"Prey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I should like a copy of that other letter. This whole fake is delightful; & I tremble with fear that you are a fake yourself & that I am your guileless prey. (But never mind, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... head, and with a single glance beheld Gertrude Pavillon, her mantle stripped from her shoulders, dragged forcibly along by a French soldier, one of several who, breaking into the chapel close by, had seized, as their prey, on the terrified females who had ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... brought certain death upon him; I have sacrificed my good name to save my son. Any mother would have done as much. You were taking care of my property here; I was alone in a foreign land, and was the prey of ill-health, fever, and with none to counsel me, and I lost my head; for since that time it has constantly occurred to me that the duke would never have carried out his threats. In making the sacrifice I did, I knew that Fernand would be poor and destitute, without a name, ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... once well put—"every one has stopped running about like rats:"—that those who work hard, whether with muscle or with brain, would not be surrounded, as now, with every circumstance which tempts toward drink; by every circumstance which depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence itself; by bad light, bad air, bad food, bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, which weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, disorder the digestion. Let any rational man, fresh from ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... would have placed his ear to that—anything to know—anything. Yes, he recognized Ramsey's voice distinctly; he was there. On tiptoe he retraced his steps. Arrived at the entrance hall he flung himself into a chair, a prey ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... that when I want it to be my countenance is illegible; assuredly, at this moment it was not my desire that she should glimpse the tumult of thought and emotion to which I was a prey; but I have reasons, numberless as the sands of the sea, for knowing that it never was indecipherable to the bright blue eyes ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... respect, however, Assyria, it is to be feared, had made but little advance beyond the spirit of a comparatively barbarous time. The "lion" still "tore in pieces for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin." Advancing civilization, more abundant literature, improved art, had not softened the tempers of the Assyrians, nor rendered them more tender and compassionate in their treatment of captured enemies. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Giant lives Who waste our land will lay; Upon no other food than maids And ladies will he prey. ...
— The King's Wake - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... in a track if he happens to light on one; he finds it easier going. Animals are cautious in proceeding onwards when they don't know the ground. They have ever a lion in their path until they know it, and have found it free from beasts of prey. If, however, they have been seen heading decidedly in any direction over-night, in that direction they will most likely be found sooner or later. Bullocks cannot go long without water. They will travel to a river, then they will eat, drink, and be merry, and during ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... all the laws of chance; and, although you may make one lucky hit, you must fare ill in the end." But no commonsensical talk seems to have any effect on the insensate fellows who are the betting-man's prey, and thus this precious sport has become a source of idleness, theft, and vast misery. One wretch goes under, but the stock of human folly is unlimited, and the shoal of gudgeons moves steadily into the bookmaker's net. One betting-agent in France receives ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Shortland) 'it is always ominous to see the figure of an absent person. If the figure is very shadowy, and its face is not seen, death, although he may ere long be expected, has not seized his prey. If the face of the absent person is seen, the omen forewarns the beholder that he is ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... his own feeling toward her; he thought how trustfully at their last meeting the priest had declared his love and hope, and how, when he had coldly received his confession, Don Ippolito had solemnly adjured him to be frank with him; and Ferris could not. That pity for himself as the prey of fantastically cruel chances, which he had already vaguely felt, began now also to include the priest; ignoring all but that compassion, he went up to the bed and took the weak, chill, nerveless ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... big bird of prey had swept on. I was sick with fear for a moment lest it should drop an "egg" on to the garden, and kill Brian or the Becketts, or the lieutenant who had wished to spare us this danger. Even the O'Farrells I didn't want hurt; and I was pleased ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was terrified—of course! But she gave a final push to the boat as the hound grabbed her. Fortunately the beast seized only her skirt. Perhaps he had been taught not to actually worry his prey. ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... penetrated every glen of the Rocky Mountains, and traced every affluent of the great river in quest of their respective prey; but the wild, desolate region watered by the Colorado, the Humboldt, or the streams that are lost in the Great Salt Lake, or some smaller absorbent of the scanty waters of the Great Basin, had never proved attractive to our borderers, and for ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the earth, the luxuriant southern vegetation, and the marvellous phenomena of light and air; of the sea stretching out on two sides and meeting the horizon; of the surrounding formidable peaks, and the more distant round-swelling hills; of the eagles descending in the pursuit of their prey down to the orange trees of the monastery gardens; of the avenue of cypresses serpentining from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the gorge; of the torrents covered with myrtles; in short, of the immense ensemble, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Tailings. Fluming companies. Rockers. Gold-mining is nature's great lottery scheme. Thousands taken out in a few hours. Six ounces in six months. "Almost all seem to have lost". Jumped claims. Caving in of excavations. Abandonment of expensive paying shafts. Miner making "big strike" almost sure prey of professional gamblers. As spring opens, gamblers flock in like birds of prey. After stay of only four days, gambler leaves Bar with over a thousand dollars of miners' gold. As many foreigners as Americans on the river. Foreigners ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... to be sixty or seventy of them, and they clustered together, looking over the side of their vessel at their expected prey. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... named Suet, on the frontiers of the territory of Damascus, where he took a rich booty of gold and silver and many cattle, which would have proved of great importance in assisting the army at the siege of Sidon. On his return with this prey by the city of Belinas, otherwise called Caesaria Philippi, the Turks of Damascus, with the Saracen inhabitants of the country, gathered together in great numbers, and pursued the troops of Hugh, that they might recover the booty. Coming up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... great. His friendship was the sure resort Of all the wretched at the court; But chiefly merit in distress His greatest blessing was to bless.— This fix'd him in his patron's breast, But fired with envy all the rest: I mean that noisy, craving crew, Who round the court incessant flew, And prey'd like rooks, by pairs and dozens, To fill the maws of sons and cousins: "Unmoved their heart, and chill'd their blood To every thought of common good, Confining every hope and care, To their own low, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... light Yields her pale empire to the mourner night, By hunger roused, he scours the groaning plain, 55 Gaunt wolves and sullen tigers in his train: Before them Death with shrieks directs their way, Fills the wild yell, and leads them to their prey. 'Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 'When first from Schiraz' walls I bent my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... consist in the exemption from pain (?), from labour, care, business, and outward evils; such exemption leaving one a prey to morbid depression, anxiety, and hypochondria. Even a pain in moderation may be a refreshment, from ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... as I had managed to place myself in a sitting posture against the tree, I was enabled to observe all that was passing, and to scan closely the groups around the camp fires. A few moments satisfied me that if in the camp, she was not visible; and left me a prey to many ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... build to Ambition? Ah! no: Affrighted, he shrinketh away; For see, they would pin him below To a small narrow cave; and, begirt with cold clay, To the meanest of reptiles a peer and a prey. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the presence of poison in the rock-hole; for by means of a certain plant which is bruised and thrown into the hole, the water is given a not actually poisonous but stupefying property. Thus birds or beasts coming to drink fall senseless and an easy prey to the ambushed native. This is a common plan in many parts of Australia, and was described to me by a tame boy from the Murchison. Here, too, were more little pyramids, similar to those at Empress Spring. Some quaint black-fellows' custom, but what it signifies ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... place; and the inhabitants, having no one to whom they could apply for redress, or for the representation of their grievances, and being thus remediless, fled also; so that their houses and effects became a prey to any person who chose to plunder them. The general conclusion appeared to me an inevitable consequence from such a state of facts; and my own senses bore testimony to it in this specific instance: nor do I know how it is possible for any officer commanding a military party, how ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... till, as day began to break, one of the gates leading into the Princes' Court was seen to be open. It had been intrusted to some of La Fayette's soldiers, and could not have been opened without treachery. The crowd poured in, uttering fiercer threats than ever, from the belief that their prey was within their reach. There was, in truth, nothing between them and the staircase which led to the royal apartments except two gallant gentlemen, M. des Huttes and M. Moreau, the sentries of the detachment of the Body- guard on duty, whose quarters were at the head of the staircase ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... howled the enraged monster. Like a heavy load of sin, he hung on to the legs of his prey, squeezing his knees together in an iron embrace, worrying his enemy's calves with his teeth, kicking and cuffing him, and striving to hurl ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... petty now to have been so disturbed over his living on, for such satisfactions as his poor fragment of life gave him. Like the insignificant insect which preyed on its own petty world, he had, maybe, his rights to his prey. At all events, now that he had ceased to trouble, it was foolish to have any feeling of disgust, of reproach, of hatred. God and life had made him so, as God and life ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... towns that were still untouched by war, hid themselves within their narrow walls, awaiting, in tremulous fear, the day on which their homes must also fall a prey to plundering soldiers. If any one were obliged to go beyond the boundaries, he would glance anxiously at the bushes on either side of the road; and when night came on, he would be forced to look with horror and sorrow at the reddened horizon, where a little village ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... suddenly that this was the hour of a great temptation, and he sat very still, conscious that his heart beat fast because of the evil that was near him. The Count watched him, meanwhile, as a wild beast may watch its prey. The man's eyes appeared to have turned to coals of fire; his fingers twitched; his teeth were on edge—he had ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... gun" and has the single merit of never getting out of order. Furthermore ammunition is precious. In consequence, the wilderness hunter is not going to be merely pretty sure; he intends to be absolutely certain. If he cannot approach near enough to blow a hole in his prey, he ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... such things; it's all talk. If people have feeling, they will show it,—they can't help it; but, then, it's a great misfortune to have feeling. I'd rather have been made like St. Clare. My feelings prey upon ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the heart is excited to pulsation by the direct contact of the blood with the muscle. The hand of a sleeping child closes upon any object which gently touches the palm. And it is in this way, doubtless, that the Sea Anemone entraps its prey, or anything else that may come in contact with its tentacles. But so far are these movements from indicating of themselves the action of any instinctive principle, that they are no proof of animality; for a precisely analogous power is possessed by the sensitive plant known as the Fly-Trap ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... brisk; when down the thoroughfares roll and glitter the countless streams of indolent and voluptuous life; when the upper class spend, and the middle class make; when the ball-room is the Market of Beauty, and the club-house the School for Scandal; when the hells yawn for their prey, and opera-singers and fiddlers—creatures hatched from gold, as the dung-flies from the dung-swarm, and buzz, and fatten, round the hide of the gentle Public In the cant phase, it was "the London season." And happy, take it altogether, happy above the rest of the year, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the infection kept chiefly in the out-parishes, which being very populous, and fuller also of poor, the distemper found more to prey upon than in the city, as I shall observe afterwards. We perceived, I say, the distemper to draw our way, viz., by the parishes of Clarkenwell, Cripplegate, Shoreditch, and Bishopsgate; which last two parishes joining to Aldgate, Whitechappel, and Stepney, the infection came ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... child, and the arrows of Sigeband's men at arms, were equally ineffectual in checking the griffin, which flew over land and sea, and finally deposited its prey in its nest on the top of a great cliff on a desert island. One of the little griffins, wishing to reserve this delicate morsel for its own delectation, caught the boy up in its talons and flew away to a neighboring ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... ends, mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at the facts which the term denotes instead of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good and bad. Men banded together in a criminal conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon the public while serving it, political machines held together by the interest of plunder, are included. If it is said that such organizations are not societies because they do not meet the ideal requirements of the notion of society, the answer, in part, is that ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... it, I dare say!" He must protest, but if he failed to convince, how could he explain that part of his high mission to the ports of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom was to sweep from the Adriatic the Confederate privateers which Great Britain was then fitting out to prey upon our sparse commerce there? As a matter of fact he had eventually to do little or no sweeping of that sort; for no privateers came to interrupt the calm in which he devoted himself, unofficially, to writing a book about the chief of ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... with might and main," to hasten them on their return journey. They pulled for dear life; and through the overhanging mist they seemed to see the shapes of the demons dancing weirdly down to seize their prey. Once back in the vessel the anchor was hurriedly raised, and all hands eagerly assisted in the work of getting under way ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... to Miss Erith. He went to the stairs, listened to the progress of agent and prey, heard the street-door clash, then hastened back to the lighted dining-room, pulling the "Perfect Cook-Book" from ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... moved upward, hungry for its prey and greedy to devour the fine young body so fresh and strong and lusty; but it was balked, for it claimed only the empty shell. The prize had gone on the wings of an everlasting happiness and the spirit of the moor, because there is no forgetting, triumphed ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... is mine, not of love but of hatred, the slow coiling of a human serpent about its prey, with something more than human in the sudden deliverance which came from so unexpected a quarter when all hope had gone ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like, and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow a little to bear your book; space enough for you to speak from at ease,— ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... unable to check the rising strength of the Boxers and appeared to be a prey to internal dissensions. In the unequal contest the antiforeign influences soon gained the ascendancy under the leadership of Prince Tuan. Organized armies of Boxers, with which the Imperial forces affiliated, held the country between Peking and the coast, penetrated into Manchuria up to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... however, and at the end of all the ends, she had that girl on her hands more than ever; and believing as she did that Dan and Alice had only to meet in order to be reconciled, she felt that the girl whom she had balked of her prey was her innocent victim. What right had she to interfere? Was he not her natural prey? If he liked being a prey, who was lawfully to forbid him? He was not perfect; he would know how to take care of himself probably; in marriage things equalised themselves. She looked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... this double, sealed there in the tomb, a prey to anxiety, lest corruption should take hold of it; which had to serve its long duration in suffocating darkness, in absolute silence, without anything to mark the days and nights, or the seasons or the centuries, or the tens of centuries without end! It was with such a terrible conception ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... inattention to my presence enabled me to examine her. My eyes rejoiced as they glided over the sweet speaker; they kissed her feet, they clasped her waist, they played with the ringlets of her hair. And yet I was a prey to terror, as all who, once in their lives, have experienced the illimitable joys of a true passion will understand. I feared she would detect me if I let my eyes rest upon the shoulder I had kissed, and the fear sharpened ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and this threw me into such terrible agonies of mind, that for a while I ran about like a madman. Night coming upon me, I began with a heavy heart to consider what would be my lot if there were any ravenous beasts in that country, as at night they always come abroad for their prey. ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... startling noise with his teeth. He had entirely emerged from his native element, and remained some fifteen minutes on land, during which time he snapped five or six times at the fowl, which was as often drawn away by a string. At length, seizing his prey, he plunged with it into the water, dived, swam across the pond, and rose to the surface on the other side, where he masticated his breakfast, at his leisure. Three alligators inhabit this pond, and being regarded as "fetishes," or charmed and sacred creatures, are never injured by the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... way back to the open sea, the temptation to disobey the royal order was all but irresistible. No fewer than three kargyndau were within shot at one and the same time; plunging from the shore of an icy island to emerge with their prey—a fish somewhat resembling the salmon in form and flavour. My companions, however, were terrified at the thought of disobedience to the law; and as we had but one mordyta (lightning-gun) among the party, and the uncertainty of the air-gun had been before proven ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Expedition with Clapperton. Sultan Bello's Letter. Widah. The Sugar Berry. Beasts of Prey. Animals of Dahomy. Religion of Dahomy. Its Government. Officers of the Court of Dahomy. Marriages at Dahomy. Carnival at Abomey. Sacrifice of Victims at Abomey. Anecdote of the King of Dahomy. Badagry. Introduction to the Chief of Eyeo. Saboo. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... optic nerves are very fine and long and weak, and by the weakness of their action we see by day but badly at night, while these animals can see as well at night as by day. The proof that they can see is that they prowl for prey at night and sleep by day, as ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... a troglodyte. He had come to Gopher Prairie in 1865. He was a distinguished bird of prey—swooping thin nose, turtle mouth, thick brows, port-wine cheeks, floss of white hair, contemptuous eyes. He was not happy in the social changes of thirty years. Three decades ago, Dr. Westlake, Julius Flickerbaugh the lawyer, Merriman Peedy the Congregational ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to this council of death. His heart was a prey to hatred and revenge. He undertook to communicate with Giacomo Cenci, without whose concurrence the women would not act, as he was the head of the family, when his father ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and hobgoblins in childhood, his active, sensitive imagination became an easy prey to these fears. But we do outgrow some things. In the summer of 1911 this grown-up boy waxed so bold that he sat in the barn with its black hole underneath and wrote of "The Phantoms Behind Us." There was still something Herculean in his task; he looked boldly down into the black abysms of Time, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... from all over the continent inevitably drifted when in Denver. But he had little expectation of finding the men he wanted there. These two rats of the underworld would not attempt to fleece keen-eyed professionals. They would prey ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... secret sympathy and intercourse with this dangerous fire-brand. The news had preceded and followed the new minister that he had been distributing blank commissions to all who would fit out privateers to prey upon British commerce, opening headquarters for the enlistment of American sailors into the French service, and constituting French consuls courts of admiralty for the trial and condemnation of prizes brought in ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the fall of Lord Melville! But I never can consent to rank him amongst the herd of peculators who prey upon the publick. He has been negligent in the economy and management of his office—he has paid too little attention to the management of his own money affairs. Had he been avaricious and greedy of wealth how many years has he been in ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... he was the most hostile. An army under Montesquieu occupied Savoy and Nice without resistance, and the people readily adopted the new system. A week later Custine seized the left bank of the Rhine, where diminutive secular and ecclesiastical territories, without cohesion, were an easy prey. The Declaration of Rights, said Gouverneur Morris, proved quite as effectual as the trumpets of Joshua. Mentz fell, October 21, and Custine occupied Frankfort and replenished his military chest. This excursion ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... magic spell. Enchanting, enrapturing, entrancing represent the influence as not only supernatural, but irresistible and delightful. That which is fascinating may win without delighting, drawing by some unseen power, as a serpent its prey; we can speak of horrible fascination. Charming applies only to what is external to oneself; delightful may apply to personal experiences or emotions as well; we speak of a charming manner, a charming dress, but of ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... able to eat. I could not go to sleep; at first because I was too upset, and later because of the arrival of some large rats, which ran about me and soon made off with my piece of bread. I was lying in the dark, a prey to my sad reflections, when, at about ten o'clock, I heard the bolts of my prison being drawn and I saw Spire, my father's old and faithful servant. He told me that after my despatch to the citadel, Capt. Gault, Col. Mnard, and all ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... we meanly must our hopes inclose, To wait our friends, and weary out our foes: While Almahide To lawless rebels is exposed a prey, And forced ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... captain in a low voice, for now that we were getting near our prey we made as little ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... his weakness his heart is still true to his higher nature; sick and restless, even in the delirium of enjoyment, he always longs for something better, and he never can be brought to say of evil that it is good. And, therefore, after all, the devil is balked of his prey; in virtue of this one fact, that the evil in which he steeped himself remained to the last hateful to him, Faust is saved by the angels ... And this indeed, though Goethe has scarcely dealt with it satisfactorily, is a vast subject. It ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... exclaimed Swope, gazing down at the fellow. He lifted his hand and checked the mate, who was already about to collar his prey. I think Swope knew just what was coming, and he found sport in the situation. "What do you want, my man?" ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... filled his canoe during the half hour I was watching him. It was terrible to see with what intense energy and cruelty the little yellow devil, with bared arms blooded to the shoulders, pounced upon his prey. With a quick jerk he pulled his fish in, then clutching it with one hand and thrusting the fingers of the other with the prompt ferocity of a young tiger into the panting gills, he tore off with a single ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... all the purposes of a ditch; though the South Sea islanders would think but little of swimming across it. Of course, Waally's men knew nothing of this bridge, nor did they know of the existence of the basin between them and their prey. They rushed directly towards the ship-yard, and loud were their yells of disappointment when they found a broad reach of water still separating them from the whites. Naturally they looked for the point of connection; but, by this time, the planks were wheeled in, and the communication ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... pitch-dark," replied Lysias, and that stout villain is as slippery as a badger with the dogs at his heels, Owls, bats and such vermin which seek their prey by night are all hideous to me, and this Eulaeus, who grins like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... flying in the sky above him annoy him greatly, and we can all tell by his voice when such a bird is near or flying over. He inclines his head and chatters in a low tone as long as the bird is in sight, paying no attention to anything else. Turkeys and hens announce the approach of a bird of prey in a similar manner. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... culture in the arid, sandy desert, that is stunted for want of attention, leafless for want of moisture, that has grown crooked from neglect, become barren from want of loam, whose tender bark is gnawed by rapacious beasts of prey, pierced by innumerable insects, would perhaps have expanded far and wide its verdant boughs from a straight and stately stem, have brought forth delectable fruit, have afforded from its luxuriant foliage under its lambent leaves an umbrageous refreshing ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... dive down in the deep water, where it finds fish and mussels, and perhaps the roots of some water-plants to eat. It makes very little motion or disturbance in the water when it goes down in search of its prey. Its coat is thick, and formed of two kinds of hair; the outer hair is long, silky, and shining; the under part is short, fine, and warm. The water cannot penetrate to wet them,—the oily nature of the fur throws off ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... of the sea's hoarse wave, Scorch'd on the rock, or shivering in the cave, Long, long I stay'd: Fate yet prolong'd my day, And Grief and Famine spared their willing prey. A roving bark at length approach'd, and bore The suppliant stranger to fair ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... a prey to an irritation which made every fibre of her nerves quiver to all their papillae, long sunk in flesh. Her blood, lashed by this new hope, was in motion. She felt the strength to converse, if necessary, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... they were really dead. The strongly marked type of race in their features, and their peculiar garb, made her conjecture that they were Spanish or Portuguese Jews, who had perhaps been put ashore and abandoned there by rapacious sailors, to whom their property remained as a prey. Such things were happening continually to Jews compelled to abandon their homes by the Inquisition: the cruelty of greed thrust them from the sea, and the cruelty of superstition ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... said he. "I don't want any of you, and I won't have you! If you take hold of me I'll shoot you!" This was said to one specially energetic Arab, who, in his efforts to secure his prey, had caught hold of Mr. Damer ...
— An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids • Anthony Trollope
... horrible roaring lion. She had no idea that the erratic manoeuvres of such a beast might be milder and more innocent than the wooing of any turtle-dove. She would have asked whether the roaring lion had gone away again, and, if so, whether he had taken his prey with him, were it not that she was too much frightened at the moment to ask any question. That her mother and sister should have been wilfully concerned in such iniquity was quite incredible to her, but yet she did not know how to defend them. "But are you quite sure of it, Aunt Stanbury? ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... across "the black sea," and he actually remained at large or in hiding for a year after his lair was discovered. Nor was he ever captured, for, by a strange fate, this ruthless scourge of the Deccan, after baffling human vengeance, found his last refuge in a jungle and died, a tiger's prey. By this time, all the wild bands which sprung into existence out of the Maratha war had been extirpated or dispersed, and after the year 1818 the dreaded name of Pindari was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... said the Jew, "on every hand the spoilers arise against me—I am given as a prey unto the Assyrian, and a prey ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... children have received a certain property of sinfulness and of dying, just as one bee transmits to all his children and future generations the property of making honey, or a lion transmits to all its future generations the property of being a beast of prey. For by sinning and cutting himself off from God Adam gave way to the lower part of him, his flesh, his animal nature, and therefore he died as other animals do. And we his children, who all of us give way to our flesh, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... to God," he said, and wept. "And she, my lady bride! O can you say She too doth live? Or better yonder tide Now held this hopeless wreck of life its prey!" "She lives, brave knight," they said. He smiled ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... a cry of exultation, like a pantheress seizing her prey. She clasped La Corriveau in her arms and kissed her dark, withered cheek, exclaiming, "Yes, that is her name! His cuckquean she is; his wife she is not and never shall be!—Thanks, a million golden thanks, La Corriveau, if you fulfil ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... bring Miss Cinnamond's fan, Hal," said Charteris, dexterously offering his arm first, and thus they returned to Lady Cinnamond, who had been a prey to grievous anxiety, disguised with an iron will lest public attention should be attracted to ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... violently struggling in its talons, and flew over the hedge to Caleb's side, but was no sooner over than it came down again and the struggle went on once more on the ground. On Caleb running to the spot the hawk flew off, leaving his prey behind. He had grasped it in its sides, driving his sharp claws well in, and the partridge, though unable to fly, was still alive. The shepherd killed it and put it in his pocket, and enjoyed it very much when he ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... advanced thinkers and the men worthy of the suffrage of the people; while those who contended human nature had not been changed, that a nation was simply the individual grown large and the jealousies, the covetousness and ambitions of governments would always make it possible for the strong to prey upon the weak and for the unprincipled under the guise of national necessity to attack their unprepared neighbours and therefore just as much as a city rests in confidence with the presence within it of a well-equipped police force, equally so the comfort ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... his own counsel. Slender Ren de Montigny, in a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign, Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan le Loup, who looked as vulpine as his nickname; these Robin Turgis eyed and catalogued with a kind of pride. It was a fearsome privilege for the Fircone to boast such patronage. On the settle, with his face ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... produced from imperfect flowers developed beneath the surface. Besides the present case, two other well-marked instances will be immediately given. It is probable that one chief good thus gained is the protection of the seeds from animals which prey on them. In the case of T. subterraneum, the seeds are not only concealed by being buried, but are likewise protected by being closely surrounded by the rigid, aborted flowers. We may the more confidently infer that protection ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. "Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain essay A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise." "Not so," quoth I; "let baser things devise ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... considered it an attack on the person of his beloved mistress and he resented it at once in his own fashion. Throwing himself on Ulrika with sudden ferocity, he pushed and beat her back as though he were a wolf-hound struggling with refractory prey; and though the ancient Lovisa rushed to the rescue, and Thelma imploringly called upon her zealous champion to desist,—all remonstrances were unavailing, till Sigurd had reduced his enemy to the most abject and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... lustre. In certain lights the surface looks like a mass of gleaming gold. In the centre stands the Tree of Life, its branches rich with foliage, among which birds of bright plumage seem to flutter. At the base of the tree two wild animals are depicted, apparently in search of prey. In the corner area at the top of the rug two serpents are attacking young birds in a nest, which is guarded by an agitated parent bird. On either side at the base of the rug is a cypress tree. Across the top is ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... him. At one time they almost overtook him, and would have captured him and all his company were it not that they got entangled among some shoals. Grange's sailors said they must not proceed. Grange, eager to seize his prey, insisted on their making sail and pressing forward. The consequence was, they ran the vessels aground, and Bothwell escaped in a small boat. As it was, however, they seized some of his accomplices, and brought them back to Edinburgh. These men were afterward tried, and some of them were ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... then, Sirs, it is. You think me ambitious: ambition, alas! is composed of more rugged materials. If I were ambitious, I should not for so many years have been a prey to all the hell of conscientious scruples. But I weary your patience: I will be brief. Know, then, that I have long been troubled in mind on my union with the Princess Hippolita. Oh! Sirs, if ye were acquainted with that excellent woman! if ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... a crowd collected on the bank, men, women, and children, anxious for the fate of the little animal known to them all: some threw themselves into boats, hoping to intercept the hound before he reached his prey; but the plashing of the oars, the eager voices of the men and boys, and the barking of the dogs, must have filled the beating heart of the poor fawn with terror and anguish, as though every creature on the spot where it had once been caressed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... motion the crocodile approached; but the mias, although he appeared to be only intent on quenching his thirst, had evidently a corner of his eye resting on the seemingly harmless log. The crocodile thought it was sure of its prey, and opening its huge jaws, attempted to seize the mias. The latter, however, swung himself quickly up the tree with his arms, and remained looking down on the crocodile within a few feet of its jaws. Then quietly stooping down, he held ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the world thinks I was very rich. But take heed of the pretences of men, and their affections, for they last not but in honest and worthy men; and no greater misery can befall you in this life than to become a prey, and afterwards to be despised. I speak not this, God knows, to dissuade you from marriage, for it will be best for you both in respect of the world and of God. As for me, I am no more yours, nor you mine, death hath cut us asunder; and God hath ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... of visitors, especially of American visitors, who love our English shrines so much that they like to chip off bits of statuary or wood-carving to preserve as mementoes of their visit. The fine monuments in our churches and cathedrals are especially convenient to them for prey. Not long ago the best portions of some fine carving were ruthlessly cut and hacked away by a party of American visitors. The verger explained that six of the party held him in conversation at one end of the building ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... place he feared to displease them as a body because he believed that he had some dignity. Hoodlums are seldom dangerous to other hoodlums, but if they catch pomposity alone in the field, pomposity is their prey. They tear him to mere bloody ribbons, amid heartless shrieks. When Coleman put himself on the same basis with the students, he could cope with them easily, but he did not want the wild pack after him when Marjory could see the chase. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... fetch something, and then a second time wearing his epaulettes, and his orders on his breast, limping slightly from rheumatism; and it struck Sofya Lvovna that he looked and walked like a bird of prey. ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Frequently during life we are, of a certainty, encompassed round with perils; we hardly know where to turn or what to do, we are breathless with fright; but even then, if we have proper faith, we shall grow calm, like the shepherd's flock in the midst of devouring animals and beasts of prey, for our Saviour and Shepherd is with us, and no evil can befall us. Even when we think Him farthest, He is often nearest; when we think Him sleeping, His heart is watching. He loves us, His weak and timid sheep; we are the objects of His heart's affection and ever active ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... pricks with eyes of fire Across the night's o'ercrusted snows, Seeking his prey, He pads his way Where Jane benighted goes, ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... her hide, poor beast. Her stomachs five Dyed with the chewing she could not survive; The very worms from her will turn away, To seek some anti-chewer for their prey. Ye chewers! be ye pilgrims to her tomb; Lament with us o'er her untimely doom. Awhile she stood the anti-chewer's butt, Till scythe-arm'd Time gave her an "ugly cut." She stagger'd to her death, and feebly cried, And sneezed, "Achew! achew!" ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Sabbath all agreed, that from every country the sorcerers arrived transported by demons. Women perched on sticks, or riding on goats, naked, with dishevelled hair, arrived in thousands; they passed like meteors, and their descent was more rapid than that of the eagle or hawk, when striking his prey. Over this meeting Satan presided; indecent dances and licentious songs went on, and an altar was raised, where Satan, with his head downward, his feet turned up, and his back to the altar, celebrated ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the joust long syne She look'd on, as he triumph'd, were hot on his brow, 'Stella! mine own, my own star!'—and he sigh'd:—and towards him a flame Shot its red signal; a shriek!—and the viewless messenger came; Found the unguarded gap, the approach left bare to the prey, Where through the limb to the life the death-stroke shatter'd ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must now stand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the swelling rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence, starting, shrinking, and colouring to the brow. Love is not to be prepared, I know, without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wretched, and his remorse for the massacre of St. Bartholomew filled his soul with agony. He beheld spectres, and dreamed horrid dreams; his imagination constantly saw heaps of livid bodies, and his ears were assailed with imaginary groans. He became melancholy and ferocious, while his kingdom became the prey of factions and insurrections. But he was a timid and irresolute king, and was but the tool of his infamous mother, the grand patroness of assassins, against whom, on his death bed, he ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the King of Prussia for assistance; but it was not so much a desire to rescue the Empress from a momentary danger that excited the Prussian Cabinet as the belief that her vengeance would now make an absolute end of what remained of the Polish kingdom. The prey was doomed; the wisdom of Prussia was to be the first to seize and drag it to the ground. So large a prospect offered itself to the Power that should crush Poland during the brief paralysis of the Russian arms, that, on the first news of the outbreak, the King's advisers urged him instantly to ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... snow, and a rush of wings overhead. An eagle. The lordly scavenger is following him, impatient for him to drop and become a prey. Soar up, old bird, and bide thy time; on yonder precipice thou shalt have good chance of ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... Herod missed his cruel prey, His cruel prey, as was God's will; Joseph with Mary then did flee With Christ to Egypt, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... reason, or a likeness of it, which was so horrible that even the Kaiser and his two chiefs could hardly repress a shudder. It rose very slowly, circled among the floating models about two feet under the surface and then, like an animal smelling out its prey, it made a dart at the ship which the Kaiser had indicated, and struck it from underneath. They saw a green flash stream through the water, and the next moment the model had crumbled to ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... Tredgold remembered a young—very young—sister of her own who had reached Pauline's age, and then quite suddenly had become melancholy, and then slightly unwell, and then more unwell, until the fell scourge had seized her as its prey. She had died when between sixteen and seventeen. Miss Tredgold seemed to see her sister's face in Pauline's. She did not for a single moment accuse the child of any wrong-doing. She did not imagine ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... prey to nervous shock, said what naturally rose to his lips. To be frank, he said it several times. He had spent the greater part of his life selling evening papers in the streets of Glasgow: and the profession of journalism, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... had weighed heavily on his adolescent years. It had caught him by surprise in that morally critical period when the growing boy, disquieted by the awakening of his feelings, discovers with a shock the existence of blind, bestial, crushing forces in life whose prey he is and that without having asked to live at all. And if he happens to be delicate in character, tender of heart and frail as to body in the way Pierre was, he experiences a disgust and horror which he does not dare confide to others ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... south wind was still blowing. The world was bright and beautiful, but he was conscious of an acute pain at the center of his being. That is, he was increasingly hungry. Paul showed equal surprise, and was a prey to the same annoying sensation in an important region. He looked up at the sun, and found that it was almost directly ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... belief among seamen, that these animals feel a secret impulse, which directs them to their prey;" returned the Skimmer. "But fortune may yet balk them.—Rogerson!" calling to one of his followers;—"thy pockets are rarely wanting in a fisherman's tackle. Hast thou, haply, line and hook, for these ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... however, took little notice of the Redfield speech and the Redfield cheers. It declared that the right of secession did not anywhere or at any time exist; that the seizure of United States property and the sending out of privateers to prey on American commerce had precipitated the war; and that it was the duty of the government to put down rebellion with all the means in its power, and the duty of the people to rally about the government; but it also demanded that Congress call a convention of all the States to revise the Constitution, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... very right," cried North, tearing at the envelope as a hawk rends its prey; "never let a scrap of writing from abroad rest a moment out of ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... seen your strong young limbs, And heard your laughter loud and gay, And in your voices she has caught The echo of a far-off day, When man was closer to the earth; And she has marked you for her prey. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... had arrived, there came a husbandman bringing grievous news. A monstrous giant had for years infested the country on the borders of Little Britain, and had slain many people and devoured such numbers of children that there were none left for him to prey upon. And being in search of victims, and coming upon the Duchess of Little Britain as she rode with her knights, he had laid hands upon her and carried her off to his den in a mountain. Five hundred men that followed the duchess could not rescue her, but they heard such heartrending cries and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... they had, on reaching this place, taken the further precaution of tying his ankles, so that he now lay on the ground utterly helpless, a prey to bitter thoughts, but nerving himself to bear bravely whatever torture ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... saw the active employments of a prosperous people move smoothly and quietly along in the absence of masculine intelligence and wisdom. Cut off from all inquiry by my ignorance of their language, the singular absence of the male sex began to prey upon my imagination as a mystery. The more so after visiting a town at some distance, composed exclusively of schools and colleges for the youth of the country. Here I saw hundreds of children—and all of them were girls. Is it to be wondered ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... they not only form the character of our childhood, but that of our maturer years. As the mind of a child expands, it searches for new objects of employment or gratification; and this is the time when the young fall an easy prey to those who make a business of entrapping them into the paths of dishonesty, and then of urging them to crimes of deeper dye. What, then, but a most salutary result can ensue from placing a child in a situation, where its first impressions will be those of ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... with them. All calamities are attributed to the power and malice of these evil spirits. Drought, famine, storm and flood, disease and death are all supposed to be brought by Vata and his hosts, so that the people are an easy prey to any designing individuals who claim power over these. Some disease charmers and rain-makers levy heavy toll ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... honesty, And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit, Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings, I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black, And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have; or for I am declin'd Into the vale of years,—yet that's not much,— She's gone; I am abus'd, and ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... to Celine, and a weariness to Cora, it was anguish unutterable to Edward Percy. He would have been glad to put a long span of miles between his inamorata and himself had he not felt that, with Cora in the same house as his fair one, it were more discreet to be on the ground, and watch over his prey pretty closely. But to this man, who made love to every pretty woman as a child eats bon bons, the task of wooing where his eye was not pleased, his ear was not soothed, and his vanity not in the least flattered, was ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... by the sound of hurrying feet, and just as the boat touched the shore and Helmar and his guide had jumped in, about a dozen men rushed towards them. The sight of their escaping prey so enraged the Arabs that they opened ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... able to look at this dark beauty without fear, and as she sat there she heard an ever-increasing number of little sounds; they were caused by she knew not what: small creatures moving among the pine needles, night birds on the watch for prey, water rats, the flop of fish, the fall of some leaf over-ripe on the tree, her own slow breathing, the muffled ticking of her heart; and into this orchestra of tiny instruments there came slowly, and as if it grew out of all ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... is it a jest that I have ever since been a prey all over to these hellish tortures, this ghastly fear of death? My own skeleton, my own rotting carcase is standing perpetually before my eyes. Old Conrad too over yonder has fallen sick, and is bewailing the loss of his reputation. Such a ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... mind." So King Badr Basim came out and sat at the shop door, looking out upon the folk; and there passed by him a world of creatures without number. But when the people saw him, they accosted the grocer and said to him, "O elder, is this thy captive and thy prey gotten in these days?" The old man replied, "He is my brother's son, I heard that his father was dead; so I sent for him and brought him here that I might quench with him the fire of my home sickness." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... he'd never be able to approach his prey. In short, he'd fail to survive. Complete telepathic blankness would have a high survival value. But an ability to detect mental radiation would still be a big help." He waved ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... and they fortified Judaea, and cryed unto God with great fervency, and humbled themselves in sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, and cried unto the God of Israel that he would not give their wives and their children and cities for a prey, and the Temple for a profanation: and the High-priest, and all the Priests put on sackcloth and ashes, and offered daily burnt offerings with vows and free gifts of the people, Judith iv. and then began Josiah to seek after the God of ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... supposing that that was self-evident, probably). He complimented them on the way in which they had conducted themselves in war in times past, comparing their stealthy approach to enemies' camps to the insidious snake that glides among the bushes, and darts unexpectedly on its prey; said that their eyes were sharp to follow the war-trail through the forest or over the dry sward of the prairie; their aim with gun or bow true and sure as the flight of the goose when it leaves the lands of the sun, and points its beak to the icy regions ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Monseigneur, which amounted to fifty thousand francs, undertook the payment of the buildings at Meudon, and, in lieu of fifteen hundred pistoles a month which he had allowed Monseigneur, gave him fifty thousand crowns. M. de la Rochefoucauld, always necessitous and pitiful in the midst of riches, a prey to his servants, obtained an increase of forty-two thousand francs a-year upon the salary he received as Grand Veneur, although it was but a short time since the King had paid his debts. The King gave also, but in secret, twenty ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... monsters much faster than birds. These can at pleasure make their breath so poisonous that the lungs of any creatures except themselves inhaling it are at once turned to parchment. Others can give their enemies or their prey an electric shock, sending a bolt through the heart, or can paralyze the mind physically by an effort of their wills, causing the brain to decompose while the victim is still alive. Others have the same power ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... confident. In time I grew used to the fellow, but I will admit that at first I accepted his services with some honest trepidation. As I watched him going ahead of me, crouching behind bushes, springing from hummock to hummock, silent and alert, quivering like an animal in search of prey, my attention was centered on him rather than on any ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... enterprise, climbing up steep and slippery slopes, and stumbling over boulders, and tripping on loosened stones. The stars blinked, the sky seemed slumbering in one vast dream of blue. Stealthily they moved with the footfalls of tigers stalking their prey. Not a word was spoken. Scarcely a ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... sails, glide silently on the deep waters, beneath the shade of the mountain, and from their dingy color can scarcely be distinguished from its dark and rocky sides. Eagles, with their dusky plumage, incessantly hover over the cliffs and boats, as if to rob the nets of their prey, or make a sudden swoop at the birds which follow in the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... buzzard head? Why for did he run away? Why did he jump for the sandhills soon as the word came to arrest him?" He snapped together his straight, thin-lipped mouth, much as a trap closes on its prey. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... the box taken to the foot of a large banyan tree which grew by a ford in the river which flowed by the hill in which the Rakhas lived: it was at this ford that the Rakhas used to lie in wait for prey. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... bailiffs who dogged have seized their prey. "At whose suit?" asked John Burley, falteringly. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fight. It springs out from ambush upon the unsuspecting. Of the tens of thousands who have fallen into bad habits, not one deliberately leaped off, but all were caught in some sly trap. You may have watched a panther or a cat about to take its prey. It crouches down, puts its mouth between its paws, and is hardly to be seen in the long grass. So iniquity always crouches down in unexpected shapes, takes aim with unerring eye, and then springs upon you with sudden and terrific leap. In secret places and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... cornstalks in Micajah Widdup's garden-patch, and cast an amber glory upon my paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary revolving chair, and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies. The room, with its one window, was already a prey to the twilight. One by one, with my trenchant sentences, I lopped off the heads of the political hydra, while I listened, full of kindly peace, to the home-coming cow-bells and wondered what Mrs. Flanagan was going ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... dismantle his ships and leave them to decay at the wharves; that it calls upon two hundred thousand masters and mariners, who now plough the main, to seek their bread ashore; that it forbids even the fisherman to launch his chebacco-boat or follow his gigantic prey upon the deep; that it subjects the whole coastwise trade to onerous bonds and the surveillance of custom-house officers; that it interdicts all exports by land to Canada, New Brunswick, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... things— Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive And vain for any service unto us In thanks for which we should permit their kind To feed and be in our protection safe— Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed, Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom, As prey and booty for the rest, until Nature reduced ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... presently he greeted with a shrill cry. That terrible cry, at once plaintive and menacing, with an undertone like the fierce protestations of a saw beneath the file, was a summons to his mate, telling her that the hour had come when they should seek their prey. From the lair behind the rock, where the cubs were being suckled by their dam, came no immediate answer. Only a pair of crows, that had their nest in a giant fir-tree across the gulf, woke up and croaked harshly ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... had submitted to arrest, there had succeeded an air of complete detachment as though her responsibility, even her interest in the matter, had wholly ceased. Mutely watching the two strong men, she seemed like some small prey over which fierce forces fought. Young began to remove the hat from ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... us of guessing what this threatning Noise might proceed from; but our Indian Pilot (who knew these Parts very well) acquainted us, that it was customary to hear such Musick along that Swamp-side, there being endless Numbers of Panthers, Tygers, Wolves, and other Beasts of Prey, which take this Swamp for their Abode in the Day, coming in whole Droves to hunt the Deer in the Night, making this frightful Ditty 'till Day appears, then all is still as ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... people born in Ilius; for you will get no Lycians to fight for you, seeing what thanks they have had for their incessant hardships. Are you likely, sir, to do anything to help a man of less note, after leaving Sarpedon, who was at once your guest and comrade in arms, to be the spoil and prey of the Danaans? So long as he lived he did good service both to your city and yourself; yet you had no stomach to save his body from the dogs. If the Lycians will listen to me, they will go home and leave Troy to its fate. If the Trojans had any of ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... struggle, the trapped one darting off, and dragging to get away; while the worm, tough, thin, and pliant as a fishing-line, let it play about till tired out, when the thin, black-looking monster would quietly swallow his prey, boa-constrictor fashion, till nothing was visible of it but a large knob in the worm's thin body. Then there were polypes; hermit-crabs with their tails in cast-off shells; tiny shell-fish tightly clinging to the stones; boring shells, weeds, and tangles, swarming with innumerable tiny living ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... have innocently passed for Maecenases, and in a simple-minded fashion expended, to that end, the millions amassed by their thrifty fathers, and frequently even by their own early labours. The long saloon was filled with the most motley throng of visitors, collected like birds of prey swooping down upon an unburied corpse. There was a whole squadron of Russian shop-keepers from the Gostinnui Dvor, and from the old-clothes mart, in blue coats of foreign make. Their faces and expressions were a little more natural ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... lightly, quicken'd by the voice divine, And gather'd fast his charioteers to battle. 335 But as when hounds and hunters through the woods Rush in pursuit of stag or of wild goat, He, in some cave with tangled boughs o'erhung, Lies safe conceal'd, no destined prey of theirs, Till by their clamors roused, a lion grim 340 Starts forth to meet them; then, the boldest fly; Such hot pursuit the Danai, with swords And spears of double edge long time maintain'd. But seeing Hector in his ranks again Occupied, felt at once their courage fall'n. 345 Then, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Thuillier; he never got over them; henceforth he was a prey to melancholy and accused all ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the Elysee, and had lost the day But that around him flocked his birds of prey, Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed. 'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang! Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang Through ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... A vulture or bird of prey much like the sopilote. These two symbols (a and b) appear to refer to the same bird, evidently a vulture. (See Manuscript Troano, Plates XVIIa and XXVI*a.) The first form (a) is found but once (Manuscript Troano, Plate ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... listening. And his movements, every now and then, had in them something of the spasmodic movements of a chained wild beast. This lithe youth had certain resemblance to the puma. He seemed to burn with a restless craving spirit. The puma never ceases to seek his prey. This man would be the same ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... commandant of the watch. He may have eaten more, or possibly the poison he had tasted on the former occasion helped, but at any rate the lieutenant was the first to be attacked with vomiting two hours later, the councillor showed the same symptoms; the commandant and the others were a prey for several hours to frightful internal pains; but from the beginning their condition was not nearly so grave as that of the two brothers. This time again, as usual, the help of doctors was useless. On the 12th of April, five ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... started down the walk, while Hugh stood waiting in the door. At first Rover's steps were slow and uncertain, but as he advanced they increased in rapidity, until, with a sudden bound and cry, such as dogs are wont to give when they have caught their destined prey, he sprang upon the mysterious ridge, and commenced digging it down ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... go," said Cameron to himself, drawing his gun. But before he could level it there shot out from the dim light behind the Indian a man on horseback. Like a lion on its prey the horse leaped with a wicked scream at the Indian pony. Before that furious leap both man and pony went down and rolled over and over in front of the pounding herd. Over the prostrate pony leaped the horse and up the hillside fair in the face ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... 'tice the king, To the west the king I'll bring; Many a noble bone will be Ravens o'er Giuke's ship are fitting, Eyeing the prey they think most fitting. Upon the stem I'll sail with them! Upon the stem I'll ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... into the tent, and, in the same instant, there came to my nostrils the faint odor of the horrible stench which had come to me in the valley, and before then from the thing that came to the side of the boat. And, suddenly, I knew that Job had fallen prey of those foul things, and, knowing this, I called out to the bo'sun that they had taken the boy, and then my eyes caught the smear of slime upon the sand, and I had proof that I ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... frequently addressed as 'Procrastination Boggs', "you are getting your metaphors dreadfully mixed. It is a four-legged beast of prey that bears its victim away to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... cabinet cannot be awakened to a sense of the danger. Mr. Seddon (who may be better informed than others), deeply sunken in his easy chair, seems perfectly composed; but he cannot know that his agents are permitted to prey upon the people: and the complaints and charges sent to him are acted upon by his subordinates, who have orders not to permit business of secondary importance to engage his attention; and his door-keepers have instructions to refuse admittance to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... a crowd gathered around Castle Lone. But they came not as festive guests but as a flock of vultures around a carcass, bent on prey. For the last time artists and reporters came not to illustrate the triumphs, but to record the downfall of the great ducal house of Scott-Hereward; to make sketches, take photographs and write descriptions of the magnificent and splendid halls and chambers, picture-galleries ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth |
