"Snake" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the young man looked with hers, and found the reason for the sudden scene. A serpent, some feet in length—one of the mottled, harmless species sometimes locally called the blow-snake—obviously had come out into the morning sun to warm himself, and his yellow body, lying loose and uncoiled, had been invisible to horse and rider until they were almost upon it. Then, naturally, the serpent had moved his head, and both ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Sumner expressing my wonder at the undecided conduct of the administration; at its want of foresight; its eternal parleying with Baltimoreans, Virginians, Missourians, etc., and no step to tread down the head of the young snake. No one among them seems to have the seer's eye. The people alone, who arm, who pour in every day and in large numbers, who transform Washington into a camp, and who crave for fighting,—the people alone have the prophetic inspiration, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... you are taking moon baths on the Riviera?" the Major asked sternly. "You are less than two hundred yards from the Germans. You are all wrapped up like Egyptian mummies. Somebody could lean over the top and snake off your head with a trench knife before you could get your feet loose. Take those blankets off ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... 3-112, a correspondent writes, from South Granville, N.Y., that, during a heavy shower, July 3, 1860, he heard a peculiar sound at his feet, and looking down, saw a snake lying as if stunned by a fall. It then came to life. Gray snake, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... frogs before their enemy, the snake, Quick scattering through the pool in timid shoals, On the dankooze a huddling cluster makes' I saw above a thousand mined souls Flying from one who passed the Stygian bog, With feet unmoistened by the sludgy wave; Oft from his face his left hand brushed the fog Whose weight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... what: you come in the evening to Sokolniki. I've a tent pitched there. The gypsies sing, ... such goings-on.... And there's a streamer on the tent, and on the streamer, written in large letters: "The Troupe of Poltyev's Gypsies." The streamer coils like a snake, the letters are of gold, attractive for every one to read. A free entertainment—whoever likes to come! ... No refusal! I'm making the dust fly in Moscow ... to my glory! ... Eh? will you come? Ah, I've one girl there ... a serpent! Black as your boot, spiteful as a dog, and eyes ... like living ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the gaze of his snake-like eyes on the young chief engineer, "I'll tell you what we have provided for you. We shall take you to the edge of the town, at once, and there hang you by the neck to a tree. After you've ceased squirming we'll fasten this card ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... it not good for me to come and draw forth a spirit, to see what kind of spirit people are of? I see that some of you have got the spirit of a goose, and some have got the spirit of a snake. I feel at home here. I come to you, citizens of New York, as I suppose you ought to be. I am a citizen of the State of New York; I was born in it, and I was a slave in the State of New York; and now I am a good citizen of this State. I was born here, and I can tell you I feel at home ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... pretty face, and am well dressed;" and she dried her eyes. She had not lost her conceit. She had not then perceived how her fine clothes had been soiled in the brewhouse of the Old Woman of the Bogs. Her dress was covered with dabs of nasty matter; a snake had wound itself among her hair, and it dangled over her neck; and from every fold in her garment peeped out a toad, that puffed like an asthmatic lap-dog. It was very disagreeable. "But all the rest down here look horrid too," was the reflection ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... of native bird population by the rapid proliferation of the brown tree snake, an ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... woods, a chewink scratched and rustled among the deep leaves as it searched for grubs. From time to time a flock of quail arose before them with a whirr and scattered down the fields, reassembling later at the call of their leader, from a rider of the snake fence, which ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... fatal word "Religion" the gentleman started as though he had been stung by a snake, felt that this mild-looking man was a dangerous lunatic and tried to move away. It was the lady with him, so far as I can discover, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... But I was not in my right mind. Listen to me, please. He must have been very different once; perhaps had sisters. For their sake give him another chance. I know he has a better nature. I feared him, hated him, scorned him, as if he were a snake, yet he saved me from that ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... my time occupied. Instead I found myself instantly involved in a network of mystery where even murder was part of the play. Little as I liked Coombs, this Creole was even more dangerous. The one was a rough, the other a venomous snake. So far as the original purpose of my adventure was concerned it had already largely faded from recollection. The swift recurrence of more startling events dominated. The spirit of adventure, with which I was liberally ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... gives as possible derivations ierokwa, the indeterminate form of the verb to smoke, signifying "they who smoke;" also the Cayuga form of bear, iakwai.[39] Mr. Hewitt[39] suggests the Algonkin words [-i]r[-i]n, true, or real; ako, snake; with the French termination ois, the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... on, stumbling over rocks and brush, with a darkness before her eyes, the terror in her soul. She was out in the cedars when someone grasped her from behind. She felt the hands as the coils of a snake. Then she was ready to faint, but she must not faint. She struggled away, stood free. It was the man Bill who had caught her. He said something that was unintelligible. She reached for the snag of a dead cedar and, leaning there, fought ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Georgia? I was out in de woods choppin' cordwood and I felt somepin' flap at me 'bout my foots. Atter while I looked down, and dere was one of dem deadly snakes, a highland moccasin. I was so weak I prayed to de Lawd to gimme power to kill dat snake, but he didn't. De snake jus' disappeared. I thought it was de Lawd's doin', but I warn't sho'. Den I tuk up my axe and moved over to a sandy place whar I jus' knowed dere warn't no snakes. I started to raise my axe to cut de wood and somepin' told me to look down. I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the old woman, "or you may be heard. We have no good food because there is a great snake here who is the chief of the camp. He takes all the best pieces. He lives over there ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... survivor is left, who, having helped to eat all his brethren, instead of meeting with his deserts, is allowed to live on in peace, till some day, in the course of his walks abroad, he, in his turn, is snapped up as a delicate morsel by some hungry snake or water-fowl. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... shuddered, with the feeling of one who treads, upon a snake, as he turned from these touching images of human happiness to the grim tackling and warlike furniture of the "little bloody: vixen" on board which he was embarked, together with the ferocious though intelligent ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... late, Nyonyoba," she murmured. "Yet I do not think I have been bitten—not by a snake, or I ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the river which, sparkling and bright, wound through the green plain like a silver snake. Smaller hills covered with forests fell away on all sides and the tops of the trees caught the radiance of the sinking sun. Over the snow-fields of the further mountain-ranges, a rosy shimmer spread that made him think of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... work, with a stick two feet and a half long, and nearly as thick as my wrist; striking her over the head, and across the small of the back, as she was bent over at her work, with as much spite as you would a snake, and for what I should consider no offence at all. There lived in this same family a young man, a slave, who was in the habit of running away. He returned one time after a week's absence. The master took him into the barn, stripped ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... her. She was amused at the memory of what had happened at the seat in the wood, of the sentinel who had looked on. She was amused by her guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the pin in his cravat, which she had never noticed before. There was a red snake with diamond eyes on the pin; this snake struck her as so amusing that she could have kissed it ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... smallest of the race, but from its elegant plumage. Mr. Waterton, the naturalist, relates a little story of a King Vulture, which seems to show that, though so much smaller, this bird is regarded with some degree of reverence by the common vultures. He says that "the carcase of a large snake, which he had killed in the forest, becoming putrid, about twenty of the common vultures came and perched in the neighbouring trees; amongst them came also the King of the Vultures; and he observed that none of the common ones seemed inclined to begin breakfast till his majesty ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... from head to foot by me who love him than that he should come to harm through ignorance," Baloo answered very earnestly. "I am now teaching him the Master Words of the Jungle that shall protect him with the birds and the Snake People, and all that hunt on four feet, except his own pack. He can now claim protection, if he will only remember the words, from all in the jungle. Is not that worth a ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... like to know what noise really was? Then let him be hooked into a triple Boston backing hitch and snake a truck down West Street, with the whiffle-trees slatting in front of him, the spreader-bar rapping jig time on the poles, and the gongs of street-cars and automobiles and fire-engines and ambulances all going at once. Noise? Let him mix in a Canal Street jam or back up for a ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... goodness only knows what had been in this one,—an alligator, maybe, or a snake. He's very fond of snakes. He says some of them are so useful. I try to be charitable, Fairy, and I believe I would give even Satan credit for any good there was in him,—but it is too much to ask me to be ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... himself in with the white-faced Miss Elsie Verriner, alias Chaddy Cravath, alias Charlotte Carruthers, and for three long hours he had pitted his dynamic brute force against her flashing and snake-like evasiveness. He had pounded her with the artillery of his inhumanities. He had beleaguered her with explosive brutishness. He had bulldozed and harried her into frantic weariness. He had third-degreed her ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... spills The Ocean o'er its boundary, and bears Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares The oval mirror of thy glassy lake; And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears[qb] A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... colour. when I awoke from my sleep today I found a large rattlesnake coiled on the leaning trunk of a tree under the shade of which I had been lying at the distance of about ten feet from him. I killed the snake and found that he had 176 scuta on the abdomen and i'7 half formed scuta on the tale; it was of the same kinde which I had frequently seen before; they do not differ in their colours from the rattle snake ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... it round any part of me I was lost. But in the position I occupied, that was just what he could not do, although he knelt down to facilitate his operations. On came the snapping tip like a great open-mouthed snake; it closed upon my hat, which vanished. Again it was thrust down, and a scream of rage was bellowed through it within four inches of my head. Now it seemed to elongate itself. Oh, heavens! now it had me by the hair, which, luckily for myself, was not very long. Then it was my turn ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... Presently, taking her hand off the table, she turned her face aft, and with a wonderfully subtle, stealthy, sneaking gait, reminding one strangely of the folding motion of the snake, she made for ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... a snake to sting That breathes ill news: but where its fang hath stung The very pang bids health and healing spring. God knows the grief wherewith my spirit is wrung - The spirit of thee so scorned, so misesteemed, So mocked ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Roman type, and usually elaborately wrought into a fretwork, composed of myriads of snakes, raised in some of the compartments over half-spheres resembling apples. In one of the Ross-shire obelisks—that of Shadwick, in the parish of Nigg—the cross is entirely composed of these apple-like, snake-covered protuberances; and it was the belief of my friend, that the original idea of the whole, and, indeed, the fundamental idea of this school of sculpture, was exactly that so emphatically laid down by Milton in the opening argument of his poem—man's fall symbolized by the serpents and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... thirsty face, and drank a sea, Athirst with thirst it could not slake. I saw him, drunk with knowledge, take From aching brows the aureole crown,— His locks writhed like a cloven snake,— He left his throne to grovel down And lick the dust of Seraphs' feet: For what is knowledge duly weighed? Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet; Yea, all the progress he had made Was but to learn that all is small Save love, for love is ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... snake, that writhest in the snow, Twisting and turning here and there To find some ease from the tormenting cold, If the congealing ice could know thy pain, Or had the sense to feel thy smart, And thou couldst find a voice for thy complaint, I do believe thy argument would make it ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... in the form of a snake, who, with his brother-fiend, Wobsacuck, are supposed to be sent by Hobbamock to heal the sick, when forced, by the potent spells of the great Powow, to work good instead ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... lowing of cattle in pain, came to his ears. He made directly for the sound, and soon saw the herd huddled together by the snake-fence which zigzagged along the bank of the creek. He went on till he came to the boundary fence which ran at right angles to the water, and then turning tried to drive the animals towards the corral. He met, however, with unexpected difficulties. He had brought a stock-whip with him, and used ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... great forest, which is popularly supposed to contain a "sanctuary of the beasts," impenetrable by any hunter, and in which they actually meet a local sorceress, with a basket of poisonous mushrooms and a tame snake in it. Another episode gives us odd comments, and a sort of nightmare afterwards, of the Count, when his guest happens to mention the blood-drinking habits of the South American gauchos, in which the professor himself has been forced ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... was an austere and taciturn man, difficult of access, and as vain and ambitious as he was haughty and contemptuous. Those who professed to have witnessed the scene told of a trial of power between this man—the Black Snake, as he was called—and a renowned medicine-man of a neighboring tribe. The contest, from what the Indians said, must have occurred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... is our faith now in the Divine Intelligence that we do not believe that in our hearts were planted aspirations and desires that are to work our undoing. The same God who created paradise devised the snake, and if the snake had something to do with driving the man and woman out of the Garden into a world of work, it was well. Difficulty, trial, hardship, obstacle, are all necessary factors ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the sea, and probably further shaped by man—caverns supported here and there by rude columns of the same rock, and dimly lit from above in one or two places by holes like mine shafts, down one of which fell masses of snake-like roots of the fig ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... very thing for you," she says, and runs away and presently reappears with a long thing like a paper snake. "This is a full report of the wedding. I kept it. I felt it might come in useful some day," she cried in triumph. "You can stick ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... savage satisfaction. Gaspar watched him as a bird might watch a snake. He had heard tales of men who could find satisfaction in a murder, but he had never believed that a human being could actually gloat over his own savagery. He stared at Riley as if he were looking at a wild beast that ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... "Brand my snake oil!" Chow said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... returned dolorously; "jist one. Flora says he niver see more th'n one—jist one big, long, ugly-faced horrible black one; the same one comin' back an' makin' a fizzin' n'ise at um iv'ry time he had the fit on um. 'Twas alw'ys the same snake; an' he'd holler at Flora. 'Here it comes ag'in, oh, me soul!' he'd holler. 'The big, black, ugly-faced thing; it's as long as the front fence!' he'd holler, 'an' it's makin' a fizzin' n'ise at me, an' breathin' in me face!' he'd holler. 'Fer ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... Queensland, or perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged, half-dead slips which comprised the orchard. Then their conversation would be pointed with many Golden Points, Bakery ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Tyrrell, beautiful still, but more than ever like the weird tragic head with snake-wreathed brows, in the wasted contour of her regular features and the flush on her hollow cheeks, while her eyes burned with a strange fire that almost choked back Julius's salutation of peace, even ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sea? That they had done so was long assumed and many conjectures have been offered as to the point in the Rockies near which they made their last camp. Their further progress was checked by an unexpected crisis. One day they came upon an encampment of the dreaded Snake Indians which had been abandoned in great haste. This, the Bow Indians thought, could only mean that the Snakes had hurriedly left their camp in order to slip in behind the advance guard of the Bows and massacre the women and ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... about that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively. It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas likes,—from women. He will tell you all about it some time,—how his negro nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... itself, the depth of a woman Fooled with his brainless art, or sending The midnight home with songs and bottles, — The cad was there, and his ease forever Shone with the smooth and slippery polish That tells the snake. That night he drifted Into an up-town haunt and ordered — Whatever it was — with a soft assurance That made me mad as I stood behind him, Gripping his death, and waited. Coward, I think, is the name ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... demanding sight of a warrant, and protesting against the illegality of his arrest, varied at moments by threats to appeal to the British consul, minister plenipo., Her Majesty's Foreign Office, etc., all of which had about as much influence on the sheriff and his cowboy assistants as a Moqui Indian snake-dance would have in stopping a runaway engine. I confess to feeling a certain grim satisfaction in the fact that if I was to be shut off from seeing Madge, the Britisher was in the ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... this morning befel Captain Jennings Bramley, of the 19th Hussars. Whilst on picket he felt something slide over his legs, and looking up he saw it was a snake over 5ft. long. The creature at once raised its head also, and deliberately spat in his face, filling both eyes with poison. That is the invariable defence of the "Spitting Snake" (Rinkholz in Dutch, and Mbamba Twan or child catcher in Zulu). ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... watch in his hand, to give us just an hour; when he said, 'Rise,' we had to rise and go to work again. The women who had children laid them down by the hedge-row, and gave them straws and other trifles to play with; here they were in danger from snakes; I have seen a large snake found coiled round the neck and face of a child, when its mother went to suckle it at dinner-time. The hands work in a line by the side of each other; the overseer puts the swiftest hands in the fore row, and all must keep up with ...
— Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America • Moses Grandy
... with another bunch of cops," said Phelan, "but I hear the crook got away. He's a smooth snake fer ye." ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... that with great patience he made the outer side of the leaves of one shade of green, and the under side of another, as Nature does, neither more nor less; and, in addition to the shepherds, he made a serpent, or rather, a grass-snake, crawling up a wall, which ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... and prone, felt a slow start in all his blood—a thrilling wave. That deep-voiced man below was Snake Anson, the worst and most dangerous character of the region; and the others, undoubtedly, composed his gang, long notorious in that sparsely settled country. And the Beasley mentioned—he was one of the two biggest ranchers ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... was a fair child, stretched nearly lifeless on the rock, its breast heaving with thirst, its eyes closed, and its lips parched and burning. Hans eyed it deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark-gray cloud came over the sun, and long, snake-like shadows crept up along the mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no coolness; the leaden weight of the dead air pressed upon his brow and heart, but the goal was near. He saw the cataract of the Golden River ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... bands of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle with a snake in its beak perched on a cactus) is centered in the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... moment, gay or sad. When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and past suffering, played like a fountain of light on all the little incidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a halibut served up for dinner, the killing of a snake in the garden, the arrival of a friend wet after a Journey, a cat shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest and brightest jet of all being John Gilpin. Lady Austen's voice and touch still faintly ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... whom he loved with his very soul, who held his heart, his mind, his imagination captive, whose every look on him was joy, whose every smile was a delight, had gone out of his life for ever! She had turned away from him as she would from a venomous snake! she hated him so cruelly that she would gladly hurt him—do him some grievous wrong if she could. And Clyffurde was left in utter loneliness with only a vague, foolish longing in his heart—the longing that one day she might have her wish, and might have ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... sent across the continent by Mr. Astor, in 1811, under command of Captain Wilson P. Hunt, that gentleman met with the first serious obstacle to his progress at the eastern base of this range. After numerous efforts to scale it, he turned away and followed the valley of Snake river, encountering the most discouraging disasters until ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... sluggish buffaloe Wallows in mud—and huge and slow, Like massive cloud of sombre van, Moves the land leviathan—[114] Where beneath the jungle's screen Close enwoven, lurks unseen The couchant tiger—and the snake His sly and sinuous way doth make Through the rich mead's grassy net, Like a miniature rivulet— Where small white cattle, scattered wide, Browse, from dawn to even tide— Where the river watered soil Scarce demands the ryot's toil— And the rice field's emerald light Out vies ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... adventure was like a blunder that one had committed at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done to excuse it: the only remedy was to forget. His horror at the degradation he had suffered helped him. He was like a snake casting its skin and he looked upon the old covering with nausea. He exulted in the possession of himself once more; he realised how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love; he had had enough ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... foot on a rock, exposing his boot-leg. The veteran Husky began to yeh-yeh! He understood. Standing off about twenty-five feet, he gathered the lash up; then, swinging the handle around his head, let the long thong go circling around him like a black snake. Faster and faster revolved the black gyres,—twenty times, I have no doubt. Presently he fetched a snap. The black thong shot out like lightning. Thut! A bit of the leather flew up, spinning in the air. Donovan caught away his leg with a profane exclamation. We crowded ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... in Alaska. They're modelled after the Yukon poling-boats, and you can bet your life they're crackerjacks. This creek'll be a snap alongside some of them Northern streams. Five hundred pounds in one of them boats, an' two men can snake it along in a way ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... in color, and small and restless as those of a ferret. He advanced into the room with the obsequious deferential manner which in all well-trained servants becomes second nature, moving across the thickly carpeted floor with the rapidity and noiselessness of a snake. ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... draws poison out of a wound, you see," said Rob, "and mud is good for that. We had a pointer dog once, and he came home with his face all swelled up, and my father said he had been bitten by a snake. We didn't know what to do, but the dog did; he wouldn't let any one touch him, but went off to a slough back of the house and lay down in the mud, and he kept his head in the mud for two or three days. He got well all right. ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... are contending for; nor of the corruptions and cruelties of the British ministry; and are therefore just as ready to fall into their destructive jaws, as young cat-birds are to run into the mouth of a rattle-snake." ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... evidently talking in low tones. While the experience was altogether new to Bob, he enjoyed it immensely. Why, after all, it was not so very hard to place his hands and knees in such fashion that he felt able to move along almost as silently as a snake might have done. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... Bay. It was between eight and nine; the land—wind had died away, and the sea—breeze had not set in—there was not a breath stirring. The pennant from the masthead fell sluggishly down, and clung amongst the rigging like a dead snake, whilst the folds of the St George's ensign that hung from the mizzen—peak, were as motionless as if they had been ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... came more frequently to Daniel, and then others, pupils of Professors Wackerbarth and Doederlein. At times he would take luncheon with them in the students' restaurant. We will call them the long-haired, or the pale-faced. Many of them looked like snake-charmers. They were almost without exception hopelessly stupid, but they all had some kind of a bee in ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a child. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed in the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... seize one of her brood; while the long train behind her, following her quick movements, and swaying from side to side to get out of the reach of the furious fox, was sometimes in the shape of the letter C, and sometimes in that of the letter S, and sometimes looked like a long snake with a curling tail. Loud was the laughter, shrill the shrieks, as the fox drove them hither and thither, and seemed to be in all parts of the room at once. He was a cunning fox that, as well as a bold one. Sometimes, when ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... through the water with surprising rapidity. Others were barrel- or globe-shaped, with swarming tentacles. With these they pulled themselves along, in and out through the crowd, or, bringing their squirming appendages rearward,—each an individual snake,—used them as propellers, and swam. There were creatures in the form of long cylinders, some with tentacles by which they rolled along like a log in a tideway; others, without appendages, were as inert and helpless as the huge red-and-gray disks. He saw four ball-shaped creatures float ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... consider themselves to be descended from the Nag or cobra, and say that they all belong to the Nag gotra. They will not kill a cobra, and will save it from death at the hands of others if they have the opportunity, and they sometimes pay the snake-charmers to set free captive snakes. The oath on the snake is their most solemn form of affirmation. For the purposes of marriage they have a number of exogamous sections or vargas, the names of which in some cases indicate a military calling, as Dalai, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... later those who were watching saw a small black snake make an ineffectual effort to leap out of the blazing mass, fall back into the flames, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... shoulders, fastening it at the bosom with a small skull of jade stone whose grinning teeth were pearls, and whose eye-sockets were empty with an awful blackness. The gold circlet was discarded, and in its place Dolores placed on her head a turban formed from a stuffed coiled snake, whose neck and head darted hither and thither on cunning springs with ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... began to swim a languorous way down the mahogany slant. At the angle it waved its sizzling molten head to and fro over the closed eyes of the man beneath it. Then, in a moment, with a mystic impulse, it moved again, and the red snake flowed directly ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... "You—you snake!" I cried, in uncontrollable anger. "You well knew Dorothy's spirit, which she has not got from you, and you lied to her. Yes, lied, I say. To force her to marry Chartersea you made her believe that your precious honour ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. For whatever knowledge of the human frame there may be in the Laocoon, there is certainly none of the habits of serpents. The fixing of the snake's head in the side of the principal figure is as false to nature, as it is poor in composition of line. A large serpent never wants to bite, it wants to hold, it seizes therefore always where it can hold best, by the extremities, or throat, it seizes once and forever, and that before it coils, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the yard, is a croft as had corn in it wan year, though 'tis permanent grass now, seemin'ly. Your faither corned through theer like a snake by night more'n wance; an' oftentimes I crept down house, shivering wi' fear an' love, to meet him under moonlight while the auld folks slept. Tim he'd grawed to a power wi' the gypsy people by that time; but faither was allus hard against un. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... flame; the next side, by contrast, was painted as black as tar. Along the front of this ran a blackening rim or rampart edged with a restless red ribbon that danced and doubled and devoured like a scarlet snake; and beyond it was nothing but a deathly ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... remaining drops on a little pile of chips and lit another match. The tinder blazed up. The man fanned the tiny flames with the brim of a torn hat. The flare of light grew brighter; a great flame leapt up and then a snake-like curve of fire followed the ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... travellers. Aarni is the guardian of hidden treasures. This important office is also filled by a hideous old deity named Mammelainen, whom Renwall, the Finnish lexicographer, describes as "femina maligna, matrix serpentis, divitiarum subterranearum custos," a malignant woman, the mother of the snake, and the guardian of subterranean treasures. From this conception it is evident that the idea of a kinship between serpents and hidden treasures frequently met with in the myths of the Hungarians, Germans, and Slavs, is not foreign to ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... accent. It lives entirely in the surfaces of things, and, as the surface of life is frequently rough and prickly, it is frequently uncomfortable. At such times it peevishly darts out its little sting, like a young snake angry with a farmer's boot. It is amusing to watch it venting its spleen in papers the bourgeois never read, in pictures they don't trouble to understand. John Bull's indifference to the 'new' criticism ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... bushes a little out of his track, and he made for them, hoping to find water. In this he was disappointed; so taking a sparing pull at his water-bottle, he crawled under one of them, seeking its shade. There was a slight rustle, and a snake rose on its tail, and darted at him with its forked tongue, but, just missing him, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... pray that you will read the letter herein enclosed. Hugh de Cressi will tell you how it came to my hand, since I lack time to write all the story. If it seems good to your Grace, I pray you scotch this snake while he is in your garden, lest he should live to sting you when you walk abroad. If it please you to give your royal warrant to the bearer of this letter, and to address the same to such of your subjects in Dunwich as you ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... snake-like ravine widened out slightly we made choice for our first camp. We reached there near the sunset hour, although the sun itself had utterly vanished from our view long before, and we moved forward amid a semi-darkness most depressing. On the spot selected ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... huts were full of carapaces, all broken and eight-ribbed. One species, the Sakar, supplies tortoise-shell sold at Suez for 150 piastres per Ratl or pound; the Bsa'h, another large kind without carapace, is used only for eating: both are caught off the reefs and islets. An eel-like water-snake (Marrna Murna Ophis) showed fight when attacked. The Arabs do not eat it, yet they will not refuse the Shaggah, or ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... detect trouble under a thousand disguises. Perhaps a small boy has thrown a snake across the wires or driven a nail into a cable. Perhaps some self-reliant citizen has moved his own telephone from one room to another. Perhaps a sudden rainstorm has splashed its fatal moisture upon an unwiped joint. Or perhaps a submarine cable has been sat upon by the Lusitania and ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... them to have been made by buffaloes, followed them some time; when suddenly the Catawbas rose from their covert, fired at and killed several of the hunters; the others fled, collected a party and went in pursuit of the Catawbas. These had brought with them, rattle snake poison corked up in a piece of cane stalk; into which they dipped small reed splinters, which they set up along their path. The Delawares in pursuit were much injured by those poisoned splinters, and commenced retreating ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Armenians, followed closely by one of the gipsies of Gregor Jhaere's party, who whispered to Maga through lips that hardly moved, and made signals to Kagig with a secretive hand like a snake's head. I got off Fred's stomach then, and when he had had his revenge by emptying hot pipe ashes down my neck he sat close beside me and translated what followed word for word. It was all in Armenian, spoken in deadly earnest ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... placed beside the cupboard which had contained the lantern a Chinaman was seated. His skin was of so light a yellow color as to approximate to dirty white, and his face was pock-marked from neck to crown. He wore long, snake-like moustaches, which hung down below his chin. They grew from the extreme outer edges of his upper lip, the centre of which, usually the most hirsute, was hairless as the lip of an infant. He possessed ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... train some distance, and then rode into the jungle. I became separated from the main party and was watching an open space in the jungle when my attention was attracted by a pretty little tropical bird, fluttering round and round a tree. This interested me, and on closer inspection I found a huge snake had coiled himself on one of the upper branches, and was calmly lying with its mouth open, waiting for his prey. Smaller and smaller were the circles the bird made, and weaker and weaker were its efforts to escape the fascination, until it finally fluttered to a limb ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... fence he halted and turned about, carelessly and casually, and looked back along the way he had come. Everything was as it should be—the weedfield steaming in the heat; the empty road stretching along the crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning itself; and beyond it, massing up, the dark, cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was all right, but——The squire's eyes, in their loose sacs of skin, narrowed and squinted. Out of the blue arch away over yonder a small black dot had resolved itself and was swinging to and fro, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... duller than oxen, and made them useful pioneers. Here is his own simple record of the way he got to the hearts of the Levy: "How they enjoy the palaver in which I tell them that 'they are the eyes to the body of the snake which is crawling up the bush-path from the coast, and coiling for its spring! The eyes are hungry, but they will soon have meat; and the main body of white men, armed with the best of weapons, will help them win the day, and get their country back again, to enjoy in peace for ever.' Then I show ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... success goes in the scholastic profession, and then disaster overtook him in the shape of a divorce. His wife, William Porphyry's mother, made the acquaintance of a rich young man named Nolan, who was recuperating at Seagate from the sequelae of snake-bite, malaria, and a gun accident in Brazil. She ran away with him, and she was divorced. She was, however, unable to marry him because he died at Wiesbaden only three days after the Reverend Harold Benham obtained his decree absolute. Instead, therefore, being a woman ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... not have known that I had it. At all events, they did not know what to do for it. It did not pass. It grew worse. But I hid it, talking very little, never telling anybody how I felt. They said I was depressed and needed cheering up. All the while there was that black snake coiled around my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter. But my body grew stronger every day. The wounds were all healed. I was walking around. In July the doctor-in-chief sent for me to his office. He said: 'You are ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... I've tasted around this country is not very good for any one, unless, perhaps, after a snake has bitten you. Then it works on the principle of poison fight ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... to their backs. He paused, imperceptibly tensed, judged the distance carefully. Then in a sudden, snake-like ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... say how many have been its victims, how many homes has it made desolate, how many hearts has it broken, and how many graves now enclose misguided men, and misguided youths, who, educated in its fallacies, lured by its snake-like influence, arrayed themselves against their country, and ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... are you sure the snake didn't drop into the water after you?" questioned Jessie, and her face ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... want? That's straight ain't it? If youse want to buy a boid or a snake why don't youse ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... not to pursue his search but to hasten out of the smell of the carrion that a little breeze had just carried towards them. Besides, this thick grass is full of snakes, he said, and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than a snake issued from a thick tuft, stopped and hissed. Snakes feed on mice and rats? Joseph asked, and come out of their holes to catch them, isn't that so, Sir? Everything is out this sunny morning, seeking its food, Azariah answered: ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... there that peaked woody mountain which stands by itself behind La Napoule in front of the summits of the Esterel; it is called in the district Snake Mountain. There is where my solitary lived within the walls of a little antique temple about a dozen ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... lay perpetually asleep, along beside a steep bank clothed with white birches and balsam poplars. Amid the trunks of the trees grew elder shrubs, and snake-berries, and the elvish trifoliate plants of the purple and the painted trillium. The steep bank, and the grove, and the Perdu with them, ran along together for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then faded out of existence, absorbed into the bosom of ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you more than ever! I did not know before that I could love so much! I could kill that woman with my own hands! I wish I had killed her when I pulled her down that day! It is right to kill poisonous creatures: she is worse than any snake!" ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... at me as he'd have looked at a snake," thought Hetty. "I guess he's an honest fellow after all. He's got a ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... Heritage. Now, tell me yours ... Girofle?... Well, I am going back to the Pavilion now. I don't feel safe anywhere else.... Yes, you can see me out of this dreadful place—just in case there should be another snake about," she conceded, for her nerves were beginning to feel a reaction, and she was glad of ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... you and the fate you deserved. And, lastly, in my blind conceit, I have told you the names of the men in the Squaw Creek trouble. If I had only known— and I had all the evidence, but I was so blind I would not see you were a snake ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the cuss 'ud ha' to ha' its way in the blood, like the bite of a sap' [snake], she murmured to herself. 'And yit the dukkeripen on Snowdon said, clear and plain enough, as they'd surely marry at last. What's become o' the stolen trushul, brother—the cross?' she inquired aloud. 'That trushul will ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... other. A few yards ahead he came to an old brick kiln. Here, prone among the broken bricks, lay the robber in greater straits than his victims. A huge cobra was tightly coiled round his right arm, while on the left hung the saree and the jewels. The rays of the lantern disturbed the snake. With an angry hiss it uncoiled itself and disappeared. The dacoit, more dead than alive from simple fear of the snake's fatal sting, yielded himself a prisoner, and it was subsequently discovered that the whole gang, of whom he was a member, were licensed ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... which sports so in the elder-bush," thought the student Anselmus; but the bells sounded again, and Anselmus observed that one Snake held out its little head to him. Through all his limbs there went a shock like electricity; he quivered in his inmost heart; he kept gazing up, and a pair of glorious dark-blue eyes were looking at him with unspeakable longing; and an unknown feeling ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the strength of dry thunder splits hill-rocks asunder, And the shouts of the desert-wind break, By the gullies of deepness and ridges of steepness, Lo, the cattle track twists like a snake! Like a sea of dead embers, burnt white by Decembers, A plain to the left of it lies; And six fleeting horses dash down the creek courses With the terror ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... she would be a friend, was not very congenial to her. Rosalind's eyes remained cold, despite their softness, and Lesley was vaguely conscious of a repulsion—such as we sometimes feel on touching a toad or a snake—when Mrs. Romaine put her hand on the girl's listless fingers. No, what it was Lesley could not tell, but she was sure of this, that she could never like ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... saying, I took it off that night, and tucked it safely away, as I supposed, in my pocket, and I slept sweetly till about midnight, when I happened to open my eyes, and saw something long and black crawl off my bed and slip under the berth. SUCH a shriek as I gave, my dear! "A snake! a snake! oh, a snake!" And everybody began talking at once, and some of the gentlemen swearing, and the porter came running with the poker to kill it; and all the while it was that ridiculous switch of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... existence, and 'the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy;' the other adorning splendid temples with costly magnificence, in which, with mysterious and grotesque rites, they paid a strange and portentous worship to some foul and grovelling object—a snake, a tortoise, a crocodile, or an ape. The destiny of the two races has been equally different: both may be said still to exist; one in their living representatives, their ever-roving, energetic descendants; the other reposing in their own land—a vast sepulchre, where the successive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... kept on cautiously, squirming his long body in sinuous waves like a lizard's through the grass, and was soon lost to us. No snake could have been lither. We waited, with ears intent. One minute, two minutes, many minutes passed. We could catch the voices of the Kaffirs in the bush all round. They were speaking freely, but what they said I did not know, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... then flash like a silver bar for a moment above the shaded pools. With light step a doe descending the mountain came upon me, and, gazing at me a moment or two with its soft eyes, tripped away. In a narrow pass where the stream rippled over the pebbles between two great walls of rock, a spotted snake crossed my path, hurrying its movement in fright. Fear not, humble ophidian. The war declared between thee and me in the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis is suspended for this one day. Let ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... a great snake-killer, they tell me, in that part of the world. But I never saw my way quite clear as bachelor, until I got the Dawn. Did ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the death cry of a monkey. Probably some python or other snake has seized it in its sleep; and the other noise is the outcry of its companions heaping abuse upon the snake, but unable to do anything to rescue ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... answered, "was tall, slender, dark; with long straight hair and eyes like a snake. I noticed, too, that he had a habit of moistening his lips with the end of his tongue, and that made me think of a snake thrusting out his tongue. I got a shot at the other fellow, ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... place. It was while eating pears that I met my Matilda Jane. Oh, she was the most lovely young turtle that you can imagine! Her beautifully rounded shell, with its delicate markings in black and "old gold," which was just then coming into fashion, her snake-like head and neck, and her beautiful bright yellow eyes, gave her the well-deserved name of "The Belle of the Village." We loved each other at the first, and for some time we were inseparable, until one morning, when ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... accompanied them; "they are called Secretaries, on account of the feathers which hang behind their heads, as the feather of a pen does when a clerk puts it behind his ear: but they are very useful, for they are snake-killers; indeed, they would, if they could, live altogether upon snakes, which they are very great enemies to, never letting one escape. They strike them with their feet, and with such force ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... is tempting, also, to connect the Asclepian snake cult with the prominence of the serpent in ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the chalk; and the same may be said of many other Foraminifera. I think it probable that critical and unprejudiced examination will show that more than one species of much higher animals have had a similar longevity; but the only example, which I can at present give confidently is the snake's-head lamp-shell (Terebratulina caput serpentis), which lives in our English seas and abounded (as Terebratulina striata ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the Doctor; "but as yet we have not, in my lectures, advanced so far as flesh-wounds. They would know what to do, I hope, if confronted with frost-bite, snake-bite, sunstroke or incipient croup—from all of which our little expedition will be (under Providence) immune, and I have as yet confined myself to directing them, in all cases which apparently differ from these, to run to the nearest ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... or steal out to the little hunchback who writes love-letters at a penny a-piece, beautiful flourishes and all, under the portico by the Fishmarket. I wonder does that wicked little Dionea, whom no one pays court to, smile (her lips like a Cupid's bow or a tiny snake's curves) as she calls the pigeons down around her, or lies fondling the cats under the myrtle-bush, when she sees the pupils going about with swollen, red eyes; the poor little nuns taking fresh ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... short knife which might be used to skin a beef or carve meat, though certainly no human being had ever used such a weapon against a five-foot rattler. He stooped and rested both hands on his thighs. His feet were not two paces from the poised head of the snake. As if marvelling at this temerity, the big rattler tucked back his head and sounded the alarm again. In response the cowboy flashed his knife in the sun. Instantly the snake struck but the deadly fangs fell a few inches short of the ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... was ponderously unwinding the coils of the boa constrictor from round her neck as we paused in front of her cage, but presently she recognized us and smiled. We asked her whether she wasn't afraid to let the snake coil ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens |
