"Forked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Wendland, when you were a guest at the court of King Burislaf; and again when we sat side by side at the inheritance feast of King Sweyn of Denmark. My name is Thyra. Harald Bluetooth, king of Denmark, was my father, and I am the sister of King Sweyn of the Forked beard, who now reigns over all Denmark, and who has lately wedded with Queen ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... stockings; bottinas of deer skin; a round-crowned Andalusian hat, and his hair cued. On the pommel of his saddle, he carries balanced a long musket, with fox skin round the lock. He is cased in a cuirass of double-fold deer skin, and carries a bull's hide shield; he is forked in a Moorish saddle, high before and behind; his feet are thrust into wooden box stirrups, of Moorish fashion, and a tremendous pair of iron spurs, fastened by chains, jingle at his heels. Thus equipped, and suitably mounted, he considers himself the glory of California, and the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... slept beneath the canoe, which was turned half over, with its upper gunwale resting on a couple of short, but stout, forked sticks; and, acting upon Donald's insistent advice, they kept watch by turn, two hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... way easy for him, though it led through mud, and slime, and stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and reaching into one of the packs drew forth a slender forked stick. Then, while they all gazed in a puzzled silence at his actions, he passed it hither and thither over the dry floor ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... halted at a spot where the trail forked. One part led to the right down the long slope of the mountain, the other to the left, gradually climbing toward the top. The Stonies had come by the right hand trail and were now camped off the trail on a little sheltered bench further down the side of the mountain and surrounded ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... is in for it too, and they say his vicar waited for him in the vestry, but he looked like forked lightning coming out of the pulpit, so the good man thought it better to keep his rod in pickle awhile. It seems that the Lords of the Council and all the nobility were there, and it is a point of religious etiquette in London that in the hangman's house nobody speaks of the rope; but our ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... intending to try the effect of a shot or two, and in another minute I was out of sight. Fifty yards further down the road forked, and fancying the branch to the right looked the easier, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... before him, and Darkness behind him. And Ahura wept at him, and she said: "Glory to the King of Darkness! Hail to the King of Light! all power is gone from the tomb." But Na.nefer.ka.ptah said to Ahura: "Do not let your heart be sad; I will make him bring back this book, with a forked stick in his hand, and a fire-pan on his head." And Setna went out from the tomb, and it closed behind him as it ...
— Egyptian Literature
... no other than the seaman who pulled the stroke—oar in the gig; a very handsome negro, and the man who afterwards forked Whiffle out of the water—tall, powerful, and muscular, and altogether one of the best men in the ship. The rest of the boat's crew, from his complexion, had fastened the sobriquet of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... comparing it with your servant and the Indians who aided at the work. The trunk of a tree, with two hollowed stones, were the fundamental pieces of the machine. These rings of stone were secured to the trunk with vines. Two forked poles, whose extremities rest at each side of the excavation, and the forked sticks tied up to the superior ring embracing it, served as arc-boutant in the direction where the greatest force was ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... some people can find water with a forked hazel twig," said Olave. "They hold it loosely in their hands, and it jerks when the water's near. I wish I ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... the furnishings. In addition it is customary to find a few well made mats of pandanus or buri palm leaf. These are spread on the floor when the owners wish to retire and for the rest of the time are rolled up and laid along the walls. Carved forked sticks which serve as torch-holders stand in various parts of the room, while somewhere near the stove is a miscellany of wooden meat blocks, bamboo fans and fly swatters, gourds filled with millet, salt, ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... recently graduated from West Point, started across one of the bridges and reached the north bank with a squad of a dozen men and two machine guns. This little unit went into position in a place commanding the forked highways which converged not far from the northern approach of the iron bridge crossing the river. It was this unit's function to prevent the enemy advance from this direction. The unit was separated from ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... forked tongue, Yellow Bird. You are not a Piegan buck of the great Blackfoot nation; you are a woman. Your fathers killed men; you are afraid to kill cattle." Smith turned from ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... neither should hurt nor alarm the other. A bright thought came to her after much pondering. Carefully lifting the handkerchief, she pinned the two ends to the roof of the cart, and there swung little Forked-tongue, while Rob lay ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... thunder.] Do you not hear, There is artillery in the Heaven to-night. Vengeance is wakened up, and has unloosed His dogs upon the world, and in this matter Which lies between us two, let him who draws The thunder on his head beware the ruin Which the forked flame brings after. [A flash of lightning followed ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... god of seas in place, Clayming that sea-coast citie as his right, And strikes the rockes with his three-forked mace; Whenceforth issues a warlike steed in sight, 316 The signe by which he chalengeth the place; That all the gods which saw his wondrous might Did surely deeme the victorie his due: But seldom seene, foreiudgement proveth ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... has a very peculiar shape; it consists of a number of lobes which are disposed upon a stalk which is more or less forked (tends more or less to dichotomize). If you call to your minds some of the Pompeian wall decorations, you will perceive that similar forms occur there in all possible variations. Stems are regularly seen in decorations that run perpendicularly, surrounded by leaves of this description. Before ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... take us for the money now. He had one gentleman, an Englishman, inside already, but evidently the sharp fellow was looking out for a double fare; so he asked this gentleman if we might get inside as we were going in the same direction. He politely and readily consented, and we were forked in by cabby, who then shot off as if the whole road ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... had a blue complexion, thin legs, and a long tail. And once when I was still very young, as I hurried from school through a lonely wood, I actually saw one of these monsters quite plainly. And I thought I observed that his tail was slightly forked at the end! I have long since forgiven you these terrifying caudal appendages, of course, but, for all that, I keep a wary eye upon my heavenly bodies and at least one wing stretched even unto this day when my guardian angel introduces a Northern man. My patriotic instincts recommend at once ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... gigantic knots, till slowly the reptile's head was thrust forward, with a gentle waving motion, rising from amidst a tuft of leaves; and then, as the gliding of the folds continued, the head descended in a slow, waving, swinging fashion, foot after foot nearer and nearer to Lilla, a forked tongue flashing and playing about the frightful jaws, and the hideous eyes fascinating the poor girl, so that I saw ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... another way in which that metaphor of the forked road will make the position plain. Medieval society was not the right place; it was only the right turning. It was only the right road; or perhaps only the beginning of the right road. The medieval age was very far from being ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... gigantic serpents along the masts, rolled themselves round the yards, then, with their forked tongues, came to lick the sides ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... all about were signs of occupation. A well-blackened billy hung from the ridge-pole. Close to the tent was a heap of dry sticks, and a little farther away the ashes of a fire still smouldered, and over them a blackened bough, supported by two forked sticks, showed that the billy had many times been boiled there. The little camp was all very neat and tidy. "It looks quite home-like," ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... a stave higher still. Keep your hair on!" she shouted down to Ulyth, and began swarming up the bole of a huge old oak-tree that abutted on the wall. She was strong and active as a boy, and had soon scrambled to where the branches forked. A mass of twisted ivy hung here, and raising herself with its aid, she ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... no bigger than a human hand,— But swiftly, darkly spreading o'er the parched, thirsty land, It widely displays its threatening armies thro' the sky, Its lurid lightnings flash in forked streaks ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... raising its head now and then to look about, and breathing out red fire and black smoke like a blast from a furnace. When its poisonous breath has blown this smoke away for an instant, it shows two rows of teeth like knives and a long forked tongue like a snake's, and its jaws are opened wide enough to take the young man into them and bite him into a dozen pieces at one snap. Surely if he is ever to learn what fear is now ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... them, the brand and the knife had been already used; for the log tenement, the stacks and the out-buildings of Reuben Ring, and of several others who dwelt in the skirts of the settlement, were sending forth clouds of murky smoke, in which forked and angry flames were already flashing fiercely. But danger most pressed still nearer. A long line of fierce warriors was even in the meadows; and in no direction could the eye be turned, that it did not meet with the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... bacon tasted when you broiled it yourself on a forked stick Frontispiece Laura took the new cousin up to her room 26 Cutting the wiry brown stems in the fern-filled glade. 140 "I'm getting dinner ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... was of light varnished wood and the floor was bare. The furniture was of the shabbiest, the simplest. The dressing-table, for instance, was a packing-case in a sprigged muslin petticoat, and the mirror above was very strange; it was as though a little piece of forked lightning was imprisoned in it. On the table there stood a jar of sea-pinks, pressed so tightly together they looked more like a velvet pincushion, and a special shell which Kezia had given her grandma for a pin-tray, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... conquered for a time, and now the two blasts were contending in the clouds above and on the waters of the distant great lake below. The rain fell in torrents, like hail upon the shingled roof; the blue-forked lightning flashed viciously, followed instantaneously by peals of thunder that rattled every casement, and made the dishes dance on the breakfast table. The doctor had been with his patient; and as the clergymen were about to conduct family worship, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... as the light which flashed from the glittering sea was thrown up beneath the trees. Jack was so utterly fascinated for the time being that his eyes took in every detail, and he noted how the reptile's tightly-closed mouth resembled a smile of triumph, and thought that the tiny forked tongue which kept on flickering in and out of the orifice in the front part of the jaws mocked at him as the creature laughed ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... for it; but to grow this root to perfection a rich light loam is necessary, free from any trace of recent or strong manure. A rank soil, or one to which manure has been added shortly before sowing the seed, will produce ugly roots, some coarse with overgrowth, others forked and therefore of little value, and others, perhaps, cankered and worthless. The soil should be well prepared by deep digging some time before making up the seed-bed, and it is sound practice to grow Beet on plots that have been heavily manured in the previous year ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... horse and rode away. He had not gone farther than to the end of the innkeeper's field, when to his surprise he found that the road forked. He did not know whether he should take the ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... reptile, and declared it not venomous, for it belonged to that species of diamond serpents which the natives of New South Wales rear. But it was possible that others existed whose bite was mortal such as the deaf vipers with forked tails, which rise up under the feet, or those winged snakes, furnished with two ears, which enable them to proceed with great rapidity. Top, the first moment of surprise over, began a reptile chase with such eagerness, that they feared for his safety. His master ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... from which she was running, as if some heavy weight was being forced through them; and presently there issued a most extraordinary monster. It came forward at a quick pace, its head erect above ten feet, its jaws wide open, from the midst of which there issued a forked tongue which darted in and out with inconceivable rapidity. Its body was very long, and thick as an ordinary tree; it was covered over with bright shining scales that seemed to have different colours, and was propelled along the ground in folds of various sizes, with a length of tail of several ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... been vomiting for more than forty-eight hours every drop that I drank. In that condition I went into a saloon and asked for a drink; and as I tremblingly poured it out, a snake shot its head up out of the liquor, and with swaying head, and glistening eye looking at me, licked out its forked tongue, and hissed in my face. I felt my blood run cold and curdle at ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... it; but I could see no one. So I started across with a hope of crossing without coming in contact with any one on the prairie. I walked as fast as I could, but when I got about midway of the prairie, I came to a high spot where the road forked, and three men came up from a low spot as if they had been there concealed. They were all on horse back, and I supposed them to be the same men that had tried to get lodging where I stopped over night. Had this been in timbered land, I might have stood ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... leeward side of the tent a fire was burning. It had not been long kindled, and crackled as it blazed. You could easily have told the strong red flame to be that of the shell-bark hickory—the best firewood—though dry sticks of some lighter wood had been used to kindle it. On each side of the fire a forked stick was stuck into the ground, with the forks at the top; and on these rested a fresh cut sapling, placed horizontally to serve as a crane. A two-gallon camp-kettle of sheet-iron was suspended upon it and ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... thrown large stones, and on top of the stones more wood was piled; so that after a time, when the wood had burnt down, the stones were very hot—sometimes red hot. With two rather short-handled forked sticks, the women took from the fire one of the hot stones, and put it in the water in the hide kettle, and as it cooled, took it out and put in another hot stone. Thus the water was soon heated, and boiled and cooked whatever was in the kettle. To be sure, there were some ashes ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... Mensitam seu Sigillam Planetarum. Aug. 26th, abowt 8 (at night) a strange meteore in forme of a white clowde crossing galaxiam, whan it lay north and sowth over our zenith; this clowd was at length from the S.E. to the S.W. sharp at both endes, and in the west ende it was forked for a while; it was abowt sixty degrees high, it lasteth an howr, all the skye ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... formidable appearance; and were under no apprehension of being plundered in the woods. About eleven o'clock one of the asses proving very refractory, the Negroes took a curious method to make him tractable. They cut a forked stick, and putting the forked part into the ass's mouth, like the bit of a bridle, tied the two smaller parts together above his head, leaving the lower part of the stick of sufficient length to strike against the ground if the ass should attempt ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... and thunder rolled throughout the ages. Men feared, wondered, and worshiped that mighty hidden power. Franklin looked straight at the forked lightning and asked, 'What are you?' The answer came in the telegraph that is fast making the nations of the earth one great family. Bell listened long and carefully to sounds, and now I can talk from New York to my ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... in these tombs are not mummified, but are contracted, though laid in an opposite direction from those discovered at Medum. The graves are open, square pits, roofed over with beams of wood. This ancient race used forked hunting-lances for chasing the gazelle, and their beautiful flints were found to be like those belonging to an excellent collection already existing in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. They also made an abundant use of copper for adzes, harpoons for spearing ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the three-forked road of divorce, complacency, or separation, sank down and waited in dull misery for help or solution, as do most of the poor wayfarers who come upon such a break in their path of matrimony. She imagined Cheever with Zada and wondered what peculiar incantations Zada used to hold ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Guernsey at present, and I have never seen it in the Islands myself. But Mr. MacCulloch writes me word—"The Long-tailed Tit is, or at least was, far from uncommon. Probably the destruction of orchards may have rendered it less common. The nest was generally placed in the forked branch of an apple-tree, and so covered with grey lichens as to be almost indistinguishable. I remember, in my youth, finding a ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... and ignorant youth, given to chicken-thieving, and, like his father, extremely superstitious. Both father and sons believed in witchcraft, and they frequently "divined" the presence of water by a forked stick or hazel rod. Orlando Sanders of Palmyra, a well-preserved gentleman of over eighty, tells us that the Smith family worked for his father and for himself. He gives them the credit of being good workers, but declares that they could save no money. He also states ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... witches was almost as difficult as finding water. They had to be imported from some remote section of the West. The witches, as we called them, went over various parts of the reservation, probing, poking, with their forked sticks. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... the blow, he would be upset by the blow himself. But the dragoon must be supported by the saddle, and as he had kept hold of the shaft he would be able to disengage the fork which had pierced the body some six inches. No cavalry of equal morale could stand against a cavalry armed with such forked spears. ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... Kampf mit dem Drachen, we have an instance, miserably feeble indeed, but characteristic, and suited to our present purpose, of the detailing, finishing action of the fancy. The dragon is drawn from head to tail, vulture eyes, serpent teeth, forked tongue, fiery crest, armor, claws and coils as grisly as may be; his den is drawn, and all the dead bones in it, and all the savage forest-country about it far and wide; we have him from the beginning of his career to the end, devouring, rampant, victorious ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the murder; Mantua had looked beautiful in her golden mantle of sunshine and silver veil of mist; there was a white, light fog on the water meadows and the lakes, and under it the willows waved and the tall reeds rustled; whilst the dark towers, the forked battlements, the vast Lombard walls, seemed to float on it like sombre vessels on a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... hills for a glow of light. But this day he came searching for them by day. Thorn had speared a fish for Sylva with a stick he had sharpened by rubbing it on a crumbling rock. He was working discouragedly on a little contrivance made out of a forked stick and the elastic from his parachute-pack. He was haggard and worn and desperate. Sylva was beginning to look ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... and blows—as we had no wish to abandon them if it could be avoided—we dashed on. Every now and then I looked back to observe the progress of the conflagration. Dark wreaths were rising higher and higher in the sky, and below them forked flames ever and anon darted up as the fire caught the more combustible vegetation. Borne by the wind, light powdery ashes fell around us, while we were sensible of a strong odour of burning, which made it appear as if the enemy was already close at our heels. The grass on every side ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... darkness—for only a faint, hazy light beyond the Mitras showed where the young moon had sunk away behind the mountains—and walked along the path that she and Pepe had trod together but five days before. This time she did not pass beneath the arch of the causeway. Where the path forked she turned to the right and climbed the bank of the arroyo and so came out upon the causeway itself. In the darkness she tripped and nearly fell, and, looking closely, she saw at her feet the body of a man. Resolutely, yet shudderingly, she stooped ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Here was the very spot where the cayuca had been tethered to a pole. Charley remembered the pole, forked at the upper end. Only the forked tip was visible, for the river had risen amazingly from the rain, and was running over its bank. But the pole was sticking out—and no canoe was attached to it. Of canoe, and of Maria and Francisco, not a ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... pigskin? Surely a male biped need not dwell In a prejudiced pedantic prig's skin, Not to like that prospect passing well. CARLYLE, who scoffed at Man, had deemed it caddish To picture Woman as "a mere forked radish." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... “surround” accomplished, we received permission from Two Axe to take up our line of march. Accordingly we started along the river, and had only proceeded five miles from the village when we found that the Platte forked. Taking the South Fork, we journeyed on some six miles and camped. So we continued every day, making slow progress, some days not advancing more than four or five miles, until we had left the Pawnee villages three hundred miles in our rear. We found plenty of buffalo along our ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, of much finer and lighter stuff than their hose, with blue flat caps on their heads, a handkerchief knit with two knots about their neck; and thus are they attired. Now their weapons are long bows and forked arrows, swords and targets, harquebusses, muskets, dirks, and Lochaber axes. With these arms I found many of them armed for the hunting. As for their attire, any man of what degree soever that comes ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... are, described the scene at night as something fearful. The huts, crowded to excess, were close, the atmosphere fetid, the stench unbearable. There lay, side by side, the poor, starved vagabond, chained hands and feet, and often with a large forked piece of wood several yards long fixed round his neck, and the warrior who had bled in many a hard-won fight, the governor of provinces—nay, the sons of kings and conquered rulers themselves. In the centre the guards, keeping candles lighted all night, laughed or played some noisy game, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... And he grinned his splendid grin from sheer sense of relief. "I'm a New Yorker—Brooklyn. I was just forked in here anyhow. Don't you waste time thinking over me. You sit down here and do your ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... afternoon a certain black dot might have been observed, so lost in the immensity of landscape that it appeared to be stationary. It was well out upon the trail that wound northward from Indian Head into the country of the Fishing Lakes—the trail that forked also eastward to dip through the valley of the Qu'Appelle at Blackwood before striking north and east across the Kenlis plain towards the Pheasant Hills. In reality the well kept team which drew the big grain wagon was swinging steadily ahead at a smart pace; for their load of supplies, the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... a hazel-tree, there was a mandrake. He promised wealth to whomsoever should dare by night, and according to the prescribed rites, to tear him from the ground,[212] not fearing to hear him cry or to see blood flow from his little human body and his forked feet. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... off the molasses she exchanged shy looks with Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully mothered as he was, felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather as if he were some clumsy lout pitch-forked into the presence of a fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of bachelor's buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known it,—and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing still more fatal damage ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... about me were obsequiously answered by the man with the forked beard, whereupon my attention was attracted by the fact that he addressed him by his Gentile name—that is, as "Mr. Even," and not by his Hebrew name, as he would have done in our birthplace. Surely America did not seem to be much ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... he grunted, "who cannot hit me with two shots." Then pointing to a huge oak that forked half way ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... and he learns to play on the flute, and the spinnet, and the piano, and the fiddle, and the bagpipes; and to sing all manner of songs, and to skirl, full gallop, with such a pith and birr, that though he was to lose his precious eyesight with the small-pox, or a flash of forked lightning, or fall down a three-story stair dead drunk, smash his legs to such a degree that both of them required to be cut off, above the knees, half an hour after, so far all right and well—for he could just tear off his shoulder-knot, and make a perfect ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... a very dangerous one, too, and sometimes lives were sacrificed in his efforts to capture or to kill this fierce wild beast. Sometimes the animal was caught in a trap which was nothing less than a hut of logs with a single entrance. In the roof of the hut heavy beams would be placed on a forked stick. The bait—a young lamb or kid—would be tied beneath the beams. The moment the bait was touched, down would come the heavy timber—smash—on the ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... an hour and a quarter the battle of Masindi was won. Not a house remained of the lately extensive town. A vast open space of smoke and black ashes, with flames flickering in some places where the buildings had been consumed, and at others forked sheets of fire where the fuel was still undestroyed, were the only remains of the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... string of beads, and after placing it over the scratchings he had made on the soil, jerked out some strange incantation in a voice that thickened and quivered with terror. I then saw a stream of red light steal from the base of the column and dart like forked lightning to the beads, which instantly shone a luminous red. The native now picked them up, and, putting them round his neck, clapped the palms of his hands vigorously together, uttering as he did so a succession of shrill cries, that gradually became more and ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... known representatives of the Equisetales the leaves were highly developed and dichotomously divided, thus differing greatly from the mere scale-leaves of the recent Horsetails, or even from the simple linear leaves of the later Calamites. The early members of the class, in their forked leaves, and in anatomical characters, show an approximation to the Sphenophyllales, which are chiefly represented by the large genus Sphenophyllum, ranging through the Palaeozoic from the Middle ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... a huge Hercules; yet the Judge who seems cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with forked lightnings without and volcanic fires within. The pure in heart see him as the face of all-clasping Love. Give him thy heart and he will give thee love, effulgent love, like the affection of mother or lover or friend, only dearer than either. Give him thy ways, and he will overarch life's path ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... south of which stands a number of smaller hills, forming with the first a circular arrangement, suggestive of the idea that they represent the relics of a large central crater. Several clefts may be seen on the floor under suitable illumination, among them a forked cleft on the N.E. quarter, and two others, originating at a dusky pit of irregular form situated near the foot of the S.E. wall, one of which runs W. of the central hills, and the other on the opposite side. ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... from the village, the road on which Harry was riding forked, and not knowing that the party which had started off in that direction had taken the road which ran to the northeast, as being the direction in which a man would probably go, if he wanted to get away safely with five stolen ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... these branches would be cut, and after sharpening the butt-end to a point, split a certain distance, and by a wedge the prongs divided sufficiently to admit a fish between. The Indian fisherman would then slyly put the forked end in the water over his intended victim, and with a quick dart firmly wedge him between the prongs. When secured there, the work of landing him took but a moment. When trout were plentiful this ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... nothing but it in all the bright infinity of sunshine. Were they, indeed, about to find the treasure chest? He felt the sun very hot upon his shoulders, and he heard the harsh, insistent jarring of a tern that hovered and circled with forked tail and sharp white wings in the sunlight just above their heads; but all the time he stood staring into the good old ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... sympathy been more fiercely kindled than along that Western border where life was always tense with martial passion. It had passed from station to station, like a torch blazing in the darkness and with a two-forked fire—gratitude to France, hatred of England—hatred rankling in a people who had come out of the very heart of the English stock as you would hew the heart out of a tree. So that when, two years before this, Citizen ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Mrs. Hollister,—the girls, their costumes, their tents, and the delicious dinner cooked over an open fire interested her greatly. She even held one of the forked branches on which reposed the chicken and broiled it as well as a chef, but she thought the green corn was the most delicious thing that she'd ever tasted. After dinner ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... ribs; his legs entwining Each other, till supplanted down he fell A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, Reluctant, but in vain; a greater power Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned, According to his doom: he would have spoke, But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue To forked tongue; for now were all transformed Alike, to serpents all, as accessories To his bold riot: Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters head and tail, Scorpion, and Asp, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... by the pillar of fire or the gushing rock, or by the rushing of mighty winds. And it is still through the elements that the Almighty speaks to man, to warn, to terrify, to chasten; to raise him up to wonder, to praise, and adore. The forked and blinding lightning which, with the rapidity of thought, dissolves the union between the body and the soul; the pealing thunder, announcing that the bolt has sped; the fierce tornado, sweeping away everything in its career, like a besom of wrath; the howling storm; the mountain waves; ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... three birds, plucked featherless as Plato's man. The two roasters we planted carefully on spits before a sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, supported on forked stakes, we suspended by a twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its spicy juices to the wooing flame, and drip bedewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters ripened deliberately, while keen and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... pale spectres of gigantic size, casting their supernatural lights over the waves. At midnight the expected lightning burst forth with as almost terror-inspiring grandeur; sometimes eight or ten flashes of forked lightning darted forth at once, lighting up the whole ocean, and showing the dark banks of clouds assembling in the distance. Even when the lightning ceased, so great was the phosphorescence of the ocean, that, as ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... fierce comfort in this thought, but it couldn't help me out of the scrape. I dared not sit still, lest a sunstroke should be added, and there was no resource but to hop or crawl down the rugged path, in the hope of finding a forked sapling from which I could extemporize a crutch. With endless pain and trouble I reached a thicket, and was feebly working on a branch with my pen-knife, when the sound of ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... fool 'nough to promise him I wouldn't say nothin' to her ef he'd keep away from her. You see I needed money awful bad fer baby. He don't take to livin' awful good. He cries a lot an' I bed to hev thin's fer 'im, so I threatened him ef he didn't do sompin' I'd go tell her; an' he up an' forked over, but not till I promised. But now they say the papers is tellin' he's to marry her to-night, an' I gotta stop it somehow. I got my rights an' baby's to look after, promise er no promise, Ken I get ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... under the trees and begin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to them, and ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... took a chair, and arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up, and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause. Then he very thoughtfully took a chair, with his back to me, so that I might be as free as possible, and began to read. I put the forked metal ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... of the word "norther"—a storm or tornado, usually preceded by a hot, stifling atmosphere, with drifting dust, accompanied by sheet or forked lightning and claps of terrific thunder, followed by wind and rain, sometimes hail or sleet, as if the sluices of heaven were drawn open, ending in a continued blast of more regular direction, but chill as though coming direct from ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... watched him when he figgered wheer tuh dig dat well. Sho' nuf old Shep got hisse'f uh prime ellum stick fum ah good sized branch dat was forked. First he skint all de ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews with Former Slaves - Virginia Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... unutterably grave, as a new brilliant band of forked lightning glittered outside the windows, and the burst of the thunderbolt sounded as if at their very feet, making a renewal of the same cries ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... second day of their resumed voyage they arrived at a point where the river forked, the stream on their right hand being almost as important as the other; but they decided that the stream on their left was the main stream, and therefore followed it. Although they knew it not at the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... since we left Camein, 1,100 people on their return, of whom about 700 were Shan Chinese. The loads carried away are in some cases very heavy; the larger pieces are carried on bamboo frames by from two to five men, the lesser on a stout piece of bamboo lashed to and supported on two cross or forked bamboos, the stouter joint resting on the bearer's neck, the handles of the forks being carried in his hands. The most obvious advantage of this is the ease with which the load may be taken off, when the bearer is fatigued. The revenue yielded ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the romance of it? Not a bit. George the Fourth was pitch-forked into a marine engineering shop at the ripe age of thirteen. He is twenty-two now, and carnal minded. He wants "siller" for—well, not for the Broomielaw. He wants to go "east" again to Singapore, where the ladies of Japan are so charming and so cheap. The only ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... wheeling spires untwist; Wide o'er the West when borne on headlong gales, Dark as meridian night, the Monster sails, 75 Howls high in air, and shakes his curled brow, Lashing with serpent-train the waves below, Whirls his black arm, the forked lightning flings, And showers a deluge from ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... 'Oh, thou Khou, for this purpose have I called thee. I am aweary of my days and I fain would learn the future. The future fain would I learn, but the forked tongue of That which sleeps tells me no word, and the lips of That which is a-cold are dumb! Tell me, then, thou, I charge thee by the word that has power to open the lips of the dead, thou ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... overhead sent out their forked tongues of fire, and from the timbers below leaped up the sheets of flame until we were enveloped in the fiery shroud. Blinded, stifled for a moment, I then felt the cool night air fan my face, and the engine no longer shook as if upon ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... they seem to be extending, their borders should be trimmed with a sharp spade pushed vertically full depth into the soil and all the earth beyond the clump thus restricted should be shaken out with a garden fork and the cut pieces of mint removed. Further, the forked-over ground should be hoed every week during the remainder of the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... spoke to him. He was a slight, brown-haired man of about thirty, bearded and long-haired after the Saxon fashion, and I thought he seemed to be recovering from some wound or sickness that had made him white and thin. He wore his beard long and forked, which may have made him look thinner; but he seemed active and wiry in his movements—one of those men who make up for want of strength by quickness and mastery of their weapons. Soberly dressed enough he was, but the cloth of his ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... the chin and cheeks, but wore their moustaches down to the breast. Our Saxon ancestors wore forked beards. The Normans at the Conquest shaved not only the chin, but also the back of the head. But they soon began to grow very long beards. During the Wars of the Roses beards grew "small by degrees and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... heat and thirst, could say no more. Then Jupiter omnipotent, calling to witness all the gods, including him who had lent the chariot, and showing them that all was lost unless speedy remedy were applied, mounted the lofty tower from whence he diffuses clouds over the earth, and hurls the forked lightnings. But at that time not a cloud was to be found to interpose for a screen to earth, nor was a shower remaining unexhausted. He thundered, and brandishing a lightning bolt in his right hand launched it against the charioteer, and struck him ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... a shrewd torment that, double-forked. To deny was infamy, to affirm ruin. However, there was no escape from it: Isoult had never been a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... here are the prairie fires at night. The grass is burnt in spring and autumn so as to kill off the old tufts and allow of the new shoots growing for hay. The fires look like one long streak of quivering flame, the forked tips of which flash and quiver in the horizon, magnified by refraction, and on a dark night are lovely. In the day-time one only sees volumes of smoke which break the monotony of the landscape, though I don't know that it is picturesque. With a slight breeze the fires ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... Notwithstanding my late boast about not fearing a shower, I hardly liked to go out under this waterspout. Then the gleams of lightning were very fierce, the thunder crashed very near; this storm had gathered immediately above Villette; it seemed to have burst at the zenith; it rushed down prone; the forked, slant bolts pierced athwart vertical torrents; red zigzags interlaced a descent blanched as white metal: and all broke from a sky heavily black in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... pertaining to his married state. So up he gets, and to his father goes, To whose glad ears he doth his vows disclose. The nuptials are resolv'd with utmost power; And he at night would swim to Hero's tower, From whence he meant to Sestos' forked bay To bring her covertly, where ships must stay, Sent by his father, throughly rigg'd and mann'd, To waft her safely to Abydos' strand. There leave we him; and with fresh wing pursue Astonish'd Hero, whose most wished view I thus long have forborne, because I left ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... the clashing of the huge leaves of a young fan palm, {78a} growing not ten feet from the window. It has no stem as yet; and the lower leaves have to be trimmed off or they would close up the path, so that only the great forked green butts of them are left, bound to each other by natural matting: but overhead they range out nobly in leafstalks ten feet long, and fans full twelve feet broad; and this is but a baby, a three years' old thing. Surely, again, we are in ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and only four at the other. They are bedded firmly and flattened a little on the inside. On the upper sides the logs are carefully hewed and leveled until pots, pans and kettles will sit firmly and evenly on them. A strong forked stake is driven at each end of the space, and a cross-pole, two or three inches thick, laid on, for hanging kettles. This completes the range; simple, but effective. (See illustration.) The broad end of the space is for frying pans, and the potato kettle. The narrow ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... she saw him; she saw him twice running. Once in the park where they had sat together, and once in the forked road that leads past that part of St. Sidwell's where Miss Cursiter and Miss Vivian lived in state. Each time he was walking very fast as usual, and he looked at her, but he never raised his hat; she spoke, but he passed her without a word. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... arrival at Bieliki was, I think, the most sleepless I have ever experienced. So thoroughly tired was I, that the deafening crashes of thunder, the forked lightning, and the deluge of rain, which poured in torrents through the tent, might have passed unheeded, but for the mass of minute life, which defied sleep. With early dawn I wandered off, too glad to escape from my ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... afternoon I had the nest brought down to me. For foundation it had a mass of small twigs from six to eight inches long, crooked and forked and straight, which were so slightly held together that they could only be handled by lifting with both hands, and placing at once in a cloth, where they were carefully tied in. Within this mass ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Red Fields, then went on to the edge of town. The forked lightnings were playing and the trees beginning to sway. "We'll stop a moment," Rand said over his ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was vivid as ever, but the thunder ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... described him better, and was sanctified to him by personal deserving—Charles the Base. When we entered the presence he sat throned, with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him. He looked like a forked carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... tasted of our blood, they turn Forced by the Dragon; in their rear The din of Ares panic-struck they hear. For Zeus who hates the braggart's boast Beheld that gold-bespangled host; As at the goal the paean they upraise, He struck them with his forked lightning blaze. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... branch, interwoven with grass and fern so as to form a complete screen. Around the neck was a strip of the bark of which they make fishing lines, and a young strait stick growing near was stripped of its bark and bent down so as to form an arch over the body, in which position it was confined by a forked branch ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... himself a brand-new Stetson, in celebration of th' occasion, an' when Barry said, in Injun talk, 'John, this is Will Curley,' Old John he never moved a muscle, but his eyes looked like forked lightnin'. You know, Curley is a Crow—th' perpetual enemy of th' Sioux—an' in addition t' that, Curley he was a scout for th' whites. Old Gall he walked slowly over t' Curley, with a walk that made me think o' nothin' else on earth but a painter, ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... great serpent was oscillating like a pendulum, its little tongue playing like forked red lightning, its loathsome red eyes holding his own. Terror gripped his heart, and his soul curdled. He would have cried out, but that his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He could not have ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Polyphemus. You—you are a Titan. You would be Behemoth in the forests, Leviathan in the deep, and Typhon in the sewer. You surpass everything. There is the trace of lightning in your deformity; your face has been battered by the thunderbolt. The jagged contortion of forked lightning has imprinted its mark on your face. It struck you and passed on. A mighty and mysterious wrath has, in a fit of passion, cemented your spirit in a terrible and superhuman form. Hell is a penal furnace, where the iron called Fatality is raised to a white heat. You ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... taint of parasitism is in its blood, and it proceeds to adapt itself to the pauper habits of its race. The tiny body first doubles in upon itself, and from the two front limbs elongated filaments protrude. Its four hind limbs entirely disappear, and twelve short-forked swimming organs temporarily take their place. Thus strangely metamorphosed the Sacculina sets out in search of a suitable host, and in an evil hour, by that fate which is always ready to accommodate the transgressor, is thrown into the company of the Hermit-crab. With its two ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... hammer being drawn back to a horizontal position and held in place by a notched piece of bone. The breech-pin was gone, and a piece of stone fixed in the stock filled its place. The breech of the stock was but little larger than the other part, and seemed very awkwardly contrived. A forked stick is carried to form a rest, that ensures the accuracy of aim. Powder and lead are so expensive that great economy is shown in their use. I was told these natives were excellent marksmen, and rarely missed a shot. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... broom-besom. At the twigs. At St. Cosme, I come to adore At the quoits. thee. At I'm for that. At the lusty brown boy. At I take you napping. At greedy glutton. At fair and softly passeth Lent. At the morris dance. At the forked oak. At feeby. At truss. At the whole frisk and gambol. At the wolf's tail. At battabum, or riding of the At bum to buss, or nose in breech. wild mare. At Geordie, give me my lance. At Hind the ploughman. At swaggy, waggy or shoggyshou. At the good mawkin. At stook ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... road you arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front, and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air sometimes and pushing ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the valleys in which Santa Maria and Tepanapa lay. But the only actual feature which we could see and recognize was the little coffee finca this side of Zautla. The combination of green mountains, blue ridges and bare rock cliffs was grand. Here our road forked, and at this point we had a moment's excitement. We met an old indian man with a baby tied upon his back, and his old wife, carrying a burden, followed after. Before them a black bull was calmly walking. The moment the old man saw us, he waved his ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... crowd the river above Gray's bay. On one of these we stopped to amuse ourselves with shooting some ducks, and meanwhile a smart breeze springing up, we split open a double-rush mat (which had served as a bag), to make a sail, and having cut a forked sapling for a mast, shipped a few boulders to stay the foot of it, and spread our canvass to the wind. We soon arrived in sight of Gray's bay, at a distance of fourteen or fifteen miles from our establishment. We had, notwithstanding, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... of nausea and powerlessness possessed Dermot, as from the open mouth, in which the fatal fangs showed plainly while the protruding forked tongue darting in and out seemed to feel for him, came a fetid effluvia that had a paralysing effect on him. He was experiencing the extraordinary fascination that a snake exercises over its victims. His muscles seemed benumbed, as the huge head swayed from side to side and mesmerised ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... of the Platte, for scalps of members of their own party of whom the Patties had killed eight; They also took from them all the stolen beaver-skins, five mules, and their dried buffalo meat. After this interchange of civilities the trappers went on to where the river forked again, neither fork being more than twenty-five or thirty yards wide. The right-hand-fork pursued a north-east course, and following it four days brought them (probably in Middle Park) to a large village of the "Nabahoes." Of these they inquired as ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... how a woman of her temperament suffered, and was martyrized at heart by the scantiness of her pecuniary means. No matter what foolish declarations people make about money, they one and all, if they live in Paris, must grovel before accounts, do homage to figures, and kiss the forked hoof of the golden calf. What a problem was hers! twelve thousand francs a year to defray the costs of a household consisting of father, mother, two children, a chambermaid and cook, living on the second floor ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... and begged! I would like to see you beg. It's not so easy as you might suppose. I played it on being a shipwrecked mariner from Blyth; I don't know where Blyth is, do you? but I thought it sounded natural. I begged from a little beast of a schoolboy, and he forked out a bit of twine, and asked me to make a clove hitch; I did, too, I know I did, but he said it wasn't, he said it was a granny's knot, and I was a what-d'ye-call-'em, and he would give me in charge. Then I begged from a naval ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... with this discovery, and the history of all our acquisitions, which I displayed to her. Nothing gave her so much pleasure as our plates and dishes, which were actual necessaries. We went to our kitchen, and were gratified to see preparations going on for a good supper. My wife had planted a forked stick on each side the hearth; on these rested a long thin wand, on which all sorts of fish were roasting, Francis being intrusted to turn the spit. On the other side was impaled a goose on another spit, and ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... the draw the trail forked, and Stratton took the left-hand branch. The grazing hereabouts was poor, and at this time of year particularly the Shoe-Bar cattle were more likely to be confined to the richer fenced-in pastures belonging to the ranch. The scenery thus presenting no points of interest, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... and slept, blazing like amethysts, rubies and emeralds, on the tops of the cattail rushes. Very lazily and without the slightest reluctance, Uncle Andy ruled in his line, secured his cast, and leaned his rod securely in a forked branch to await more favorable conditions for his pet pastime. For the present it seemed to him that nothing could be more delightful and more appropriate to the hour than to lie under the thick-leaved maple at the ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Sheikh the money ourselves." One of them turned to me, "Why, Christian, what is a couple of dollars to Haj Ibrahim? That's the value?" (putting his hand to his nose.) The reader may easily guess how this stupid obstinacy of the merchant ended. The Haj forked out, with a bad grace, and the money was carried after The Giant, one of the Ghat merchants adding two more dollars. I was pleased with this trait of the Ghateen, who were determined we should not go off in this uncomfortable plight. The Giant I did not see again; I regretted ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... heartily, and their laughter acted like gunpowder on Don Quixote's fury, for drawing his sword without another word he made a rush at the stand. One of those who supported it, leaving the burden to his comrades, advanced to meet him, flourishing a forked stick that he had for propping up the stand when resting, and with this he caught a mighty cut Don Quixote made at him that severed it in two; but with the portion that remained in his hand he dealt such a thwack on the shoulder of Don Quixote's sword arm (which the buckler could ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... these steep slopes, but the extent of the mountain chain, and the phantasmal outlines of volcanic peaks, absorb the incongruities grafted upon them. Valerian and violet border the track between swarthy pines with grey mosses hanging down like silver beards from forked branches, and sudden mists shroud the landscape in vaporous folds, torn to shreds by gusts of wind, to melt away into the blue sky, suddenly unveiled in dazzling glimpses between the surging clouds. A long flight of mossy steps ascends to the plateau occupied ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... roots do not run down so low as the Crab. The ground, whether deep or shallow, should receive a good mulching in the autumn; that on the deep soil being dug in at the approach of spring, while that on the shallow soil should be removed in the spring to allow the ground to be lightly forked and sweetened, replacing the manure when the dry, hot weather sets in. The best time to perform the grafting is March, and it should be done on the whip-handle system, particulars of which will be found under "Grafting." Young ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... easily set right." I marched out of the room and downstairs, with both Cullingworth and his wife behind me. Into the yard I went, and, picking up a big hammer, I started for the front door, with the pair still at my heels. I got the forked end of the hammer under my plate, and with a good wrench I brought the whole thing clattering ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... on to his legs while he spoke, and with the aid of these he rapidly mounted the elm tree to where the boughs forked, put his hand into a hollow, and drew out a wooden box, which ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... I being of a necessity compelled to reply "No," Marian further told me that it was thus that the ghost had comported itself; that, moreover, it was clad all in a livid blue flame from top to toe, and that it had a banner o' red sarcenet that streamed out behind like forked lightning. She then said that this malevolent spirit had struck her with its blazing hand, and that, did I not believe her, I could see the burn on her wrist. Upon my suggesting that this wound might have ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... I don't know that I ever did," considered her Father. With his elbows on the arms of his chair, his slender fingers forked to a lovely Gothic arch above the bridge of his nose, he yielded himself instantly to the reflection. "Why ... no, ... I don't know that I ever did," he repeated with an increasing air of conviction.... "When you're young enough to enjoy the day as a 'holler' day ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... so soon. However, he was not going home without a load. Madame Francois had a contract with the company which undertook the scavenging of the markets, and twice a week she carried off with her a load of leaves, forked up from the mass of refuse which littered the square. It made excellent manure. In a few minutes the cart was filled to overflowing. Claude and Florent stretched themselves out on the deep bed of greenery; Madame Francois grasped her reins, and Balthazar went off at his slow, steady pace, his ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... so bloody, and so base a deed: But more to aggravate the heavy cares Of my perplexed mind, must only I, Must I alone be made the messenger, That must deliver to her princely ears Such dismal news, as when I shall disclose, I know it cannot but abridge her days? As when the thunder and three-forked fire, Rent through the clouds by Jove's almighty power, Breaks up the bosom of our mother earth, And burns her heart, before the heat be felt. In this distress, whom should I most bewail, My woe, that must be made the messenger Of these unworthy and unwelcome news? Or shall ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... game at cards, played among soldiers, in which the loser wears a forked stick on his nose till ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... twenty-four inches deep is made in the soil, and a rude wall of stones, about one foot high, is built round it, over which the tent cloth, made in narrow widths of yak's or goat's hair, is extended by ropes led over forked sticks. There is no ridge pole, and the centre is supported on short poles, to the projecting tops of which prayer flags and yaks' tails are attached. The interior, though dark, is not too dark for weaving, and each tent has its loom, for the Chang-pas not only weave their coarse woollen ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... very heart of Omdurman. From the high ground the field-glass disclosed rows and rows of mud houses, making a dark patch on the brown of the plain. To the left the river, steel-grey in the morning light, forked into two channels, and on the tongue of land between them the gleam of a white building showed among the trees. Before us were the ruins of Khartoum and the confluence of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... came half shyly near the log, fishing, and exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the silent couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom. The gamins laughed and chattered in their soft patois; ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... For forked and furious, the fiery flung flashes, Gleam o'er the sad wreck like a funeral pyre; And louder and louder each thunder clap crashes. The air in a roar! the billows ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... may we see the treason of those brethren against us." Therewith he took the tiller, but Frithiof caught up a forked beam, and ran into the prow, ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... he searched amid the mazy windings of the wall, Bill Brown sat in the forked top of a tree and studied out the ground-plan of the city. He was imprinting landmarks in his memory for future reference, and trying—with a brain that ached from the apparent hopelessness of the task—to figure out ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... is!" said Ken, reaching with a forked stick for the handle of the galvanized iron pail which sat upon the fire. Nobody ever heard of boiling eggs in a galvanized iron pail but that is exactly what the Sturgises did. The pail, in an excellent state of preservation, had been found in the woodshed. The pump yielded, unhesitatingly, ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... day the rain came down in torrents, accompanied with thunder and lightning, which kept me within my tent and caused me to exclaim with Dr. Henry, "O, ye lightnings, that brood and lie couchant in the sulphureous vapours, that glance with forked fury from the angry gloom, swifter and fiercer than the lion rushes from his den, or open with vast expansive sheets of flame, sublimely waved over the prostrate world, and fearfully lingering in ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... violin-case, and put back the top with uncertain fingers. She was waiting for the thrilling moment when he should tuck the instrument away under his pendulous double chin and draw his bow across the strings in the long sonorous singing chord, which ran up and down Sylvia's back like forked lightning. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... forward, Wild and wide their arms are thrown, Ready to pierce with forked fingers Him who touches their ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... on the same course until abreast of the perch, which was only a forked stick. The men came aft and hauled in the mizzen sheer. Chambers put up the helm. The mizzen came across with a jerk, and the sheet was again allowed to run out. The jib came over with a report like the shot of a cannon, and at the ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... ridge, faint in the extreme distance, that seemed to lie on the other side of Bloemfontein, nearly one hundred miles away. The sky was bright above us, but thunderstorms hung over the plains of the Free State behind Ladybrand, and now and then one caught a forked tongue of light flashing from among them. It was a magnificent landscape, whose bareness—for there is scarcely a tree upon these slopes—was more than compensated by the brilliance of the light ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce |
