield, and upon being refused the house a serpent of malice coiled in his heart, and he determined to be ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... from the San Joaquin was riding up and down the narrow strip of sand which was a street, showing off alike his horsemanship and his drunkenness. The horse he bought, and the outfit, from the silver-trimmed saddle and bridle to the rawhide riata hanging coiled upon one side of the narrow fork and the ivory-handled Colt's revolver tucked snugly in its holster upon the other side. Pleased as a child over a Christmas stocking, he straightway mounted the beautiful ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... accumulations of cosmical matter. The most interesting specimen of a spiral nebula is situated in Canes Venatici. It consists of spiral coils emanating from a centre with a nucleus and surrounded by a narrow luminous ring. In appearance it resembles the coiled ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... that the H of Landa's alphabet is a tie of cord, while the Egyptian H is a twisted cord. . . . But the most striking coincidence of all occurs in the coiled or curled line representing Landa's U; for it is absolutely identical with the Egyptian curled U. The Mayan word for to wind or bend is Uuc; but why should Egyptians, confined as they were to the valley of the Nile, and abhorring as they did the sea and sailors, write their U precisely ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... skies And noise of rising storm came fiercer Sins The rearmost of the Ten, Patigha—Hate— With serpents coiled about her waist, which suck Poisonous milk from both her hanging dugs, And with her curses mix their angry hiss. Little wrought she upon that Holy One Who with his calm eyes dumbed her bitter lips And made her black snakes writhe to hide their fangs. Then followed Ruparaga—Lust ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... finished our building operations, when Lucien, who had been prowling about, lifting up stones and looking under stubs in order to find insects, loudly called out to me. When I got up to him, I saw at the bottom of a hole a coral-serpent, measuring about a yard in length. The reptile was coiled up, and remained motionless while we admired its beautiful red skin, divided at intervals with rings of shining black. L'Encuerado promptly cut a forked stick and pinned the animal down to the ground. The prisoner immediately tried to stand up on end; its jaws distended, and its head assumed a menacing ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... readily do, as the coiled spring inside him was so easy to bend, Jack touched the China Cat. But Jack must have leaned too far, or too suddenly, for he brushed the ...
— The Story of a China Cat • Laura Lee Hope
... Edwardes came down stairs Mary, who had slipped timidly away, edged into the room, bashful and adorned. She had put on her best dress, and her lustrous hair was braided and coiled on her head, after the instruction of one of her fashion plates. As the visitor saw her he once more checked his inclination to laugh, for the marvelous mismated eyes were fixed on his face and they held an almost passionate anxiety to be approved ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... my part, I should only regard him as one to be watched jealously and carefully avoided. There is something creepingly malignant in the look which shoots out from his glance, like that of the rattlesnake, when coiled and partially concealed in the brake. When I looked upon his eye, as it somewhat impertinently singled me out for observation, I almost felt disposed to lift my heel as if the venomous ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... looked in at the window. At first, he thought that there was no one there, and that the blaze was reddening only the old beams in the ceiling and the dark walls; but peering in more narrowly, he saw the object of his search coiled asleep before it on the floor. He passed quickly to the door, opened it, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... was the most radiant girl he had ever looked upon. The simple costume was wonderfully effective. The white, full throat and the curves of the neck running to the shoulders were revealed by the low rolling collar, and the hair coiled low ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... she came to a dwarf oak tree, with a deep hollow in the ground between its trunk and the hedge; the hollow was half filled with fallen dead leaves, and Fan, turning them with her foot, found that under the surface they were dry, and this spot being the most tempting one she had yet seen, she coiled herself up in the leafy bed to rest. And lying there in the shelter, after eating her bread, she very soon fell asleep, in spite ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... He coiled the whole thing up at his feet, and then, with a feeling of relief and pleasure which cannot be described, he looked about to see whether he was alone. Alone he was, and master of the situation. ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... gaze with dropped jaw at a spiral of smoke that coiled and twisted in the lee of the mizzenmast twenty ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... "Burn him!" It ran like an electric current. Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts? Nothing can be more terrible. A railroad tie was sunk into the ground, the rope was removed, and a chain brought and securely coiled around the victim and the stake. There he stood, a man only in form and stature, every sign of degeneracy stamped upon his countenance. His eyes were dull and vacant, indicating not a single ray of thought. Evidently the realization of his fearful fate had robbed him of whatever reasoning power ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... others are cleaning their rifles. The proceedings are superintended by a contemplative tabby cat, coiled up in a niche, like a feline flower in a ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... before you had time!" said Rento, getting up from the spot where his length had been coiled, and speaking with a slow drawl that lent emphasis to the words. "You ever lay a hand on that boy, and it's the last you ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... shivering a little in the pale autumn sunshine, but laughing and pushing each other as they gathered closer around the man with the hand-organ. As the wheezy notes were ground out, the man unwound the rope that was coiled around his wrist, and bade the monkey at the other end of it step ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... to one side of the room and coiled itself up under a grating. Everard King came out, and taking the iron handle which I have mentioned, he began to turn it. As he did so the line of bars in the corridor began to pass through a slot in the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was hurting me again and I could not speak, but without waiting for me to answer he coiled the rope about my right arm, and told me to stay where I was, and hold fast to the boat, while he climbed the rock and took possession of it in the name ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Judith's dainty blue-and-white bedroom. Here all had been set in order by Mrs. Simpson. A great vase of rosebuds, brought by Jose this morning, accepted by Mrs. Simpson with suspicion and searched carefully for a lurking scorpion or a coiled rattlesnake, stood on a table by the window. On entering the room a sort of awkward shyness fell over both Lee and Carson. Hampton, freed now and standing alone, though under Carson's hard eye, stared at ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... in the course of which Beowulf's sword and strength both failed him. The Firedrake coiled its long, scaly folds about the aged hero, and was about to crush him to death when the faithful Wiglaf, perceiving his master's imminent danger, sprang forward and attacked the monster so fiercely as to cause a diversion and make ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... almost imperceptible current of air, this was a ghoulish place—suggesting a rookery for shrouded spirits which perched along the bonelike branches awaiting their resurrection. Here, too, upon some convenient root of these gray ancients—perhaps the longest lived of our southern trees—lay coiled the dozing moccasin. And from this grim place we merged once more into the jungle where my clothes again became the prey ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... nudged elbows while Mose threw the saddle on the cringing brute and cinched it till the pinto, full of suffering, drew great, quiet gulps of breath and groaned. Swift, practiced, relentless, Mose dragged at the latigo till the wide hair web embedded itself in the pony's hide. Having coiled the rope neatly out of the way, while the broncho stood with drooping head but with a dull red flame in his eyes, Mose flung the rein over the pony's head. Then pinto woke up. With a mighty sidewise bound he attempted to leave his rider, but Mose, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... jaw was missing, and a portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the second finger of the left hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the coiled spring is too limited to be employed upon a larger scale. The use of the steam-engine is accompanied with a gradual consumption of the resources of the Balloon in ballast, and consequently in gas, the one being exactly answerable to the other, and is therefore not calculated for voyages of long duration. ...
— A Project for Flying - In Earnest at Last! • Robert Hardley
... well-known sound broke upon Chimo's ear, he was lying coiled up in front of the kitchen fire, being privileged to do so in consequence of his position as Edith's favourite. The cook, having gone out a few minutes previously, had left Chimo to enjoy his slumbers in solitude, so ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... fruits. About it sat a very noble company of some half-dozen men and two very resplendent women. One of these was slight and little, very dark and vivacious with eyes full of a malicious humour. The other, of very noble proportions, of a fine, willowy height, with coiled ropes of hair of a colour such as I had never dreamed could be found upon human being. It was ruddy and glowed like metal. Her face and neck—and of the latter there was a very considerable display—were ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... quickly aside to avoid the recoil. He stepped back, and stood, on the side of the gun opposite to that on which the cartridges were stored, so that there might be no chance of a spark from his match setting fire to the ammunition. Spare match, newly soaked in saltpetre water, lay coiled in a little tub beside the gun. The cartridges, contained in latten buckets, were placed in a barrel by the gun and covered over with a skin of leather. The heavy shot were arranged in shot racks, known ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... indeed, were gone, and the preacher, and the choir; and the room was cold. But there was a great green cross over the pulpit, and words along the walls, and festoons upon the galleries, and great wreaths, like vast green serpents, coiled about the cold pillars. The church of the Orthodox parish of —— had been fairly dressed ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... you want to," said Eva, her handsome face burning red with wrath, and she went out of the room, which was suffocating with the fumes of the burning wool, tossing her black head, all banged and coiled ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sparrow, tender little ones, upon the topmost branch, nestling beneath the leaves; eight were they and the mother of the little ones was the ninth, and the snake swallowed these cheeping pitifully. And the mother fluttered around wailing for her dear little ones; but he coiled himself and caught her by the wing as she screamed about him. Now when he had swallowed the sparrow's little ones and the mother with them, the god who revealed him made of him a sign; for the son of crooked-counselling Kronos turned him to stone, and we stood by and marvelled to see what was ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... interest arose to boiling point. I refilled my acquaintance's mug, pressed a sovereign upon him (in honesty I must confess that he was loath to take it), and departed with the pigtail coiled neatly in an inner pocket of my jacket. I entered the house in Wade Street by the side door, and half an hour later let myself out by the front door, having cast off my ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... May.—At Stella's request, I have returned to Penrose—with but one fellow-traveler. My dear old companion, the dog, is coiled up, fast asleep at my feet, while I write these lines. Penrose has gained strength enough to keep me company in the sitting-room. In a few days more ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... deadly pale,— Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring, And, smitten through their leprous mail, Strike right and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... pieces are held together closely by bands of rattan coiled around them at equal intervals. A coating of beeswax serves to preserve the wood and at the same time to impart a finished appearance to the sheath. Frequently pot black is mixed with the beeswax, and on the upper and central parts, and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Andy, Bill has been out West himself, and he's seen the villages of the prairie dogs, and the little owls sitting on the tops of the hillocks which are on the roofs of the prairie dogs' houses, and the rattlesnakes coiled up here and there in the hot, sunny hollows. There were lots and lots of the prairie dogs, millions and millions of them, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... St. Louis at the drink-houses, only prettier. A soft, thick carpet was on the floor, and a square glass lamp hung from the ceiling. I sat cross-legged on the floor, and he on a sofa, his feet cocked on a chair, and his tail coiled under him, comfortable as traders in a lodge. He hollered something, I couldn't make out, and in comes two black crook-shanked devils with a round bench and a glass with cigars in it. They vamosed, and the old coon, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... of shoulder proportionate to her height. She had none of that exaggerated slope which our grandmothers esteemed, yet she lacked no grace of womanhood on that account, and in her walk she was light-footed as a deer. Her hair was dark brown, and she wore it coiled upon the nape of her neck; a bright colour burned in her cheeks, and her eyes, of a very clear grey, met the eyes of those to whom she talked with a most engaging frankness. And in character she was the counterpart of her looks. She was honest; she had ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the appearance of long, delicate black hairs, which move about with great activity amidst the mud of pools and ditches. These worms, in the early stages of their existence, inhabit the bodies of insects, and may be found coiled up within the grasshopper, which thus gives shelter to a guest exceeding many times the length of the body of its host. Sooner or later the hair-worm, or Gordius aquaticus as the naturalist terms it, leaves the body of the insect, and lays ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... larger dishes, some containing preserved Strasburg tongues, enclosed in bladders coloured a bright red and varnished, so that they looked quite sanguineous beside the pale sausages and trotters; then there were black-puddings coiled like harmless snakes, healthy looking chitterlings piled up two by two; Lyons sausages in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; hot pies, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great glazed joints of veal and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... high spirits at her success, next declared that she must arrange Deena's hair, and she pushed her into a low chair in front of the dressing table, and fluffed the golden mane high above the temples, and coiled and pinned it into waves and curls that caught the sunlight on their silken sheen and gave it back. A very beautiful young woman was reflected in old Mother Ponsonby's small looking-glass, a face of character and spirit, in ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... I was still haunted by a lingering suspicion of the machine and its inventor; but this experiment went far to destroy it. Even if the motive power was derived from a coiled spring, or compressed air, or electricity, in the box, how was it possible to make it act without the resistance offered by the air? Magnetism was equally out of the question, since no conceivable arrangement of magnets could have brought about the movements I had seen. Either I was hypnotised, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... as she watched Josie O'Gorman make herself ready to apply for a housemaid's position. First the henna wig was pulled off and Josie brushed out her neat sandy braids that had been tightly coiled around her head. She parted her hair in the middle and then pulled it tightly back in a hard knot, carefully disclosing her ears, something no person of any breeding was supposed to do at that time. The knot was placed at exactly ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... and valiant, but in understanding, also, and in gentleness, superior to his condition, and more of a Grecian than the people of his country usually are. When he first came to be sold at Rome, they say a snake coiled itself upon his face as he lay asleep, and his wife, who at this latter time also accompanied him in his flight, his country-woman, a kind of prophetess, and one of those possessed with the bacchanal frenzy, declared that it was a sign portending great ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... not a new rope, but was strong save in that one spot. Ann coiled it, and although it did not have the "feel" of the fine hemp, or the good hair rope that is part of the cowman's equipment, her hands and arm tingled to lassoo ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded, Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled, Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled. Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird: Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred. Let the clarion sound from westward, let the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... interminable length, ended in square rooms, in the middle of which pits had been constructed, to which we descended by means of crampons or spiral staircases. These pits led us into other rooms, from which opened out other corridors embellished in the same bizarre manner with sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbolic tau, pedum, and baris, prodigious works which no living eye should ever see, interminable legends in granite which only the dead throughout eternity have ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... the open door of the galley, where the cross, sleepy cook was coaxing his stove to burn, a path of light lay across the deck, showing a slice of steel bulwark with ropes coiled on the pins, and above it the arched foot of the mainsail. In the darkness forward, where the port watch of the Villingen was beginning the sea day by washing down decks, the brooms swished briskly and the head-pump clacked like a ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... after the messenger had been stowed away, the cables coiled in the tiers, and the ropes flemished down on deck, the captain made his appearance, and directed the first-lieutenant to send aft the newly impressed men. In few words he pointed out to them the necessity of their servitude; and concluded ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and the closing of the door, together with the draught of cold air, had awakened a little man who occupied that corner of the chimney nook which faced old Matthew. Coiled up with his legs under him on the warm stone seat, his head resting against one of the two walls that bolstered him up on either hand, beneath a great flitch of bacon that hung there to dry, he had lain asleep throughout the preceding conversation, only punctuating ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... though they had unquestionably only third-class tickets. They had the good family's dog with them, and after an unintelligible appeal to us and to the young English couple in the other corner, they remained and banished any misgivings they had by cheerful dialogue. The dog coiled himself down at my feet and put his nose close to my ankles, so that without rousing his resentment I could not express in Spanish my indignation at what I felt to be an outrageous intrusion: servants, we all are, but in ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... there was not any human society. The fire crouched on its ashes. It was on a little circular eminence of mossed rock; black sticks, and brushwood, and dry fern, and split logs, pitchy to the touch, lay about; in the centre of them the fire coiled sullenly among its ashes, with a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... its nail one of the little wooden slabs, and showed her the roots coiled about it, with the cluster of bulbs. The flower was snow-white and shaped like a butterfly. The fringe of the lip was of a delicate rose-pink, and at the base of it were two spots of rich maroon, each with a central spot of the most vivid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... vaguely that he meant to say something else when he began; but she forgot to wonder what it was when she saw what he brought out of a little corner cupboard. It was a teapot of some fine, glistening purple ware, coiled over by golden dragons with gilded claws and scales. The lid looked like a beautiful golden flower and the handle was a coil of a dragon's tail. Rachel sat and looked ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... matter could generally be detected. On the other hand, in bladders containing either one large or several small decayed animals, the processes presented a widely different appearance. Six such bladders were carefully examined; one contained an elongated, coiled-up larva; another a single large entomostracan crustacean, and the others from two to five smaller ones, all [page 412] in a decayed state. In these six bladders, a large number of the quadrifid processes contained transparent, often yellowish, more or ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... young and inexperienced as she stood there, a slim girlish figure with masses of burnished hair the colour of ripe corn, braided and coiled as closely as possible round her small head, but there was no trace of timidity or subservience in her manner. In the slight form, with the milk-white skin, delicate profile and exquisite hands, there was a distinction that struck her employer as quite absurdly ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... slacker—Hugh! How did his father dare say it? A poisonous terror, colder than the fear of death, crawled into her soul and hid there. Was it possible that Hugh, brilliant, buoyant, temperamental Hugh was—that? The days went on, and the cold, vile thing stayed coiled in her soul. It was on the very day war was declared that young Hugh injured his knee, a bad injury. When he was carried home, when the doctor cut away his clothes and bent over the swollen leg and said wise ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... warmth, and will remain coiled up for hours in any snug retreat where they can find this very necessary element of their existence. The following anecdote well ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... long time after he had rolled himself in his own blanket Philip lay awake, wondering at the strangeness of this thing that had happened to him. It was Her hair that he had seen shining this night under the old spruce, lustrous and soft, and coiled in its simple glory, as he had seen it last on the night when Chesbro had broken in on them at the ball. It was very easy for him to imagine that it had been Her face, with soul and heart and love added to its beauty. More than ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... with a cockade, of course, to imply their mistresses have seen service. I know but of one who sports any heraldic ornament, and that is the female Giovanni, who has the very appropriate crest of a serpent coiled, and preparing to spring upon its prey, a la Cavendish. The elegante in the dark vis, to whom our friend Horace is paying court, is the ci-devant Lady Ros—b—y, otherwise ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... said: 'Either the baron will escape, or this letter will be taken to the Duc de Richelieu.' I voted for the baron's escape, I assure you. The abbe procured all that was necessary; he met me at a rendezvous which I appointed in a quiet spot; he coiled all his rope about my body, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... came to Judith's dainty blue-and-white bedroom. Here all had been set in order by Mrs. Simpson. A great vase of rosebuds, brought by Jose this morning, accepted by Mrs. Simpson with suspicion and searched carefully for a lurking scorpion or a coiled rattlesnake, stood on a table by the window. On entering the room a sort of awkward shyness fell over both Lee and Carson. Hampton, freed now and standing alone, though under Carson's hard eye, ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... remember two of those ominous snakes, each of which was as thick as the calf of a man's leg, and in colour resembling a dolphin in the water, crept at different times into my mother's night-house, where I always lay with her, and coiled themselves into folds, and each time they crowed like a cock. I was desired by some of our wise men to touch these, that I might be interested in the good omens, which I did, for they were quite harmless, and would tamely suffer themselves to be handled; and then they ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... it was a fell, fell place, With dead black trees all round, And a quag that boiled and writhed and coiled Where ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... but gradually the captain shot ahead, and it became evident that his harpooner, Amos Parr, was to have the honour of harpooning the first whale. Amos pulled the bow-oar, and behind him was the tub with the line coiled away, and the harpoon bent on to it. Being an experienced whaleman, he evinced no sign of excitement, save in the brilliancy of his dark eye and a very slight flush on his bronzed face. They had now neared the whale ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... is twenty-five or thirty feet long in a full-grown man; but it is so coiled up and folded away that it occupies but little space. It begins at the mouth, and ends at the lower part of the trunk. The greater part of it is coiled up in ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear "Go below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping and shaking the mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in or be cut adrift, or the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... alone stop it. Here were no suffocating, faltering creatures. Here were beings possessed of their full vigor, each one equal to three of us even as the Professor had conjectured. Their only weak points were their tentacles which trailed outside the glass cases. But these they kept coiled close, so that to reach them and hack at them we had to step within range of their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... which is very remarkable, accords perfectly with the effects observed in solid helices where wires are coiled over wires to the amount of five or six or more layers in succession, no diminution of effect on the outer ones being occasioned by ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... strips. Unlike the second weave described, the warp strips do not pass alternately above and below the horizontal foundation, but retain the same relation to it throughout the entire length of each strip. A coiled weave (Fig. 24) is used in the manufacture of tobacco boxes (Plate XIX) and in the rims of women's baskets. In this type the foundation consists of a series of horizontal rattan strips or rods which are ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life, when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever been ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... contrary to the sound tradition, "One hand for yourself and one for the owners." I believe the old English phrase ran, "One for yourself and one for the king." Then, when all was over and snug once more, the men down from aloft, the rigging coiled up again on its pins, there succeeded the delightful relaxation from work well done and finished, the easy acceptance of the quieting yet stimulating effect of the strong air, enjoyed in indolence; for nothing ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... a short loose garment of the smock pattern, and having his head bare, so that I could see his pigtail coiled upon his yellow crown. That he carried a cord, I perceived in the instant of his spring, and that he had whipped it about Smith's throat with unerring dexterity was evidenced by the one, short, strangled cry that came ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... the capillitium in these species are usually much coiled and entangled, but when straightened out they are seen to be very long, but few in number, fixed at one end and ...
— The Myxomycetes of the Miami Valley, Ohio • A. P. Morgan
... within, for it was enchanted. 'Here,' said he to himself, 'must I find the prize the good fairy told me of.' So he once more searched the whole palace through, till at last he found a white snake, lying coiled up on a cushion in one ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... stern, but to the stern-thwart where it joined the gunwale. This was designed to hold the canoe at an angle against the current that would keep her out in the stream. The slack of the line was coiled neatly on ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... her appearance in a kind of Hungarian or Polish costume; for the November weather was chilly, and unusually so that day. She wore a tightly fitting velvet gown, with sable-edged tunic, reaching to the knee; and her hair was loosely coiled beneath a large hat, also trimmed with sable, to match ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... the flag of the State, with its pillars, its sentinel, and its legend of "Wisdom, Justice, and Moderation." The design of the other was entirely new to Little Compton. It was a pine tree on a field of white, with a rattlesnake coiled at its roots, and the inscription, "DON'T TREAD ON ME!" A few hours later Uncle Abner Lazenberry made his appearance in front of Compton's store. He had just hitched his horse to the rack near ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... sword and his corselet of blue steel inlaid with gold. Then he put on his head a steel and gold helmet with dragon crest, and slung on his back a shield of bronze wrought all over with cunning hammer-work of serpentine lines that swelled and sank upon the surface, and coiled in mazy knots, or flowed in long sweeping curves like waves of the sea when they gather might and volume for their leap upon the sounding shore. In the glimmering dawn, through the empty streets of the fair city, they rode forth alone and took their way ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... gradually grew lighter and lighter until he could see as well as if it had been daylight; but there was no sun. Finally he came to a section of this passage that was wider for a short distance, and then closing abruptly continued in a narrow path; just where this section narrowed two huge serpents were coiled, and rearing their heads, hissed at him as he approached, but he showed no fear, and as soon as he came close to them they withdrew quietly and let him pass. At the next place, where the passage opened into a wider section, were two grizzly bears prepared to attack him, but ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... picture of this world of theirs, with a lovely rainbow bridge arching up over the sea to the earth, and a great coiled serpent, holding his tail in his mouth, lying in mid-ocean like a ring around the land. Perhaps you will some day read about it all, but at present we have only to do with the Frost Giants; for I want to tell you, that, although no one now thinks of believing ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... within and outside the bay, with their headlights showing like twinkling stars. The St. Ives men are not dependent on pilchards only, happily for them; in winter their seines take many mullet, which are mostly sent to Paris. The shore-seine used for these is comparatively small; it is coiled and passed round the school, and the two ends then drawn ashore. Here, as elsewhere, the men are usually parcelled into companies—a kind of limited share-company; they take turns in shooting the nets, and profits are shared. The control of affairs by husband and wife is a different sort of share-company; ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... dined my fill Upon a Caxton,—you know Will,— I crawled forth o'er the colophon To bask awhile within the sun; And having coiled my sated length, I felt anon my whilom strength Slip from me gradually, till deep I dropped away in dreamful sleep, Wherein I walked an endless maze, And dined ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... distracted—his blood seemed to have been turned to fire—he clenched his hands, and he gnashed his teeth, and exhibited the wildest symptoms of madness. About ten o'clock he desired fuel for a large fire to be brought into the kitchen, and got a strong cord, which he coiled, and threw carelessly on the table. The family were then ordered to bed. About eleven they were all asleep; and at the solemn hour of twelve he heaped additional fuel upon the living turf, until the blaze shone with scorching ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... rowed on until they were far out of sight of land and about where he thought the great snake was coiled in the bottom of the sea; then he laid down the oars, as fresh and strong apparently as when he got into the boat. It was the strangest fishing party the world ever saw, and the most wonderful fishing. No sooner had Hymer's ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... nearly so; but from this typical form they may vary, becoming irregular or elongated. They are sometimes drawn out into long masses looking like a string of beads (Fig. 24), or, again, resembling minute coiled worms (Fig. 21), while in still other cells they may be branching like the twigs of a tree. The form and shape of the chromatin thread differs widely. Sometimes this appears to be mere reticulum (Fig. 23); at others, a short thread which is somewhat ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... of finding or tracing trichinae in pork by means of a microscope is the following: Cut a very thin longitudinal slice of the muscle by means of a very sharp knife or razor. Press it between two glass slips, and examine by transmitted light, The coiled trichinae may be readily ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... sky and already morning was at hand. In the growing light it might be seen that Phoebe had an unusually beautiful face. Her eyes, of very dark blue, were almost black at times; her reddish brown hair, coiled into a thick knot on her neck, grew low on her forehead. Her features were well molded, her mouth fine and strong, and a full, rounded chin added sweetness ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... that the fangs of the rattlers are secretly withdrawn before the creatures are handled, but this has been proved to be untrue. The most accepted theory is that the snakes are never permitted to coil, and cannot strike unless coiled, while the weird chanting and graceful undulating motions of the dancers in some manner "charms" or intoxicates the serpents, which are not aroused to antagonism. Occasionally, however, one of the Moki priests is bitten, in which case nothing ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... naow? want me tew address the meetin', hey? I'm willin', only the laugh's ruther ag'inst me, ef I tell that story; expect you'll like it all the better fer that." Flint coiled up his long limbs, put his hands in his pockets, chewed meditatively for a moment, and then began, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... cheerful youth. He had possessed himself of Prince Ranjitsinhji's book and coiled himself comfortably into a wicker chair.—"You're only rotting, I know. And you've passed over the most important sentence in the whole book. Listen to this: 'There are very few newspaper readers who do not turn to the cricket column ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and gasketed, awnings stretched, and sheets and tackles coiled harbour fashion, David Grief paced the deck and looked vainly for a flutter of life elsewhere than on the strange schooner. Once, beyond any doubt, he heard the distant crack of a rifle in the direction of the Big Rock. There were no further shots, and he thought of it as ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... her cheeks, and her straw bonnet (which our contemporaries might look at with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket) fell a little backward. She would perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling required the meagreness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows, never ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... bilateral type, the possession of a pair of nephridia or renal canals, and the formation of a vertical brain or cerebral ganglion. It is now usual to distinguish four classes of Platodes: the two free-living classes of the primitive worms (Platodaria) and the coiled-worms (Turbellaria), and the two parasitic classes of the suctorial worms (Trematoda) and the tape-worms (Cestoda). We have only to consider the first two of these classes; the other two are parasites, and have descended from the former by adaptation ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... answered Drysdale, "he leaves a bad taste in one's mouth;" and he went to the table, took a pull at the tankard, and then threw himself down on the sofa again, as Jack jumped up and coiled himself round by his master's legs, keeping one half-open eye winking at him, and giving an occasional wag with the end ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in one stay like so many churches established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their innocent heads, and found no more than so much coiled fishing-line below their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows in india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever and a day, by still and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cast-off child's dolls with the allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth. He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his right hand rested upon the head of another serpent. This, according to the laws of interpreting allegories, we should understand to signify that the god had been renowned for his wisdom; that with the wisdom of the serpent he had executed judgment; and that his meditations were ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... down, and saw, coiled away at the bottom of the skiff, where Lawrence had taught him to lie, a huge black dog, with an unusually ferocious expression of countenance, though from his coat he had evidently much of the Newfoundland breed in him, but ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the bladed crest, And the sun to the noon rose higher, A serpent came, with an eye of flame, And coiled by the leafy pyre; His ward he would keep by the lonely tree, To guard it with constant devotion; Oh, sharp was the fang, and the armd clang, That pierced through the roar of the ocean, And guarded the tree, the Palmetto tree, Ensign of the noble, the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... hair since her illness, and now it was soft and smooth and seemed warmer in color. The nurse having parted it one day when Mrs. Middleton was convalescent, and coiled it upon her head simply, had declared it made her look like a Raphael madonna. The allusion was far-fetched, but it touched Mrs. Middleton's sentimental fancy, and she adopted that ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... rugs, and ponchos had all been thrown together in a corner, and anyone wishing to sleep had to make himself a bed with his own horse-gear and toggery as best he could. The experience was nothing new to me, so I soon made myself a comfortable nest on the floor, and, pulling off my boots, coiled myself up like an opossum that knows nothing better and is friendly with fleas. My friends, however, were evidently bent on making a night of it, and had taken care to provide themselves with three or four bottles of rum. After conversation, with an occasional song, had been ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... hissing sound in a very different manner, namely by rubbing "the sides of the folds of its body against each other," whilst the head remains in almost the same position. The scales on the sides, and not on other parts of the body, are strongly keeled, with the keels toothed like a saw; and as the coiled-up animal rubs its sides together, these grate against each other.[26] Lastly, we have the well-known case of the Rattle-snake. He who has merely shaken the rattle of a dead snake, can form no just idea of the sound produced by the living animal. Professor Shaler states that it is indistinguishable ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... readily identified them. In time he made out the monuments marking the International Boundary, and a short distance beyond that point he unhitched his dogs, then took a carbine from his sled and slipped it full of shells. Next he removed his lash rope, coiled it, and placed it in his pocket, after which ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the huge, twenty-foot, spring snake coiled inside the camera and ready to leap out like a jack-in-the-box when Dick squeezed the bulb. And there were others who knew and who urged Dick to get the camera ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... very deliberately coiled up the tube of his hookah, and produced from behind a curtain a very long befrogged topcoat with Astrakhan collar and cuffs. This he buttoned tightly up, in spite of the extreme closeness of the night, and finished his attire by putting on a rabbit-skin cap with hanging ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... surly the mere mould Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept, This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold What while we, while we slumbered. O then, weary then why should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered, When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care, Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... figure, with a clean turban coiled about his head, strode austerely into the circle ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... language. "We start the ditch here. Right here—you fella! Get digging! And put your back into that shovel. Hit hard or maybe it gives the whip—understand?" Larkin made a threatening motion toward the lash coiled at his belt. ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... were neat, were even exquisite; but then, Aunt Raby was not gifted with a stylish cut. Prissie's hair was smoothly parted, but the thick plait on the back of the neck was by no means artistically coiled. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... the simplest white washing-dresses. Their girlish waists were encircled by sashes of pale gold. Catherine's thick dark hair was coiled tightly round her head—Mabel's more frizzy and paler locks fell in wavy curls round her forehead and on her shoulders. Nobody else looked the least like the Bertrams. Their dresses were as cheap as any other girl's dresses in the room. Daisy ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... now and then the huge boa and the macaurel, twining the trees. The great tiger-snake is seen with its head raised half a yard from the surface; the cascabel, too, coiled like a cable; and the coral-snake with his red and ringed body stretched at full length along the ground. The two last, though inferior in size to the boas, are more to be dreaded; and my horse springs back when he sees the one ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... bed, slowly and cautiously, looking all about him. He remembered to have awakened once thus in India—and to have found a great cobra coiled at his feet. His inspection revealed the presence of nothing unfamiliar, and he stepped out on ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... black evening-dress such as a lady of the city would wear. It covered her shoulders, but left her throat bare. Her features, particularly her eyes, had a slight Oriental cast, which the mass of very black hair coiled on her head accentuated. Yet she did not look like an Oriental, nor indeed like a woman of any race of this earth. Her cheeks were red—the delicate diffused red of perfect health. But underneath the red there lay a curious mixture ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... behind him, whereupon his companion placed something in it. Emma Dean whispered to Nora that it looked like a blacksnake all coiled up and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... on the piazza with the questioning, patronizing air of a dignified host; a bright-faced Scotch terrier, Charles Dickens, peered at us from the window, as if glad of a little excitement; while Carl, the graceful greyhound, was indolently coiled up on a shawl and took ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... to him again, his wife crawled forward painfully and swiftly coiled herself about his legs. He struggled, still dizzy from his fall, bent over and tore at her twining arms, but the more he pulled the tighter she clung, fastening her misshapen fingers in the lacing of his shoes. He swore! And he became panic-stricken. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... him from the window ledge, shrilly demanding crumbs. Crumbs made him think of Mrs. Kukor's stealthy gift. Sure enough, the yellow bowl held soup. In the soup was spaghetti—the wide, ribbony, slippery kind he especially liked, coiled about in a broth which smelled deliciously of garlic. As for the black bread, some nibbling visitor of the night had helped himself to one corner of it, and this corner, therefore, went at once to ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Clarence Hervey, who was not in a masquerade dress. He had laid a wager with one of his acquaintance, that he could perform the part of the serpent, such as he is seen in Fuseli's well-known picture. For this purpose he had exerted much ingenuity in the invention and execution of a length of coiled skin, which he manoeuvred with great dexterity, by means of internal wires; his grand difficulty had been to manufacture the rays that were to come from his eyes. He had contrived a set of phosphoric rays, which he was certain would charm all the fair daughters of Eve. He forgot, it seems, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... agreed, in great relief. They turned back toward the garden, in time to meet Alix and several dogs streaming across the clearing. Over the girl's shoulder was coiled the great rope; she leaped various logs and small bushes as she came, and the dogs barked madly and leaped with her. Breathless, she stumbled and fell into her father's arms, and both men had the same thought, one that made them smile upon her tomboyishness indulgently: "If this is twenty-one— ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... his ears forward toward the strident buzzing which once heard is never forgotten, and which is never heard without a tensing of nerves. He sighted the snake, coiled and ready for war in the small shade of a rabbit-bush. He circled the spot warily, his head turned sidewise, and his eyes fixed upon the flattened, ugly head with its thread of a ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... rattle-snake was coiled up inside that tunnel! A burro wouldn't smell it, and it could crawl out during the night and take a good straight bite!" ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... its footsteps, as it came cautiously forward, a little way at a time. Once more the fingers coiled round the triggers, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... they could be rowed forwards or backwards. When a whale was seen in the distance the boats set out, each boat manned by six experienced whalers. One of them was the coxswain, another the harpooner, while the others sat at the oars. The harpoon line, an inch thick, lay carefully coiled up, and ran out through a brass eye in the bow. Every man knew from long experience what he had to do at any particular minute, and therefore there was silence on board, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... throat," confessed Kai Lung. "The barbed thought had assailed my mind that perchance the rings of precious jade lay coiled around your heart. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... of Baldwin and Maxwell and Ram-stam, he drew out, uncoiled, rubbed, examined inch by inch, and re-coiled the life-line and the air-tube; unscrewed the various pieces—glasses, nuts, and valves—of the helmet, carefully examined them, oiled them, and re-fastened them, much to the interest and curiosity of "the natives." The helmet itself he polished up till ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... and covered himself with glory. This wonderful young man, having planted himself behind a rampart of chairs, placed himself in the position of a pugilistic frog, and boldly defied his enemies to "come on and be punched." At the commencement of the fight, Abbott coiled himself up under the table, and was seen no more; while Handiboe fled for safety to the cole-hole. The battle was at its height, and the bird of victory seemed about to perch upon the banner of the "Uncles and Nephews," when some reckless, hardened ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... a hideous thing on which frogs and snakes squatted and coiled. It was a fitting piece to accompany the gruesome occupant of the little room in his long, last vigil. In fact, it almost sent a shudder over me, and if I had been inclined to the superstitious, I should certainly have concluded that this was retribution ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... began to teem with rushing, half-naked clean children, one of the parents rose, either the mother, easy and slatternly, with her thick, dark hair loosely coiled and slipping over one ear, or the father, warm and comfortable, with ruffled black hair and shirt unbuttoned at ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... might, and as we drew near, the captain ordered Tom Lokins to "stand up," so he at once laid in his oar, and took up the harpoon. The harpoon is an iron lance with a barbed point. A whale-line is attached to it, and this line is coiled away in a tub. When we were within a few yards of the fish, which was going slowly through the water, all ignorant of the terrible foes who were pursuing him, Tom Lokins raised the harpoon high above his head, and darted it deep into its fat side just behind the left ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... that the perspiration-tubes are coiled up into a ball at their base. The number and extent of these tubes are astonishing. In a square inch on the palm of the hand have been counted, through a microscope, thirty-five hundred of these tubes. Each one of them is about a quarter of an inch in length, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... attached to "good Corporal Grimsby," who had given him such a nice supper—while the latter gentleman, having finished his meal, drew forth an antiquated pipe, having a Turk's head for the bowl and a coiled serpent for the stem, which having lighted, he proceeded to smoke with much gravity and thoughtfulness. Not a word did he utter, but smoked away in silence, until the clock struck ten; then pocketing his pipe, and depositing ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... coming into his hand and being coiled on his arm. Woofer all the while was urging on his pony, trying to throw Ted off ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... The child coiled herself up in the chimney-corner, gazing at the ruddy fire and deep in reverie. From time to time she moved her hands forward mechanically to warm them. The glinting of the flames dazzled her large eyes. So absorbed was she in her dreaming that she did not hear Monsieur ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... been set on fire, and the blazing mass of timber, cordage, and canvas had fallen back upon the mainmast, setting the sails and rigging of that mast also on fire; the flames blazing fiercely as they writhed and coiled about the spars and darted hither and thither, like fiery serpents, through the mazes of the tarred and highly inflammable rigging. But that was by no means the worst of it. The lightning, upon reaching the deck, appeared ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... and paddled, while Tim Price poised himself in the boat, spear in hand and the long rope from its slender shaft coiled at his feet. He peered intently into the water as the boat moved slowly along. Presently every muscle of him was set: he bent backward for a cast, pointed his spear with steady hands to a spot in the river, and quick as a flash it pierced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... surgeon in the United States, and he looked like nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow. He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... began to move, aimlessly at first, but soon with a steadiness that suggested purpose. Moya unloosed with her chill fingers the rope coiled to her saddle, and threw ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... personality held him. Her tall gracious figure. Its exquisite modeling. The full rounded shoulders, their contours unconcealed by the light jacket she was wearing. Her neck, soft with the gentle fulness of youth. The masses of ruddy brown hair coiled on her bare head without any of the artificiality of the women he encountered in Leaping Horse. The delicate complexion of her oval cheeks, untouched by the fierce climate in which she lived. To him she had become ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... greater size than her tonnage warranted. Royson was sailor enough to perceive that her masts and spars were intended for use, and, when he reached her deck, to which much scrubbing and vigorous holy-stoning had given the color of new bread, he knew that none but men trained on a warship had coiled each rope and polished every ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... shudder. Such a thing had never come into their experience, but they knew the terrible possibility of it. Many a man has been so detained in the Bush, riding inadvertently against the "wait-a-bit" or "lawyer cane." It springs round its victim like a coiled spring, and he is helpless to free himself if his arms happen to be pinioned. Who could this particular poor fellow have been, found not far from the plantation? No one would ever know, Mrs. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... through the darkness, what occasioned the noise, but could not, although I thought I saw something moving not far from me. I retreated, quieted my cattle, took my lantern and gun, and walked back to the spot. By the light of the candle I saw about half a bushel of snakes, coiled up in a heap, and all alive with rage at being disturbed. I hardly knew what to do. There they were, and gave no indications of leaving the road; and I no longer wondered at the reluctance of the oxen in refusing to pass over them. Had they done so, it is very probable ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... distance," Mistress Cambridge decided, with solemn reservation. With a multitude of apologies and thanks, the two young men, more considerate and courteous in their forward and backward fashion than many a fine gentleman of the time, clambered up, and coiled themselves into corners, leaving a respectful void between them and the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... on the edge of a small lake or pond. Suddenly my son, who is in the lead, rushes back saying: 'Look out! I put my hand on a snake.' Some of us, being armed with hickory canes that had been thrown down, concentrated our lights and advanced. Sure enough, there is a snake a yard long coiled up on a section of rotten wood. It proves to be a copperhead, the most quarrelsome and vicious snake in this country; but his nature is changed so that he makes no effort to fight and is killed with a blow, and is sent to be hoisted up that we may examine him in daylight. No others were ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... view dashed the two boys for whom Zeph was looking. They were still chasing one another, and the foremost of the twain was making for the house. As he passed a tree full tilt, without the least apparent exertion he leaped up lightly, seized a branch, coiled around it like a rubber band, and his pursuer passed under him ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... birches, followed him. He passed; they waved their arms and clapped their hands; There was no sound. The torrents from the hills Leaped down their rocky pathways, like wild steeds Breaking the yoke and shaking manes of foam. The lowland brooks coiled smoothly through the fields, And softly spread themselves in glistening lakes Whose ripples merrily danced among the reeds. The standing waves that ever keep their place In the swift rapids, curled upon themselves, And seemed about to break and never broke; And all the wandering waves that ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... unpleasant proximity to the fangs of the reptile. A still more dangerous practice, and one which I have frequently seen, is a method of playing with the rattlesnake for the delectation of the cow boy at the expense of a "tenderfoot." It is well known that unless a snake is coiled, or held by the tail or body, or placed at length in a hole or crevice so narrow that by rendering its length sinuous a certain amount of support is given, it cannot strike. On this theory a mounted cow boy ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... tiny bow and arrows! Stealthily and cautiously I approached, keeping my eyes upon the pretty little animal, and just as I was about to let fly my shaft, I heard a hissing noise at my feet. There lay a horrid snake, coiled and ready to spring! Forgetful that I was a warrior, I gave a loud scream and started backward; but soon recollecting myself, looked down with shame, although no one was near. However, I retreated to the inclined trunk of a fallen tree, and there, as I have often ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Lying huge upon the water, Sparkling, rippling in the water, Lying coiled across the passage, With their blazing crests uplifted, Breathing fiery fogs and vapors, So that none could pass ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... of your own right hand into it, and that is what makes it go. Every turn of the key or the stem winds up tighter and tighter a spring from one to two feet long, but so slender that it would take thousands to weigh a pound. This is the main spring. It is coiled up in a cup-shaped piece of metal called a "barrel"; and so your own energy is literally barreled up in your watch. The outer end of this spring is held fast by a hook on the inside of the barrel; the inner end is hooked to the hub of a wheel ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... his arms a large vase, about whose sides green and golden dragons coiled themselves ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... only, as Mr. A.F. Kelly, of Barwonleigh, in Victoria, states: "When riding past a bull-oak tree about twenty-five feet high, with either a magpie's or crow's nest on top. I noticed the nest looked very bulky, and had something red in it. On going nearer I saw a large fox coiled up ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... almost immediately, looking rather scared. It now occurred to me that they might have found a snake, as a few days ago I had heard Merry barking in a similar manner, and upon joining him I had discovered a snake coiled up with head erect in an attitude of defence. I had killed the snake and scolded the dog, as I feared he would come to an untimely end, should he commence snake- hunting in so prolific a field as Cyprus. Since that time ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... gray bird sing clear and loud and sweet every strain that sang other birds, was to see and hear most joyous things. Lizards were innumerable; at edge of a marsh we met with tortoises; once we passed coiled around a tree a great serpent. It looked at us with beady eyes, but the Indians said it would not harm a man. A thousand, thousand ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... tree, with a deep hollow in the ground between its trunk and the hedge; the hollow was half filled with fallen dead leaves, and Fan, turning them with her foot, found that under the surface they were dry, and this spot being the most tempting one she had yet seen, she coiled herself up in the leafy bed to rest. And lying there in the shelter, after eating her bread, she very soon fell asleep, in spite of ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... bobbins, A A, are wound with No. 24 double cotton-covered magnet wire, the terminals being soldered to eyes formed of pieces of spring wire bent so as to form helical coils of two turns each, with the ends inserted in holes drilled in heads of the spools. These coiled wires answer a good purpose in making electrical connections. The magnet frame, B, consisting of the cores and the yoke formed integrally of a single soft gray iron casting, is adapted to receive the bobbins, A A, to form an electro-magnet. The yoke of the magnet is provided with a thumb-screw, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... above the unmanliness engaged him so he failed to see the other severer and more lasting struggle inevitable if the Countess were indeed the being to whom he owed the highest earthly obligations—the struggle between natural affection and honor, as the latter lay coiled up in the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... enough, and the cargoes were insufficient. She had long lain idle when she was secured by the cable company and fitted out for the purpose of laying the cable, which was the first useful work which had been found for the great ship. The 2,300 miles of heavy cable was coiled into the hull and paying-out machinery was installed upon the decks. Huge quantities of coal and other supplies ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... such a night she felt her husband's eyes resting on her anxiously, and her hands trembled as she coiled up her thick hair. It was fortunate that she dropped a hair-pin, then she could stoop quickly and withdraw her tired face with the dark lines under the eyes from his ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... mining, whose struggles with the English language were quite as conspicuous as were our efforts to tell what he was driving at. He was describing an ordinary windlass hoist used at the shaft of a mine. He said "There is a windlass at de top of de shaft around which is coiled a rope, on de two ends of which is fastened two er—er—pans, one of which is a bucket and de oder a platform." I mention this because I shall ask you to attribute my shortcomings in this lecture, not so much to my lack of familiarity with my native tongue, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 799, April 25, 1891 • Various
... ashes, a sudden whir-r-r caused him to spring back as though he had received an electric shock. Only his quickness saved him from the living death held in the fangs of a rattlesnake that had evidently just crawled from the black muzzle of the gun. The snake instantly re-coiled to repeat its venomous stroke, and though Donald could easily have killed it as he had scores of its kind, the presence of this hideous and sole representative of life in that place of the dead so filled him with horror that he turned ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... with a skull hanging over their heads and little demons behind them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of them was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... an emblem seems to have been somewhat of a favorite among the colonists. Besides Franklin's snake of the many initials—which, indeed, might have stood, or coiled, for any sort of serpent—there was the one borne by Patrick Henry's men when they forced the Governor of Virginia to pay for the powder which he had carried away from the colonial magazine. Then, too, there was a third variety of ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... got a big and a small worm. The small he coiled like a rope, and held up towards the base of his beak; the big he carved up into sections, which he held more towards the tip. The large ones, it seemed, were too awkward and lively simply to carry ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... a hundred years; during all these years owned by the same family. When I was a little girl a woman kept the shop. She was very tall, very thin, with quantities of black hair braided and wound round and round her head. She wore always a Paisley shawl of faded colors, and her hair coiled as it was made me think ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... artfully and scrupulously interwoven and twisted together. It seemed to stand the solitary pride of a life claiming few things of which to be proud. Blake remembered how that wealth of nut-brown hair was daily plaited and treasured and coiled and cared for, the meticulous attentiveness with which morning by morning its hip-reaching abundance was braided and twisted and built up about the small head, an intricate structure of soft wonder ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... is the fortunate recuperative faculty of boyhood that day after day I would forget the horrors of that hour, and be happy in climbing over the decayed chalk acclivities of Whitby, picking up the fossil shells that nestle there. Yonder on my table, as I write, lies a coiled ammonite found there; it had been there ten thousand years or ages before I detached it from its bed, and, for aught I know, my remotest posterity may use it, as I have done, for a paper-weight. Thanks to eternal justice, the bathing-machines ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... I saw a beautiful herd of vildebeestes one hundred and sixteen in number, lumbering slowly towards where we stood. The wind blew straight from them towards us, so that I had no fear on the score of scent. Climbing swiftly down until almost level with the veldt, I lay cosily coiled up behind a rock, and waited for the quarry. They came at last, Indian file, about a yard and a half separating one from the other, not a hundred and twenty yards from where I lay. I had plenty of time to pick and choose, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... one can tell just how much there is in the heart that needs to be consumed. There are things dormant in the unsanctified heart of which the man never dreams. There are serpents coiled in balls, and vipers spitting poison, and centipedes, and fat blinking toads, and vampires, and lizards, and tarantulas, that we never suspect of being in the soul. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... Yesterday is dead, Now forever must it stay Coiled about your head, Tell me Whence the great Command Hitherward has sped. "Silly boy, as if ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Sta. Catarina and away to Spain, when unfortunately one of the sisters, suspecting some mystery, from the changed face of Sister Maddelena, began investigating, and at length discovered the rope neatly coiled up by the nun's window, and hidden under some clinging vines. She instantly told the Mother Superior; and together they watched from a window in the crypt of the chapel,—the only place, as you will see to-morrow, from which one could see the window of Sister Maddelena's cell. They ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... in a bottomless chair, the embodiment of human misery. In place of his invoices lie the Gazette, which announces his bankruptcy, and a number of tradesmen's bills; on the back of his chair is coiled a rope, and on the table before him a razor lies on a treatise on suicide,—John in fact is debating by what mode he shall put an end to his existence. An onion and some water in a broken jug are the only articles of sustenance he has to depend on. The tax gatherer, who has made a number ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... sea of my own accord. I was too far gone for any such energetic proceeding; and had anybody else taken me up for the purpose, I have no doubt that I should have struggled and kicked myself into perfect health again. I had coiled myself away on the top of my chest, on the lower-deck, in a dark recess, where I thought no one would see me; and there I hoped to remain all alone in my misery, till the ship went down, or blew up, or something else dreadful happened, for as to my ever getting well again that ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... had become an old story. After the days of construction the days of accomplishment seemed to him lean. His men did the work and reaped the excitement. Senor Johnson never thought now of riding the wild horses, of swinging the rope coiled at his saddle horn, or of rounding ahead of the flying herds. His inspections were business inspections. The country was tame. The leather chaps with the silver conchas hung behind the door. The Colt's forty-five depended at the head of the ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... embodiment. The girl's figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that she was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, and that she walked with an ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and walked ten miles across the plains to hire a man with a team to haul them away. The teamster had much ado to drive his half-bridle-wise Indian ponies near enough to the university doorway to load his wagon. Before the threshold a huge rattlesnake lay coiled, already disputing any human claim to this ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... management to control. To him it was the thorn in the flesh, which will be seen in the following note found in his pocket-book: 'I have never loved evil for its own sake; no! nor ever sought pleasure for its own sake, but only as the means of escaping from pains that coiled around my mental powers as a serpent around the body and wings of an eagle! My sole sensuality was not ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... return. I may as well here describe the fittings of a whale-boat. In the after-part is an upright rounded post, called the loggerhead, by which to secure the end of the harpoon-line; and in the bows is a groove through which it runs out. It is furnished with two lines, each of which is coiled away in a tub ready for use. It has four harpoons; three or more lances; several small flags, called "whifts," to stick into the dead whale, by which it may be recognised at a distance when it may be necessary to chase another; and two or more "drogues," four-sided pieces of board ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... of taro spread its magnificent leaves over the earth, we slowed to a walk. The jungle tangle was all about us; a thousand bright flowers, scarlet, yellow, purple, crimson, splashed with color the masses of green; tall ferns uncurled their fronds; giant creepers coiled like snakes through the boughs, and the sluggish air was heavy with innumerable delicious scents. I said to Mademoiselle N—— that the beauty of the islands was like that of a fantastic dream, an ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... mad bondage of man, the creek finally returned to its ancient ways, all soiled and smirched from its toil, and coiled lazily among the broad flats and timbered spaces where the valley widened to its mouth. Here the "pay" ran out, and men were loth to loiter with the lure yet beyond. And here, as Li Wan paused ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... disciple of Paley to imagine they had caused a secret enjoyment within, sat back in the nearest corner, towards the stove, a most attentive auditor to the thrilling debate. Between his outspread feet, a dog was coiled up, the only indifferent individual present, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... appealing to old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
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