"Contorted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though she had struck him, and his face contorted with sudden panic. He cowered away from her and covered his ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... From some deep cave, and bear To us that gasp in this so meagre air Sweet ministerings And consolations of contorted sound, With agonies profound Of nobly warring and enduring chords That lie, close-bound, Unstirred as yet 'neath thy wide, wakening wings; So that our hearts break not in broken words. O music, that ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... rest later." Ransome's eyes burned into the crewman's. The latter looked away. Ransome tightened his grip, and pain contorted the gunner's features. ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... Wilderness more deserve its name; gloomy at any time, it had new attributes of solemn majesty. Everything seemed to be in unison with those who lay there—the pitchy blackness, the low muttering of distant thunder, the fitful glimmer of the lightning, the stems of trees twisted and contorted by the gleam of the uncertain flashes, the white faces of the slain upturned to the sky seen dimly by the same light, the banks of smoke and vapour yet floating through the forest, the strange, repellent odours, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... advanced, his toothless face contorted with inexplicable emotion, and corroborated the red-armed woman, and the chorus generally, with astonishing volubility ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the most magnificent beech foliage I have ever seen anywhere. The trees were of great age and enormous size; and from some accidental influence affecting their growth, the huge trunks were many of them contorted so as to resemble absolutely the twisted Saxon pillars of some old cathedral. In many of them the powerful branches (as large themselves as trunks of common trees) spread out from the main tree, at a height of about six feet from the ground, into a sort of capacious ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... dawn broke with singing of birds, and the shriek and whistle of the barrage. The Division was attacking Fayet, the enemy's last stronghold beyond the city. Before they went over, grey and green coated figures were being brought down. There were many other grey and green figures grotesquely contorted in the brown ribbed fields, and those of them who had escaped from the inferno fought it out intermittently, in the woods beyond the village. But their sniping was braved for a few days more, and then one night they staggered weakly ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... feeling bitterly envious as he went by the offices. He had already seen seven smugly-similar faces when he came by Room Eight. Suddenly the face of its occupant contorted in agony, then the man got up and paced about as if in a trap. Deciding he had seen more than was good for him, Connor hurried on. But the man in Nine was acting out the same curious drama. He quickly retraced his steps, passing one scene of ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... he contorted his pliant limbs until his eyes seemed starting from his head and a bloody ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... margin) beds of volcanic ash. If he look below the little coloured squares on the margin, he will see figures marking the strike, or direction of the inclination of the beds—inclined, vertical, horizontal, contorted; that the white lines in the map signify faults, i.e. shifts in the strata; the gold lines, lodes of metal—the latter of which I should advise him strongly, in this district at least, not to meddle ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... not less than a hundred miles in direct thickness. We have also evidence that the earliest strata were formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat than what operated in subsequent stages of the world, for the laminae of the gneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a way which could only be the result of a very high temperature. It appears as if the seas in which these deposits were formed, had been in the troubled state of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat. Such a condition would probably add not ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... everywhere linked together by sipos; the woody, flexible stems of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that of the taller independent trees. Some were twisted in strands like cables, others had thick stems contorted in every variety of shape, entwining snake-like round the tree trunks, or forming gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others, again, were of zigzag shape, or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from the ground to a ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... fierce looks, and lips contorted into all modes and expression of indignation, the guests speedily disappeared. And while Mr Pitskiver, still panting from his exertions, related to his daughters and their enchanted partners his grounds for anger at the attempt to impose Miss Hendy on him instead of a statue, Mr Daggles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and the Queen will have pride, You will see every Prince use a fork with his mince, And eating his peas like Alcibiades, Who would sooner go mute than play on the flute Lest it made him grimace and contorted his face. ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... lightning flashed repeatedly; she saw him go out the gate and disappear into sudden darkness. He ran through the field and came out on the road. Heaven and earth were revealed again for a dazzling white second. From horizon to horizon rolled clouds contorted like an illimitable field of inverted haystacks, and beneath them enormous volumes of pale vapor were tumbling in the west, advancing eastward with sinister swiftness. She ran to a little knoll at the corner of the house and saw him set his face to the storm. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed and sang and laughed, that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; and their laughter passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire's very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... laughter contorted Kranitski's face, the red spots spread over his brows and covered half of his forehead, which was drawn now ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Honor is also a very distinguished bit of pastry. The dome of the wheat market is an English jockey cap, on a grand scale. The towers of Saint-Sulpice are two huge clarinets, and the form is as good as any other; the telegraph, contorted and grimacing, forms an admirable accident upon their roofs. Saint-Roch has a door which, for magnificence, is comparable only to that of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin. It has, also, a crucifixion in high relief, in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... contorted and purple from pain, the stricken man slid backward. His lips parted and became ashen. The poison was coursing through his veins with ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... feet in height. Descending the eastern slope of the Cumbre, the structure becomes very complicated, and generally differs on the two sides of the east and west line of road and section. First we come to a great mass [A] of nearly vertical, singularly contorted strata, composed of highly compact red sandstones, and of often calcareous conglomerates, and penetrated by green, yellow, and reddish dikes; but I shall presently have an opportunity of describing in some detail an analogous pile of strata. These vertical beds are abruptly ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... is abroad,—is close to us. I have this very hour seen him afflict two innocent children, as of old he troubled those who were possessed by him in Judea. Hester and Abigail Tappau have been contorted and convulsed by him and his servants into such shapes as I am afeard to think on; and when their father, godly Mr. Tappau, began to exhort and to pray, their howlings were like the wild beasts of the field. Satan is of a truth let ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... give to the figure of the living Christ the expression of infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his Crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted Christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on His features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented Him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice He completed, and full of joy in dying for ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... those of civility, from the conductor. The best thing I saw on the route was a rustic fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I am not quite sure. There was more genius in it than in any structure of the kind I have ever seen,—each length being of a special pattern, ramified, reticulated, contorted, as the limbs of the trees had grown. I trust some friend will photograph or stereograph this fence for me, to go with the view of the spires of Frederick already referred to, as mementos ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... of a pure green color. The veins of minerals are about a half an inch to—in the case of druses of magnesite, which penetrate the rock in all proportions and directions—even six inches in thickness. They lie generally in a perpendicular position, but are frequently bent and contorted in every direction. They are the more abundant where the rock is soft, as veins, but included minerals are more plentiful in the harder rock. There is hardly any one point on the outcrop that may be said to be favored in abundance, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... late. Mellon, his face contorted with a mixture of anger and hatred, was standing just behind Jakob von Liegnitz. In one hand was a heavy spanner, which he was bringing down with deadly force on the ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ipecacuan of the shops. The plant is met with in the woods of several Brazilian provinces, as Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio Janeiro. It is found growing in moist shady situations, from 8 to 20 degs. south latitude. The roots, which are the officinal part, are contorted, knotty and annulated, and about the thickness of a ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... though the smooth disc, falling from its place in the sky upon the earth, had rolled to the bottom of that precipice: its ascending movement was like a leisurely rebound; it disengaged itself from the tangle of twigs; the bare contorted limb of some tree, growing on the slope, made a black crack right across its face. It threw its level rays afar as if from a cavern, and in this mournful eclipse-like light the stumps of felled trees uprose ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... our way among the bath-chairs in the path. Many of the people sitting in the chairs seemed almost natural in their passive poses, but the contorted scarlet of the bandsmen was not a restful thing to see. A purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent struggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were many evidences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... with his hands as if to shut out the sight. Ali fell prostrate upon the deck, pressing his contorted ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... mean." A spasm of pain contorted the pallid face and he went on hurriedly as if fearful of the inevitable interruption. "I couldn't take her myself and couldn't part from her, but the life hasn't been right for her, though I did all I could. She's a lady and she must go back to her own. I'd like ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... word twired is not explained in Mr. Blunden's glossary and the meaning is not evident from the context, we guess that he is using it here of shape, in the sense of 'contorted', which would range with the quotation from Burton (given in some dictionaries) 'No sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming, but he ... slickes his haire, twires his beard [&c.]'. Here twires, as latest edition of O.E.D. suggests, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... the unguarded door of the hall. An instant later he reeled back horror-stricken. Instead of a feasting gathering of officers attached to the Mongolian Staff he saw before a feast of men contorted in grotesque shapes by some violent death. Many lay beside the table, some on it, their faces blotched with great, unsightly wheals, their chests bloated until they seemed about to burst. Only one poor wretch had any life left in him—he ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... then you would kiss the helpless, staring, blinking, little blanket-framed face; but at first touch of those bristling moustaches a powerful spasm has convulsed the tiny features, and a vehement, plaintive, wailing protest bursts from the contorted lips, and then your son and heir is snatched away, and you stand like convicted felon, while nursey dandles and tosses and condoles and condones and cuddles. "Well, well, well, did it nearly fighten its pessus, pessus ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... little yard behind the house, and I hurried thither to behold a singular sight. There was one apple-tree in the yard,—an old, stunted, crooked thing; and in that tree I found my son and heir, Tip, tied fast with a small stout rope. "Tied" does not express it; he was gagged, manacled, twisted, contorted, wound about, crossed and recrossed, held without a chance ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... in the gale. Under the sign-post, in the pouring rain, he stands, and watches another quavering figure drifting down the Wayfleet road. Then swiftly he streams after it. It flickers among the trees. He licks out and winds about them. Over, under, blown, contorted. Spindrift after spindrift; smoke following smoke. There is a wailing through the trees, a wailing of fear, and after it laughter—laughter—laughter, skirling up to the black sky. Lightning jags over the funeral procession. A heavy clap of thunder. Then darkness and rain, and ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... convolutions by yesterday's tropical heat. Both sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible running a trolley ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... to the truth. He was by nature suspicious. He had faith in no man. When the summons came to O'Day, Raffelo quit his bench and made his way to the saloon. His dark, swarthy face, with stubby beard, was twisted and contorted. He gesticulated continuously, sawing the air with his hands. "Ye-s—Joe Ratowsky, he run and tell ze—ze. He ees—one—fool. He ze monkee on ze stick. ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... The other contorted and twisted awkwardly, but finally managed to thrust first one foot, then the other, between his shackled wrists. Alfred bound together his elbows ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles, the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so—suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent. I pulled aside the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... authentic narratives, it is more than probable, as Tonty could not have known Iroquois enough to make himself understood.] A moment more, and he was among the infuriated warriors. It was a frightful spectacle: the contorted forms, bounding, crouching, twisting, to deal or dodge the shot; the small keen eyes that shone like an angry snake's; the parted lips pealing their fiendish yells; the painted features writhing with fear and fury, and every passion of an Indian fight; ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... study, and the little boy was left sitting in the hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror. The doctor was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced the child to be suffering from a kind of fit, apparently produced by a sudden shock. The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms, and after some time recovered consciousness, but only to pass into a ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... thousands of nymphs, whiter than milk, who with folded arms and head bent forward await the hour of awakening. In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, become nearly transparent, they seem almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep thought, or legions of virgins whom the folds of the shroud have contorted, who are buried in hexagonal prisms that some inflexible geometrician has multiplied to the ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... dark and impressive countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave. "He is a man after ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... but pyxes in cylindrical form were made, the sculpture on them being in relief. In small ivory statuettes it was necessary to follow the natural curve of the tusk in carving the figure, hence the usual twisted, and sometimes almost contorted forms often seen in these specimens. Later, this peculiarity was copied in stone, unconsciously, simply because the style had become customary. One of the most charming little groups of figures in ivory is in the Louvre, the Coronation ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... The touch of your lips is like a tide hushing, sucking my wakefulness down into depths of terrible oblivion. O, listen, you are grotesque—your limbs are like the coils of nightmare. I love you because you are so grotesque—because upon your face is stamped the contorted beauty of your mind—your mind that is surely as amazing as your face. O, Gwymplane, tell me of what you have thought, tell me ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... Forman's Journey's End—serving as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine fashion,—lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of flourishes and ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... made its mark upon Mr. Wilfer's countenance, and contorted his face into a caricature—with its mottled skin and bleary eyes—of the good looks which had won Lucy Goodwin's heart in former times. His language had also degenerated as well as his looks. All trace of German accent had been carefully obliterated, in order that no suspicion ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... the fact that, besides having contorted her face into an unrecognisable shape, she had soiled it in several places with ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a bloody froth were drawn back tightly over the white teeth clenched in agony, and red foam lay on the black beard. Out of the sweat-bathed, ghastly face the eyes glared in frenzy. The features were contorted with pain. Again and again the wild shrieks like the howl of a mad thing rang through the long room and out ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... hair now, as her bead still lay pillowed upon his breast, so he could not see the spasm of pain which contorted her features as be thus appealed to her. Half bewildered, Maddy could not at first make out whether it were a blissful dream or a reality, her lying there in Guy's arms with his kisses on her forehead, lips and cheek, his words of devotion in her ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... repose and gentleness, so far as long, sweeping lines and broad, smooth slopes can give this impression. It is a land which has never suffered violence at the hands of the interior terrestrial forces; nothing is broken or twisted or contorted or thrust out or up abruptly. The strata are all horizontal, and the steepest mountain-slopes clothed with soil ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... to see how on every slippery ledge the ranks of horses had broken like waves to fall in heaps like rows of seaweed, tumbled, contorted, and grinning. Their dried skins had taken on the color of the soil, so that I sometimes set foot upon them without realizing what they were. Many of them had saddles on and nearly all had lead-ropes. Some of them had even been tied to trees ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... shine; and fire did not flame; and by no means did the Vedas of the twice-born once shine. And, O Janamejaya, the creatures peopling the interior of the earth, on being afflicted, rose and surrounded the Pandava, trembling with joined hands and contorted countenances. And being burnt by those weapons, they besought Dhananjaya (for their lives). Then the Brahmarshis, and the Siddhas, and the Maharshis and the mobile beings—all these appeared (on the scene). And the foremost Devarshis, and the celestials and the Yakshas ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... quest that he did not hear the chuckle of two wagons coming up through the sand to the corral. He did not even hear the footsteps of men approaching the house. He did not hear anything at all except a dismal yowl now and then from the darkness. He contorted his long person that he might peer into the gloom. He pushed the prairie dog in as far as he could reach. "Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!" he coaxed. "Doggone your onery soul, I'm gitting tired of this kinda performance! You ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... horrifying. A man took his life in his hand every time he left a pan. Doctor Rolfe was not insensitive. He began to sweat—not with labor but with fear. When the ice bent under him he gasped and held his breath; and he came each time to the solid refuge of a pan with his teeth set, his face contorted, his hands clenched—a shiver in the small of ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp—a chaos of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed to clutch frantically ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... mystery-mongering have been pointed out by Poe with his wonted acuteness in his criticism of 'Barnaby Rudge.' After retelling the plot of Dickens's contorted narrative, and after putting the successive episodes into their true sequence, Poe asserted that "the thesis of the novel may thus be regarded as based upon curiosity," and he declared that "every point is so arranged as to perplex the reader and whet his desire for elucidation." ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... back a corner of the sheet, disclosing the face, contorted and of a peculiar, purplish hue from the congested blood vessels. He bent over and I did so, too. There was an unmistakable odor of tobacco on him. A moment Kennedy studied the face before us, then slowly replaced ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... at this moment as a man may laugh in hell. He reeled. His lean face momentarily contorted, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... modern. The material is heavy, but shows no quartz; whereas the smaller valleys which debouch upon the northern or right bank of the main line, display a curious conformation of the "white stone," contorted like oyster shells, and embedded ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... treachery," muttered the warder, holding the lantern over a ghastly face contorted by agony. "Well, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... to dislodge his bonds. He contorted his body, expanded his powerful chest in an effort to break the ropes ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... evidently of enormous strength, as are many of the pure-blooded West African negroes; but one completely lost sight of his splendid physique in contemplation of the expression of low cunning and ferocious cruelty that blazed out of his small, narrow eyes and contorted his wide, flat nostrils, his thick, blubber lips, and his unnaturally prominent chin and jaws; he was the very embodiment and picture of all the most savage and debasing passions that characterise the worst specimens of humanity, and reminded me of nothing so much as a combination ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... hatred flames in her big brown eyes, her face is contorted with passion; she is more like a fury ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... in spikes is to be noted as a degradation of the veronic character; connecting it on one side with the snapdragons, on the other with the ophryds. In Veronica Ophrydea, (C. 2210,) this resemblance to the contorted tribe is carried so far that "the corolla of the veronica becomes irregular, the tube gibbous, the faux (throat) hairy, and three of the laciniae (lobes of petals) variously twisted." The spire of blossom, violet-coloured, is then ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... on the eve of the battle. Her presence caused the brave warrior to tremble with horror and rend his clothes when he remembered his vow. The daughter was dismayed—instead of a smile of joy from her father she read her doom in his blanched and contorted face. And somewhere on these hills round about the voice of wailing arose for two months from many maidens because Jephthah must fulfill his rash vow by sacrificing his only child. But he did unto her according to his word; and ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... it seemed to open out. Moreover, there were fish bones at the entrance. The captain, the surgeon, and Congdon, the coxswain, landed. Captain Parkinson reached the spot first. Stooping, he thrust his head in at the orifice. A sharp exclamation broke from him. He rose to his feet, turning a contorted face ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The lips pulled back to reveal the grinning teeth, the eyes bursting from the head, the features swollen and contorted from the deadly poison. A tiny, tufted dart of wood stuck in the brown flesh on the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... landscape in a mantle of mystery. A heavy, low-hung, steel-coloured pall was stretched almost entirely across the heavens, except where along the flat horizon a broad stripe of opal atmosphere let the eye wander into space, in search of the pearly gateways of Paradise. On the other side rose the contorted lava mountains, their bleak heads knocking against the solid sky and stained of an inky blackness, which changed into a still more lurid tint where the local reds struggled up through the shadow that lay brooding over the desolate scene. If ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... fixed upon Hunterleys' slim, self-possessed figure. His forehead was contorted into a frown. Somehow or other, he felt that during their brief interview he had failed to score; he had felt a subtle, underlying note of contempt in Hunterleys' manner, in ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... carefully I saw now that her full, well-rounded face was contorted with either pain or fear—perhaps both. Even through the make-up one could see that her face was blotched and swollen. Also, the muscles were contorted; the eyes looked as if they might be bulging under the lids; and there was a bluish tinge to her skin. Evidently death had come quickly, but it ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... I forget the look on my friend's face. He seemed to be in agony. It might be that he was striving to keep himself from going mad. His eyes burnt with a red light, his features were drawn and contorted. Then suddenly he heaved a deep sigh, and lifted his shoulders, as though he were throwing ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... will not go from me; I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty or thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty; smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spotlessly clean and perfectly empty, if I except the stoves; but still, if we chose, these two rooms could be Margaret's and mine, and the corridor as well, with a beautiful balcony which commanded an enchanting view of the rich Pusterthal up and down, right and left, with a row of jagged, contorted dolomite mountains thrown into the bargain. All this was to be ours if only the Hofbauer would have us. So down we went, casting longing looks around us—down into the entrance-hall, where a crowd of poor people were streaming out of the stube, the parlor of the family, such as in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... giant, making an effort that contorted every muscle of his body—"oh! but I cannot." While saying these words, he fell upon his knees, but with his mighty hands he clung to the rocks, and ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... both boys were frightened by the effect of those words. The old seaman whirled about, his one black eye blazing weirdly and his face contorted. Then he collected himself ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... most varied and distant sources to confirm his opinions, and the abundance of his materials never perplexed or burdened him in his argumentation, but examples of well-conducted historical argument are rare in his pages. He sometimes altered and contorted the facts; he very often unduly simplified his problems; he was very apt when he had proved a favourite opinion true to infer it to be the whole truth. On the other hand, many of his ideas have passed into the common literary stock, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... a short silence, during which I was observing the very peculiar physiognomy of this misshapen being—those long deep wrinkles that moated in his wide mouth, his small eyes with the crow's feet at the outer corners, that contorted nose, bulbous at its end, and especially that huge double-storied forehead of his. The whole figure reminded me not a little of the received pictures of Socrates, and while warming myself and listening to the crackling of the fire, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... usual care, preparatory to his last long sleep; whereas those who had died from the thrust of a pike, or the blow of a cutlass, however mild the living expression of their countenance might have been, were always fearfully contorted both in body ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the plants are gelatinous or cartilaginous. The form of the plant is usually very much contorted, fold-like or leaf-like, and very much branched. The fruiting surface extends over the entire upper ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... together and left on my office table. They had a great frolic over it. They had not spared red tape nor red wax. Very official it looked, indeed, and on the left-hand corner, in Sarah's boldest and most contorted hand, was written, "Secret service." We had a great laugh over their success. And, indeed, I should have taken it with me the next time I went down to the Tredegar, but that I happened to dine one evening with young Norton of our gallant little ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... course of ages they had been battered and undermined by rain, hurricane, and lightning, and all the mighty artillery of time. Piled on one another, and repeated over and over again, these strangely contorted rocks stretched as far as the eye could reach, sinking, however, as they receded, and leading the mind, though not the eye, down to the plain below, through which a turbid stream wound its way rebelliously, like some great twisting, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... fists clenched, but he kept his distance and watched the other warily. The innkeeper's face was contorted and his brow grew wet. For one moment something peeped out of his eyes; the next he sat down in his chair again and nervously ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... His face was contorted, with rage, thought Armfelt, who watched him, but in reality with pain caused by the poison that was corroding his vitals. He had drained a little phial just before stepping into the presence of Lillesparre, as they discovered upon ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... straining ears caught rustlings among the grass and roots, but otherwise a solemn peace brooded over the scene. Just beyond the hut, which was shielded from the arid hill by a grove of curiously contorted trees, the inner heights of the island rose abruptly. Something that resembled a column of cloud showed behind the rugged sky-line of the land. Even while he waited there, he saw a glint of light on its eastern side. He fancied ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... picturesque. The two most noteworthy are the Indian and Wilmington Passes; the first too rugged for the present to admit of a road; and the latter containing the beautiful Wilmington Fall. Many of the mountains have been burned over, and the bare, gaunt-limbed timber, and contorted folds of gray, glittering rock, afford a spectral contrast to the gentler contours of hills still clad in their natural verdure, bright or dark as deciduous or evergreen trees preponderate. The variety of form is endless; long ridges, high peaks, sharp or blunt, sudden clefts, great bare ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... contorted with pain or grief. Big tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped on the table before him. Every little while he was shaken by a sob ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... magnificent as they should be in an ancient noble property like this. A century does not accomplish so much for a tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours. I think, however, that they were more individual and picturesque, with more character in their contorted trunks; therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our forest-trees have a great sameness of character, like our people,— because one and the other ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and find some place to hide him. But to my surprise he started to his feet. I could not see much of him, because of the streams of paint; but I could see enough to realize that his face was contorted with fury. I remembered that gentle, compassionate countenance; never had I dreamed ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... room was painful in its intensity. The Elder leaned forward and listened with contorted face, and the prisoner held his breath. A pallor overspread his face and his ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the other; this malicious suggestion reposed also on the fact that the quasi-hero of "Le Roi s'Amuse" (1832, a tragedy suppressed after one representation, for its reflections on royalty), was also a contorted piece of humanity. This play was followed by "Lucrezia Borgia," "Marie Tudor," and "Angelo," written in a singular poetic prose. Spite of bald translations, their action was sufficiently dramatic ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... By and by it transpires that some one has won a box of candy. Just how this is done we know not. Speaking of card players, observe the gaze of anguish on the outpost. He dashes ahead, grabs two facing seats and sits in one with a face contorted with anxiety for fear that the others will be too late to join him. As soon as a card game is started there are always a half dozen other men who watch it, following every play with painful scrutiny. It seems that watching other people play cards is the most absorbing amusement known ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... understand what the young ensign said to them, they knew the drift of his jeering words. Their faces contorted with rage, they struck at him, Dave's arms working like piston rods in his efforts to ward ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... the thickness, inclination to the horizon, and direction with respect to the compass, of the beds? [If these cannot be measured, an estimate should always be recorded, while the objects are in view.] Are they uniform in dip and direction? curved, or contorted? continuous, or ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... the first have caused screams or groans to be uttered, the body to be contorted, and the teeth to be ground together. But our progenitors will not have exhibited those highly expressive movements of the features which accompany screaming and crying until their circulatory and respiratory ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... resources in Papua with its area of 90,500 square miles. Untrodden forests where the dark soil moulders beneath the everlasting shade; swamps bearing a harvest of thousands of sago and nipa palms, and mountains in a riot of contorted peaks rising to a height of 13,200 feet in ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Sporangia multilobate or compound-contorted, below obconic, gray, ribbed with calcareous thickenings; stem short, fuscous, longitudinally wrinkled; hypothallus distinct, black; columella none, although the lime massed at the centre of each sporangium simulates one; capillitium white, densely calcareous, with heavy angular nodules ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... girl's white face as she fell fainting into her mother's arms told the detective that their fears had been, to that extent at least, groundless. The girl's lovely features, although drawn and contorted by fear, showed no signs of the disfigurement ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... stared at him, he coolly turned to the chief and handed him his pistol, butt foremost. Was Roger mad, I wondered? He was the sanest man of all our crew. The chief gravely took the proffered weapon and looked at Blodgett, whose face was contorted with fear, and at the Malay, who by now was sitting up on deck blinking about him in a dazed way. Then he smiled and raised his hand and the points of ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... passions of men; unheeding alike the ambitions of kings, the obstinacy of parliaments, or the desire of liberty on the part of peoples. Some were lying calmly, as if their last moments had been as peaceful as when little children they laid themselves down to sleep; others twisted and contorted with looks of horror and anguish fixed upon their mournful faces, which bespoke agonies attending the departure of life like to the travail pains with which it had been ushered into existence. Seymour with a ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... better be at home. I felt saddened and went on deck and saw the people she called "Anglo-Indians" (more than two-thirds Scots, Irish, Cornish, and Welsh, with a negligible fraction of possible Angles) all lying like dead men in rows, with no side or show about them as they lay; some in contorted positions, with here and there a powerful limb or well rounded northern head showing in the half dark. Rulers of the Indian Empire, by Odin! or Jove! damp and hot, and in the dark, in a strong draught, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... her that same evening a goodly bundle of cast-off clothes, over which her eyes grew gleefully bright in her careworn face. At one of the articles included they widened with almost awe. This was an enormous hat made of white fluffy felt, with vast contorted brims, and great blue velvet rosettes and streamers. Its fabric was very stout and substantial, and withal quite new, for its original owner had speedily found it so stiff and heavy that to wear it gave her a headache and a crick in her neck. Mrs. M'Bean, for her part, could ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... a popular "seance." I heard a concert of gratitude. Lesions in the lungs, displaced organs, asthma, Pott's disease (!), paralysis, the whole deadly horde of diseases were being put to flight. I saw a paralytic, who sat contorted and twisted in his chair, get up and walk. M. Coue had spoken, he demanded confidence, great, immense confidence in oneself. He said: "Learn to cure yourselves, you can do so; I have never cured anyone. The power is within you yourselves, call upon your spirit, make it act for your physical and ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... even in the darker half of the globe, a multitude of intertwined forms, outlined with pen and ink. Those of the lighter hemisphere were beautiful as angels, with faint stars in their hair. All were singing. The others, the denizens of the dark, were twisted and contorted in agony, and each was drawn with such certainty of prearrangement that the line which formed the arm of one outlined the head of another. There were hundreds of them, and the whole work was as intricate in design as the engraving on a bank-note, and so packed with symbolism—according ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... share with them their greatness, and equally enjoyed those of their own, but denied to them the rights to infringe upon the South's possessions or rights of statehood. We all loved the Union, but we loved it as it was formed and made a compact by the blood of our ancestors. Not as contorted and misconstrued by demagogueism and fanaticism. We almost deified the flag of the Union, under whose folds it was made immortal by the Huguenots, the Roundheads, the Cavaliers, and men of every faith and conviction in the crowning days of the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... hell!" cried a wild little man, his face contorted with rage and the lust which finds satisfaction in a blow. He went fiercely on, butting his shoulder against every woman he met. Nobody arrested him; nobody cried "shame." "Give 'em ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the time, and, while pronouncing the four last words, absolutely touching the ground with a kind of contorted gesticulation. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... three principal groups, based upon the form of the foliage: (1) Plain varieties, in which the leaves are nearly as they are in nature; (2) moss-curled varieties in which they are curiously and pleasingly contorted; and (3) fern leaved, in which the foliage is not curled, but much divided into ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... (when not mere views,) we see the imitator of Salvator, or rather copyist of his lines; and these we have in all their angular nakedness, where rocks, trees, and mountains are so jagged, contorted, and tumbled about, that nothing but an explosion could account for their assemblage. They have not the relation which we sometimes find even in a random collocation, as in the accidental pictures of a discolored ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... lined and darkly sunburnt. His head, bald no doubt, was tied up in a crimson handkerchief that gave him the value of a rare picture by the hand of some old master. Seeing the cure, the pair stopped under an immense olive tree, a tree so twisted, so contorted that it seemed to have settled down to treehood only after the wild whirl of a maenad dance. Now in its old age, which had been youth in Caesar's day, it was more like a gray, ruined tower than an olive tree. It had divided ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... face of the baron contorted suddenly on hearing this question; his eyes flashed, the deep wound stood out on his face by reason, no doubt, of his great internal emotion. Formidable sounds were heard in his throat, low rumblings presaged a coming storm. But those noises finally calmed down, the signs of disturbance ceased, ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... skin of our old planet Earth like a poisoned dart, was this cylinder. But the poison was scarcely working yet. Around it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years. The fever ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... lay on his bed motionless. Sound asleep? No, not merely asleep—the twisted unnatural lie of the limbs, the contorted legs, the one arm drooping listlessly but stiffly over the side of the berth, told of a deeper, more ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... struck by paralysis, and thus for a time had been put beyond the reach of his daughters' anger. Sarah Jane was very soon there, but the wretched state in which the old man was lying quieted even her tongue. She did not dare to carry on the combat as she looked on the contorted features and motionless limbs of the poor wretch as he lay on his bed. On her mind came the conviction that this was partly her work, and that if she now spoke above her breath, those around her would accuse her of her cruelty. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... spot into a peak, which ended it hitherward, outside the hedge being arable ground. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... and entered his tent. Cazi Moto was there, unfolding the canvas bath tub, laying out the clean clothes. He looked up from his occupation, his wizened face contorted in a shrewd smile. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... slays; The hills that swell to Heaven drip With ooze of murdered men; for days The dead drift with the drifting ship, And far as eye may see the plain Is cumbered deep with slaughtered ones, Contorted to the shape of pain, Dissolving 'neath the callous suns, And driven in his foetid breath Still ply the harvesters ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... horse which he recognized, and a big, red-faced cowpuncher with gray eyes that did not twinkle. While Lance looked, the man lifted his head, seemed to be staring straight into Lance's face, opened his mouth and contorted his pain-racked face in a shout. It was strange to have the sound reach Lance's ears thinned and weakened by distance, while the glasses brought the injured man so close that he could see the wild look of entreaty in his eyes. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... warriors, their long faces expressionless, started to hustle the three captives toward the door again. Holaf wrenched free, turned, his face contorted ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... among myriads of Japanese junks, gliding softly, wafted by imperceptible breezes on the smooth water; their motion could hardly be heard, and their white sails, stretched out on yards, fell languidly in a thousand horizontal folds like window-blinds, their strangely contorted poops, rising up castle-like in the air, reminding one of the towering ships of the Middle Ages. In the midst of the verdure of this wall of mountains, they stood ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... eccentric negro who was a very king of jesters. From the Sirdar and the Khalifa downwards—for he was an ex-dervish and had played pranks in Omdurman—none escaped a parodying portrayal of their mannerisms. He imitated the tones of their voice and twisted and contorted his face and body to resemble the originals. Nothing was sacred from that mimic any more than from a sapper. He showed us Osman Digna's little ways, and gave ghastly imitations of trials, mutilations and executions by hanging ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... was not afraid: not in the least. I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me. The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe. I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... words, had pointed to almost any finale, however debased, however sordid. Barclay mentally invoked the face of his former friend, as he had seen it on the occasion of their last meeting, flushed, swollen-eyed, insolent, the fine patrician mouth hideously contorted and ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... cloud-masses crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood of dragons; now creeping along the ledges of the rock with sinuous self-adjustment to its turns and twists; now launching out into the deep, repelled by battling winds, or driven onward in a coil of twisted and contorted serpent curls. In the midst of summer these wet seasons often end in a heavy fall of snow. You wake some morning to see the meadows which last night were gay with July flowers huddled up in snow a foot in depth. But fair weather does not tarry long to reappear. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... great limbs of the tree. He cautiously approached the first of the hanging bodies. It was hideous. There was a bandage drawn tightly over the dead eyes, but its folds were powerless to disguise the rest of the contorted features. The head was tilted over on one side. Its flesh was ghastly, and deep discolorations blotched it from the neck up. The body was clad in the ordinary garb of the prairieman, with the loose waistcoat hanging ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... her head, she could command a view of the features of the renegade; whose strange workings, as before noted, served to fix her attention and divide her thoughts between him, as the cause of her present unhappiness, and that unhappiness itself—and she gazed on his loathsome, contorted countenance, with much the same feeling as one might be supposed to gaze upon a serpent coiling itself around the body, whose deadly fangs, either sooner or later, would assuredly give the fatal stroke of death. She noted the sudden start of Girty, and ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... the creature down on the box in its former queerly contorted position. Toolls had left his instruments and strolled over beside them ...
— Vital Ingredient • Charles V. De Vet
... chatter, as makes me feel flatter than cold eggless batter upon a lead platter—as mad as a hatter, and who will relieve me? Can anyone? I tell you it's dreadful to face a whole bedful of spectres and spooks (born of papers and books) with, most horrible looks, limbs contorted in crooks, and bat-wings with big hooks, which haunt all the nooks of tester and curtain, and which, I am certain, will drive me insane if some one can't explain where the mischief we are, 'midst the jumble and jar of factions and fads, of crotchets ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... drawback of all sea-side places that half the landscape is unavailable for purposes of human locomotion, being covered by useless water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a lifetime, continuing that promenade ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... New York's financial center with the Levant. It is less than fifty feet through this tiny thoroughfare from the back doors of the great Broadway office buildings to Greenwich Street, where the letters on the window signs resemble contorted angleworms and where one is as likely to stumble into a man from Bagdad as from Boston. One can stand in the middle of it and with his westerly ear catch the argot of Gotham and with his easterly all the dialects of Damascus. And if through some unexpected convulsion of Nature 51 Broadway ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... naked arm had reached out from the underbrush and grasped her wrist. Carr wheeled and his ray pistol spat crackling flame. The savage, an undersized red man with an enormous head, rose unsteadily from his hiding place, a look of terrible hate in his contorted features. Then, like a punctured balloon, his body collapsed into the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... Master Headley really love his trusty foreman too well to expose him to such chances, but Tibble knew too well that there were brutal young men to whom his contorted-visage would be an incitement to contempt and outrage, and that if racked with rheumatism, he would only be an incumbrance. There was nothing for it but to put Kit Smallbones at the head of the party. His imposing presence would keep ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... donkey climbs the ladder he may find carrots on the tiles," was the Paduan's reply. The weasel-like face of the Templar contorted in a ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... hauled up frantically. Tom's face was contorted with pain when they finally got him aboard and stripped ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... upon which I had thus stumbled. The ground rose abruptly on both sides of the stream; that on the opposite side being a rocky precipice, the strata of variously-coloured stone twisted and contorted in the most extraordinary manner, geraniums of various hues growing out from between the interstices of the rock, and the summit of the precipice crowned with a rich profusion of trailing creepers, some of which, notwithstanding the time of year, were in blossom, and the perfume of which ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... silent and terrific, visible only in the swift swirling changes of a livid and blackened sky, so the fatal passion in that imperial bosom was known at first only in the gleaming of her black eyes beneath contorted brows and the spasmodic changes that swept ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... that moment that the heir to the throne had gone mad. His lips were contorted, his eyes were starting out of their sockets. He drew his sword, rushed to the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... angle of 60 degrees. On changing the face of the instrument so as to give a South-East and North-West direction to the needle it hung vertically. The position of the slaty strata of the magnetic ore is also vertical. Their direction is extremely irregular, being much contorted. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... a hundred miles its fierce current has seldom tarried; yet now and again it spreads panting into a long smooth stretch of still water when wearied momentarily with buffeting the boulders in its broken and contorted bed; or when a great rock, jutting out into its course, causes a deep black sullen pool whose sluggish eddy is crested with masses of yellow foam. Merely as a wayfaring pedestrian I have followed Spey from its source to its mouth; but my intimacy with it in the character of a fisherman extends over ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Henry contorted himself on, inch by inch, for all the world like a great snake. Now he passed the sleeping Senecas, hideous with war paint, and came closer to the woman. She was not paying attention to anything about her, but was merely looking up at the pale, cold stars, as if everything in ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... over, and Lise, her face contorted, her body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in one of those periodicals of froth and fashion ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... face was contorted in a furtive grimace of deprecation. Without waiting for permission Calendar dropped into ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the representation of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted snakes[145] finds its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times this curious device was still ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... inspiration, are not yet exhausted: our curious, complex, aspiring age still abounds in subjects for aesthetic manipulation by the literary as well as by other forms of art. For the literary art, at all events, the problem just now is, to induce order upon the contorted, proportionless accumulation of our knowledge and experience, our science and history, our hopes and disillusion, and, in effecting this, to do consciously what has been done hitherto for the most part too unconsciously, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... existence. And now as the Luso steamed along shore, no external change appeared. A bird's-eye view of the islet suggests a podao or Madeiran billhook, about six miles by three. The tool's broken point is the Ilha da Cima, facing to north-east, a contorted pile which resembles a magnified cinder. The handle is the Ilheu Baixo, to the south; and the blade is the tract of yellow sandy lowlands—the sole specimen of its sort in the Madeiras—connecting the extremities. Three tall cones at once disclose vulcanism; ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... base of the great cone. I made my way by tortuous walking round the erupted masses of lava, and also by portions of the lava streams, which, on losing their original fluidity, had become piled up and contorted into gigantic masses. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... have discovered that the chief good some of them got from the ceremony was a perfect command of the organs of sound; for the restraint was limited to those organs; and projected tongues, deprived of their natural exercise, turned themselves, along with winking eyes, contorted features, and a wild use of hands and arms, into the means of telegraphic despatches to all parts of the room, throughout the ceremony. The master, afraid of being himself detected in the attempt to combine prayer and vision, kept his "eyelids screwed together tight," and played the ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... "mannerism," as I understand the word, is meant the repetition of certain forms of language in obedience to blind habit and without reference to their propriety in the particular case. Johnson's sentences seem to be contorted, as his gigantic limbs used to twitch, by a kind of mechanical spasmodic action. The most obvious peculiarity is the tendency which he noticed himself, to "use too big words and too many of them." He had to explain to Miss Reynolds ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... slow. Now he knew why, by reason of what he saw—and what he saw made him feel rather sick. The man with the lantern was quite plainly Professor Kell, bent nearly double with the weight of a grotesquely big thing on his back, a thing that flung a dim, contorted shadow on the ceiling. And that thing was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... two hundred and sixty-five dollars were also realized for awa licenses. Awa is a root the use of which produces a frightful kind of intoxication, in which the victim falls into stupor, his features are contorted, and he has seizures resembling epilepsy. The body of the habitual awa drinker becomes covered with white scales; and it is said that awa drinking predisposes to leprosy. The manner of preparing awa is peculiarly disgusting. The root is chewed ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... across a rough board platform until at last we came to what looked like a huge steel cylinder, lying horizontally, in which was a floor with a cot and some strange paraphernalia. On the cot lay Jack Orton, drawn and contorted, so changed that even his own mother would scarcely have recognised him. A doctor was bending over him, massaging the joints of his legs ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... extraordinary sight—a flood of molten stone, solidifying as it ran down the declivity, forming arrested waves, streams, eddies, gigantic convolutions, forms of snakes, stems of trees, gnarled roots, crooked water-pipes, all involved and contorted on a gigantic scale, a wilderness of force and dread. Over one steeper place the lava had run in a fiery cascade about 100 feet wide. Some had reached the ground, some had been arrested midway, but all had taken the aspect of stems of trees. In some of the crevices I picked up a ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... fell with strange effect. Enid, inspired by sudden terror, rose to her feet; Bale-Corphew sat gripping the arm of his chair, his face contorted, his mouth working, while a rustle, an audible murmur of excitement passed over the whole chapel, and the Precursor, who all along had been crouching at the foot of the throne, turned quickly and ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... natural order of their regular formation; but, instead of this, they are found every where disturbed in that order more or less; in many places this order and regularity is so disturbed as hardly to be acknowledged; in most places we find those stratified bodies broken, dislocated, and contorted, and this aqueous theory of mineralists has neither the means for attaining that end, were it required in their theory, nor have they any such purpose in their theory, were that end attainable by the means ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... younger men got out and looked at the ruined wheel; but the most of the passengers kept their seats, chewed their tobacco, and went to sleep. In all such matters an American is much more patient than an Englishman. To sit quiet, without speech, and ruminate in some contorted position of body comes to him by nature. On this occasion I did not hear a word of complaint—nor yet a word of surprise or thankfulness that the accident had been attended with no serious result. "I have ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... he straightened himself to the height of a tall man. The bent contorted limbs became lithe and strong. The cringing humility slipped from him like a garment. He stood upright and faced Ralph Dacre—a man in the prime ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... was made as he led his companions out of shady gardens into the open. Gale saw an adobe shed and a huge pen fenced by strangely twisted and contorted branches or trunks of mesquite, and, beyond these, wide, flat fields, green—a dark, rich green—and dotted with beautiful horses. There were whites and blacks, and bays and grays. In his admiration Gale searched his memory to see if he could remember the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the valley the face of the mountain sprang; Sheer and bare it rose, unscalable barricade, Beaten and blown against by the generous draught of the trade. Dawn on its fluted brow painted rainbow light, Close on its pinnacled crown trembled the stars at night. Here and there in a cleft clustered contorted trees, Or the silver beard of a stream hung and swung in the breeze. High overhead, with a cry, the torrents leaped for the main, And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain. Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua's ravine, Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the treatment of many forms of insanity has grown more psychological and less physiological than it used to be. Instead of looking for a physical defect in the brain, those who treat delusions look for the repressed desire which has found this contorted mode of expression. For those who do not wish to plunge into the somewhat repulsive and often rather wild theories of psychoanalytic pioneers, it will be worth while to read a little book by Dr. Bernard Hart on "The Psychology of Insanity."* On this question ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... mountain covered with such trees! A traveler speaks of them as the most solemnly impressive trees in the world, and says that their massive trunks, clothed with a scaly texture almost like the skin of living animals and contorted with all the irregularities of age, may well have suggested those ideas of royal, almost divine, strength and solidity which the sacred writers ascribe to them.—Turn to the ninety-second psalm, Clara, and read ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... up that only his face was visible, lay one whom at first I failed to recognize, for the horribly contorted features presented a kind of mottled green ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... summons in an exemplary spirit. It is not certain that he did not bite it. He rolled on the floor, and contorted himself in convulsions of vexation; he 'bothered' the Dean, he 'bothered' the Precentor, he 'bothered' the Organist, he 'bothered' Shapcote's sore throat, he 'bothered' Harewood's wool- gathering wits, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glare of the lanterns our hero could see the men's faces, and they were pale and contorted with ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... open, and in rushed Peggy once more,— but such a Peggy, such an apparition of fear, suffering, and terror as brought a cry of consternation from every lip. Her eyes were starting from her head, her face was contorted in spasmodic gaspings for breath, her arms sawed the air like the sails of a windmill, and she flew round and round the room ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey |
