"Twisted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... finding them well above the horizon and bearing down rapidly on us. We did not know what sort of a vessel was coming, but we knew she was coming quickly, and we searched for paper, rags,—anything that would burn (we were quite prepared to burn our coats if necessary). A hasty paper torch was twisted out of letters found in some one's pocket, lighted, and held aloft by the stoker standing on the tiller platform. The little light shone in flickers on the faces of the occupants of the boat, ran in broken lines for a few yards along the black oily sea (where for the first time I saw the ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... his cap and gloves on the table and began to pull down the skirts of his coat and to put himself to rights before the looking-glass. An enormous black handkerchief, which was twisted into a very high stiffener for his cravat, and the bristles of which supported his chin, stuck out an inch over his collar. It seemed to him to be rather small, and he drew it up as far as his ears. As a result of that hard work—the collar of his ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... reaping-machine went about the gradually decreasing square of corn, narrowing it by a broad band each time, the wheat fell flat on the short stubble. Roger stooped, and, gathering sufficient together, took a few straws, knotted them to another handful as you might tie two pieces of string, and twisted the band round the sheaf. He worked stooping to gather the wheat, bending to tie it in sheaves; stooping, bending—stooping, bending,—and so across the field. Upon his head and back the fiery sun poured down the ceaseless and increasing heat of the August day. His ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... about two feet long, composed of different colored threads tightly twisted together, from which a quantity of smaller threads were suspended in the manner of a fringe. The threads were of different colors and were tied into knots. The word quipu, indeed, signifies a knot. The colors denoted sensible objects; as, for instance, white represented silver, and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... journey to Capetown, next returned to Belmont, few signs of the recent engagement were visible. The strands of wire fencing on either side the line were cut through here and there, and twisted back several yards where our fifteen-pounders had been galloped through to shell the retreating Boers. Now and again the eye was caught by little heaps of cartridge cases marking the spot where ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... long pause. The little warm hand still rested trustingly in Ralph's. "Listen, dear," he began, clearing his throat; "it isn't wrong to be married. I never before in all my life heard of anybody who thought it was. Something is twisted in Aunt Hitty's mind, or else she's taught you that because she's so brutally selfish that she doesn't want you ever to be married. Some people, who are unhappy themselves, are so constituted that they can't bear to see anybody else happy. She's ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... way through a long, dark corridor that turned and twisted. At the extreme end he stopped, put down the telescope valise, and drew a key from ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... lateral progress, [Footnote: For a full account of the Greek five, see Gibbon, chapter 53] In sieges, it was poured from the ramparts, or launched like our bombs, in red-hot balls of stone or iron, or it was darted in flax twisted round arrows and in javelins. It was considered as a state secret of the greatest importance; and for wellnigh four centuries it was unknown to the Mahomedans. But at length the composition was discovered by the Saracens, and used by ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... back to her base. She had a hellish time among the Dardanelles nets; was, of course, fired at by the forts, just missed a torpedo from the beach, scraped a mine, and when she had time to take stock found electric mine-wires twisted round her propellers and all her hull scraped and scored with wire marks. But that, again, was only in the day's work. The point she insisted upon was that she had been for seventy days in the Sea of Marmara with no securer base for refit ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... of us. But I saw him as he put his luggage into the taxi which Dr. Kent had summoned. I was standing silently nearby with Babs and Alan. The look he flung us as he drove away carried an unmistakable menace—the promise of vengeance. And I think now that in his warped and twisted mind he was telling himself that he would some day make Babs regret that she ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... Noble Vertuoso, M. Charls Howard, brother to the Duke of Norfolk) so curiously dress'd and prepar'd, as to appear both to the eye and the touch, full as fine and as glossie, and to receive all kinds of colours, as well as Sleave-Silk; yet when this Silken Flax is twisted into threads, it quite loseth its former luster, and becomes as plain and base a thread to look on, as one of the same bigness, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Norte rushed at Frank, drawing a knife. He struck at Merry's heart, but his wrist was seized and the knife was twisted from ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies' hair. One could see the 250 air holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster's mouth, a horned beak like a parrot's, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... despairingly at the blaster's trigger. Nothing happened. Before she could realize that she hadn't turned off the safety, Calhoun twisted the weapon from her fingers. ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... linen; it should be about five inches from the middle of the bow when strung (Cut II). The notches for the string should be two-thirds the depth of the string. If you have not a bought string make one of strong, unbleached linen thread twisted together. At one end the string, which is heaviest at the ends, should be fast knotted to the bow notch (Cut V); at the other it should have a loop as shown in Cut IV. In the middle it should be lashed with fine silk and wax for five inches, and the exact place ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... for when Spinrobin gives the details one simply fails to recognize either cupboard or curtain. To say that the dark, lumbering cupboard, standing normally against the wall down there in the shadows, loomed suddenly forward and upward, bent, twisted, and stretched out the whole of one side towards him like a misshapen arm, can convey nothing of the world of new sensations that the little secretary felt while actually watching it in progress in that haunted chamber of Skale's mansion among the hills. Nor can one be thrilled ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... ready and the adversaries stood up in their places. Bauer the Rhine Korps man, was an ugly sight. The eye-pieces gave a singularly sinister expression to his sallow face, and his disorderly hair looked like a wig of twisted black wire, while the jerkin he wore seemed almost dropping from his long, sinewy frame. He made his sharp weapon whistle three or four times in the air and tapped his foot impatiently upon the marble floor as though anxious ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... second-growth trees. At the side of the doorway was the tree which they had collided with, a twenty-foot white birch. The hut was even more dilapidated than they had supposed. It looked as if a good wind would send its twisted, sun-split grey boards into a heap. Inside, however, with the sunlight streaming through doorway, window and cracks, it looked more inviting than it had at night. Weeds were growing between the rotting boards ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the twisted, difficult, rather foolish smile of one who is cursing the mortification of a predicament into which he has been cast through no ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Brother Michel. We were mounted on a pair of sober nags, suitable to these rude paths; the weather was exquisite, and the company in which I found myself no less agreeable than the scenes through which I passed. We mounted at first by a steep grade along the summit of one of those twisted spurs that, from a distance, mark out provinces of sun and shade upon the mountain-side. The ground fell away on either hand with an extreme declivity. From either hand, out of profound ravines, mounted the song of falling water and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excited by it. Before this, her manner had been brusque, if not contemptuous, towards her new acquaintance; now it became, towards my mother especially, quite rude. Presently she took up some slight remark made by my mother, which, though, it did not naturally mean anything of the sort, could be twisted into some reflection upon England, and made it a handle, first of vulgar sarcasm, and then, upon my mother's defending herself with some surprise and gentle dignity, hurled upon her a volley ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... but he was no match for the youth, who all his life had been used to hard labor, and whose muscles, consequently, were like steel. He struck Hal many times, but the youth squirmed and twisted, and suddenly hit him a crack between the eyes ...
— The Missing Tin Box - or, The Stolen Railroad Bonds • Arthur M. Winfield
... merely made Chicot extend his arm, and at every opening left by the young man, strike him full on the chest. Jacques, red with anger and emulation as this was repeated, bounded back, and for ten minutes displayed all the resources of his wonderful agility—he flew like a tiger, twisted like a serpent, and bounded from right to left; but Chicot, with his calm air and his long arm, seized his time, and putting aside his adversary's sword, still sent his own to the same place, while Borromee grew pale with anger. At last, Jacques rushed a last time on Chicot, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... figured in the XVIIIth dynasty as sacred to Ammon; but his most frequent and celebrated incarnation was the woolly sheep with curved ("Ammon") horns (as opposed to the oldest native breed with long horizontal twisted horns and hairy coat, sacred to Khnum or Chnumis). It is found as representing Ammon from the time of Amenophis III. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Ireland which weighed from fifteen to twenty pounds. Seven pounds is, I believe, no unusual size. The large ones are extremely strong and muscular. Fishing one day at Pain's Hill, near Cobham, in Surrey, I hooked an eel amongst some weeds, but before I could land him, he had so twisted a new strong double wire, to which the hook was fixed, that he broke ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... not so swift, but much more disconcerting, he threw his sheet as the retiarius used to throw a net in ancient Rome. It wrapped round the native's head and arms, and the two went together to the floor in a twisted stranglehold. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... lecture platform Susan wore a gray silk dress with a soft, white lace collar. Her hair, now graying, was smoothed back and twisted neatly into a tight knot. Everything about her indicated refinement and sincerity, and most of her audiences ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... litters. At the further end of the shed were several armed men, who did not bear the appearance of regular Roman troops. They were seated round a table, drinking and singing. Some among them, who carried short-handled scourges twisted of several thongs and terminating in bits of lead, detached themselves from time to time from the group, and walked here and there with the uncertain gait of drunken men, casting jeering looks on the prisoners. Next to me lay an aged man with white hair and beard, very pale and thin. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... She twisted it up and addressed it, reconsidered that, and made the scrap more secure in a yellow envelope. It had an embossed post-office stamp, which she sacrificed with resignation. Then she went back to an extremely uninteresting ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... with me upon my seeming bad health, and the solitary mode of my living, and wished to know whether he could be of any service to me. "From the first moment he saw me, he had conceived an affection for me." In my present disguise I appeared twisted and deformed, and in other respects by no means an object of attraction. But it seemed Mr. Spurrel had lost an only son about six months before, and I was "the very picture of him." If I had put ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the two ante-chambers, and a piece of fringe getting loose in the air, had fallen upon the King's wig, from which it was removed by Livry, a gentleman-in-waiting. Livry also opened the bundle, and saw that it did indeed contain the fringes all twisted up, and everybody saw likewise. A murmur was heard. Livry wishing to take away the bundle found a paper attached to it. He took the paper and left the bundle. The King stretched out his hand and said, "Let us see." Livry, and with reason, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... twisted off from their roots and torn to pieces. Wild animals and birds were dashed to death. Streams were emptied of their waters. Human beings and horses and cattle were lifted into the air, hurled hither and thither and thrown dead ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... to imagine any possible explanation; and indeed, if we drive briskly along a good, well-made road in an open vehicle, we shall experience this sympathy almost at its fullest. We feel the sharp settle of the springs at some curiously twisted corner; after a steep ascent, the fresh air dances in our faces as we rattle precipitately down the other side, and we find It difficult to avoid attributing something headlong, a sort of abandon, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my countenance; And one of them, not this one who was speaking, Twisted himself beneath the weight that ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... twisted among the mountains and crawled up their steep sides on a line that wound about in bewildering fashion, in one place looping the loop completely in such a way that the engine was crossing a bridge from under which the last carriage was just emerging. Noreen delighted ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... came into her chamber the three unerring Fates who spin the destinies of men. White-robed and garlanded, they stood beside the babe, and with unwearied fingers drew out the lines of his untried life. Clotho held the golden distaff in her hand, and twirled and twisted the delicate thread. Lachesis, now sad, now hopeful, with her long white fingers held the hour-glass, and framed her lips to say, 'It is enough.' And Atropos, blind and unpitying as the future always is, stood ready, with cruel shears, ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... some press of business, the task was entrusted on this occasion to the head prompter,—a clever man in his way, but wholly unfitted to bring out, or even to understand, Mr. Browning's meaning. Consequently, the delicate, subtle lines were twisted, perverted, and sometimes even made ridiculous in his hands. My "cruel father" [Mr. Elton] was a warm admirer of the poet. He sat writhing and indignant, and tried by gentle asides to make me see the real meaning of the verse. But ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Dick made a grimace, twisted his neck, and vehemently denounced high collars and white ties as being decided nuisances; then remembering his sister's parting injunction, he attempted to call up an angelic smile to his face, and to make his most polite bow on ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... the same metal, a few tall, slender, Venetian glasses, a little pewter, and some rare shells. A few high-backed chairs were ranged against the wall; there was a tall "armory," i.e. a linen-press of dark oak, guarded on each side by the twisted weapons of the sea unicorn, and in the middle of the room stood a large, solid-looking table, adorned with a brown earthenware beau-pot, containing a stiff posy of roses, southernwood, gillyflowers, pinks and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... somewhat in the fight. Her loss in men was only two killed and eight wounded; but two of her guns had the muzzles shot off, the armor was damaged in some places, and, most serious of all, she had badly twisted her ram in running into the Cumberland. Still it appeared that she was more than a match for the rest of the Federal fleet, and that these must ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... high, with a sort of beetle-browed roof in front. It is not very striking, and does not look older than many wooden houses which I have seen in America. There is a curious stately staircase, with a twisted balustrade much like that of the old Province House in Boston. The drawing-room is a handsome modern apartment, being beautifully painted and gilded and paper-hung, with a white marble fireplace and rich furniture, so that the impression is that of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wuz twisted right under the ankle, and the broken, crushed bones of the foot pressed right up where the instep should be. The pain must have been sunthin' terrible, and very often a toe drops off, but I spoze they are glad of that, for it would make the little lump of dead flesh they call their feet ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... things, so he should also into this, How came I into this way of dealing in which I have now miscarried? Is it a way that my parents brought me up in, put me apprentice to, or that by providence I was first thrust into? Or is it a way into which I have twisted myself, as not being contented with my first lot, that by God and my parents I was cast into? This ought duly to be considered, and if upon search a man shall find that he is out of the place and calling into which he was put by his parents, or the providence of God, and has miscarried ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... may be described as a sort of boudoir extracted from the bulk of a mansion and deposited in a wood. The front room was filled with nicknacks, curious work-tables, filigree baskets, twisted brackets supporting statuettes, in which the grotesque in every case ruled the design; love-birds, in gilt cages; French bronzes, wonderful boxes, needlework of strange patterns, and other attractive objects. The apartment was one of those which seem to laugh in a visitor's face and on closer examination ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... a slight interval of embarrassment after this outburst. The majority of those present realized that the speaker had gotten her proverb twisted, but, she being Miss Tryphosa Taylor, no one felt like venturing to set her right. Mrs. Captain Godfrey Peasley relieved the situation; she had a habit of relieving situations—when she did not make them tenser. She had gotten ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the Chinese wedding procession in the narrow, twisted streets of the city, that first day: the gorgeous palanquin, the tom-toms, the weird music, the ribald, jeering mob that trailed along behind. It was surely odd that her thought should pick up that picture and recast ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... the following cruel manner: their hands were tied behind their backs, a rope from the masthead rove through their arms, and hoisted three or four feet from the deck, and five or six men flogged them with their rattans twisted together till they were apparently dead; then hoisted them up to the mast-head, and left them hanging nearly an hour, then lowered them down, and repeated the punishment, till they died or complied with ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... father, an engraver of some distinction, had been dead eleven years, and his mother had three girls to educate and maintain on a meagre annuity. Hans Meyrick—he had been daringly christened after Holbein—felt himself the pillar, or rather the knotted and twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing plants must cling. There was no want of ability or of honest well-meaning affection to make the prop trustworthy: the ease and quickness with which he studied might serve him to win prizes ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... the casement of the upper chamber open, some twisted linen fastened to the bar, nearly reached to the ground without, and proved the method of her flight; a beldame who must have aided her escape, remains alone above, (turning towards the window,) ha! I catch a female figure darting through the trees at a distance; she runs with lightning speed,—now—she ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the poor suppliant! As he stepped over the threshold his foot twisted, and he fell to the ground. Of course, everybody was firmly convinced of his guilt, and what could the poor boy say when his own appeal to the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... themselves furiously into the chasm as if bent on everlasting devastation. The river itself was rising swiftly and from time to time the great logs that had remained stranded in the upper reaches of the river also plunged into the vortex, where they twisted and ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... had melted lead in an iron spoon, and dropped it into buckets of water, amid bubbles of laughter, to see what the occupations of their future husbands would be. They fished out the results with eager faces, and twisted them to suit their hopes. Carette's piece came out a something which Jeanne Falla at once pronounced an anchor, but which young Torode said was a sword, and made it so by a skilful touch ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... into place, wires of them and tail are passed through loops in body-wire and twisted around it once or twice, and then leg-wires are led to drilled holes in edge of shell and clinched in them as shown ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... tranquility but zealous to pay court to a powerful minister and—provided they can obtain advantages—unconcerned should the means of obtaining them prove ruinous to the King's service.' These pettifoggers so turned and twisted the law about for the sake of screwing out the maximum of fees that Carleton pointedly refused to appoint Livius as a member of the Legislative Council. Livius then laid his case before the Privy Council in England. But this great court of ultimate appeal ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... tradition, and grew dim and vague in the recital. What one fierce partisan leader had done might dwindle or might grow in the telling or might finally be ascribed to some other; or else the same feat was twisted into such varying shapes that it became impossible to recognize which was nearest the truth, or what man had ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... either," said the Motherkin, with a peculiar little smile upon her face; and Grim twisted the scarlet tassel of his cap mysteriously. Laura looked at one, then at the other: what did ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... educated men in the ship. The marine officer was also a very excellent fellow, but he squinted awfully, which made him carry his head somewhat on one side; and his face was broad and strongly seamed with lines, which twisted in a way that made him look as if he was always laughing. He however did laugh very frequently, more especially at his own jokes, which, if not always original, were very amusing. In the midshipmen's berth there were several mates of long standing, who had come out on the station in the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... two or three bottles over the girl. Wearing nothing beyond her chemise, it changed Catherine into a kind of mythological figure of a humid species like nymphs and naiads. She cried herself into a rage and twisted in convulsions. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... thought that Mrs. Warren knew anything about her plan of playing Swiss Family Robinson, and her face grew very red, as she looked away from Mrs. Warren, and twisted the corner of her apron into ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity beneath her cloak. When she was arrested she had cursed the lady into a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from rheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policeman whose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said: "The ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... it up—a long, mist-like veil. He spread it out, held it gingerly between a thumb and finger of each hand, and continued to look at it abstractedly. Part of it was clean and whole, dainty as only a bit of woman's finery can be; but one end of it was torn and twisted and stretched out of all semblance to itself. Moreover, it was dirty, as if it had been ground under a muddy heel. It was, in its way, a shrieking evidence of violence, of unrighteous struggle. Hambleton folded the scarf carefully, with its edges ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Were twisted, gracefu', round her brows; I took her for some Scottish Muse, By that same token; And come to stop those reckless vows, Would soon ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... together heather and juniper leaves, and make up a bed on a little declivity where it was a bit dry. I opened the parcel and took out the blanket; I was tired and exhausted with the long walk, and lay down at once. I turned and twisted many times before I could get settled. My ear pained me a little—it was slightly swollen from the whip-lash—and I could not lie on it. I pulled off my shoes and put them under my head, with the paper from ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... is a note referring to a description in the "English Note-Books" of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, "quite dead and dry, although they have the aspect of dark, rich life. But this is caused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines which have twisted round them like gigantic snakes, ... throttling the life out of them, ... and one feels that they have stolen the life that belonged to the pines." This does not seem to have been used; but the necessity of some life being stolen in order to add to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... darkly sunburnt. His head, bald no doubt, was tied up in a crimson handkerchief that gave him the value of a rare picture by the hand of some old master. Seeing the cure, the pair stopped under an immense olive tree, a tree so twisted, so contorted that it seemed to have settled down to treehood only after the wild whirl of a maenad dance. Now in its old age, which had been youth in Caesar's day, it was more like a gray, ruined tower than an olive tree. It had divided itself into a few crumbling, leaning walls ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a hundred men and women and children lay crushed and twisted and jammed, forced into that great, gaping doorway like refuse in a can—as if in one wild, frantic rush to safety, they had rushed and ground themselves to death. Slowly the messenger crept along the walls, wetting his parched ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... by the Furies; and before the Scarlet Car could swing back into what had been an empty road, in swift pursuit of the first came many more cars, with blinding searchlights, with a roar of throbbing, thrashing engines, flying pebbles, and whirling wheels. And behind these, stretching for a twisted mile, came hundreds of others; until the road was aflame with flashing Will-o'-the-wisps, dancing fireballs, and long, shifting shafts ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... was pierced, or rather slit, and to such a length, that one of them stuck there a knife and some beads, which he had received from us; and the same person had two polished pearl-shells, and a bunch of human hair, loosely twisted, hanging about his neck, which was the only ornament we observed. The canoe they came in (which was the only one we saw), was not above ten feet long, and very narrow; but both strong and neatly made. The fore part had a flat board fastened ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... this grew ever narrower and I walked in an ever-deepening gloom, wherefore I turned about, minded to go back, but found myself quite lost and shut in, what with the dense underbrush around me and the twisted, writhen branches above, whose myriad leaves obscured the moon's kindly beam. In this dim twilight I pushed on then, as well as I might, often running foul of unseen obstacles or pausing to loose my garments from clutching thorns. Sudden there met me a wind, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... those slaves, and behold with what piercing stripes he furrows the back of an able negro, whose greatness of soul will not suffer him to complain, and whose strength could crush his tormentor to atoms. The unmerciful whip with which they are chastised is made of cow-skin, hardened, twisted, and tapering, which brings the blood with every blow, and leaves a scar on their naked back which they carry with them to their grave. At the arbitrary will of such managers, many of them with hearts of adamant, this unfortunate race are brought to the post of correction, often no doubt through ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... just called up to ask 'what the devil' I meant by letting him make a fool of himself," said Sara, with a peculiar little twisted smile ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... twisted the sixshooter from the old man's grasp and jammed it into the waistband of his own trousers. The old man burst into frank tears. Incontinently he slid sidewise from the saddle and ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... had I not white hair?—for a few minutes had shown me that I was not old enough for the child despite my forty years. She was quite happy with the little black cat, which lay in the small lap blinking its yellow eyes at the sun; and presently an old man came by, lame and bent, with gnarled twisted hands, leaning ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... forced their way from another part, was a form which seemed charmed against arrow and spear. For the defensive arms of this chief were as slight as if worn but for ornament: a small corselet of gold covered only the centre of his breast, a gold collar of twisted wires circled his throat, and a gold bracelet adorned his bare arm, dropping gore, not his own, from the wrist to the elbow. He was small and slight-shaped—below the common standard of men—but he seemed as one made a giant by the sublime inspiration of war. He wore no helmet, merely ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tables with a duster. But she already partook of the pervading spirit of neglect which encompassed her. Her pretty face was wan and listless; her hair uncurled: some locks hanging lankly down, and some carelessly twisted round her head. Probably she had not touched her dress since yester evening. Hindley was not there. Mr. Heathcliff sat at a table, turning over some papers in his pocket- book; but he rose when I appeared, asked me how I did, quite friendly, and offered ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... issue from the cavern into which she had retired, and being prevented from returning thereunto by a deity who stretched a rope of straw across the entrance—all of which is written in the Kojiki. Next observe that, although the shimenawa may be of any thickness, it must be twisted so that the direction of the twist is to the left; for in ancient Japanese philosophy the left is the 'pure' or fortunate side: owing perhaps to the old belief, common among the uneducated of Europe to this day, that the heart lies ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... starting. As I have read and thought, I have been more and more impressed with the obvious explanation of these observations. How should the beliefs be otherwise than shadowy and illusory, when their very substance is made of doubts laboriously and ingeniously twisted into the semblance of convictions? In one way or other that is the characteristic mark of the theological systems of the present day. Proof is abandoned for persuasion. The orthodox believer professed once to prove the facts which he asserted ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... accustomed to take just before supper; only, this time, the symptoms changed entirely, as if one malady had yielded to another of a very different kind. He complained of a pricking in his skin, of vertigo, of convulsive twitches which contracted and twisted his limbs, especially his arms. He cried out with excruciating neuralgic pains in the face. He was seized with a violent, persistent, tenacious craving for pepper, which nothing could assuage. He was sleepless, and morphine in large doses failed to bring him slumber; while he felt an intense chill ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... that, although lazy and dirty and mean, what they do and wear is like an animated picture. The gay costumes of the women—ribbons and bodices and trinkets—with their deep olive skins and bare heads, with hair that is most luxuriantly black, and beautifully twisted and folded in heavy, graceful braids, the broad-browed and outlined Roman women, majestic and handsome, not lovely or interesting, but showing as the remains of an imperial beauty; and in Naples the little figures and arch eyes and Oriental mien of the girls—these persons living ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of gossip, no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had made her suffer, he had at least ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... screamed the Cactus. 'Why, he is twisted and stumpy, and his head is completely out of proportion with his legs. Really he makes me feel prickly all over, and if he comes near me I will ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... prettier than in the attitude of improvisation—or rather, I should say, than in the hundred attitudes which she assumed at such a time. Perpetually moving, she was yet constantly graceful, and while she twisted her body and turned her head, with charming hands that never ceased to gesticulate, and little, conscious, brilliant eyes that looked everywhere at once—eyes that seemed to chatter even faster than her lips—she made you forget the nonsense she poured ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... who would fain be rich, And rich who thought they were poor; And men who twisted their waist in stays, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... cobra her hand gripped his which held the dagger. Her warm body again pressed closely to him, her red lips, parted still, almost touched his cheek; her hair smothered him with its fragrance; and while his senses swam her supple muscles tensed to living steel wire, her grip tightened and twisted at his wrist, and the dagger was wrenched from his fingers. Then leaping back, laughing mockingly now, Dolores slipped the dagger into the sheath, snatched up the chains from the floor, and flew upon him with a deadly pounce that bore him ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... look at the wreck before he gave the starting signal. As he gazed at the bent and twisted mass of steel that had once been a great ship, he saw something long, black and shadowy moving around from the other side, coming ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... What a net he has drawn around my poor John! How he twisted every little fact until he made it seem ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... himself, a distance of not more than two feet, the shell ripped with a deafening shriek, to bury itself and burst by the root of a tree not three yards off. How this man escaped death is a wonder. The wall behind him was scarred by splinters, the iron fence in front torn and twisted into strange shapes, the rails crushed to matchwood by the force of concussion. Yet there he stood unscathed in the midst of it all. He had not heard the shell coming until its burst stunned, and for nearly a minute afterwards ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... as the hot season came on, was something dreadful. It was slimy with alkali. Little black worms knotted and twisted themselves together at the bottom of the cup, like bunches of witch-woven horse-hair. The Indians were dying of malaria. They were burning up with the fever. And this was the only water these people, who had been used to the fresh sweet snow-water ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... pallid, but curiously youthful. Into it had crept again something of that boyish confidence—the joyous swagger of youth—which he had when they sat in the Chicago beer-garden. It startled Milly, who had not recalled those days for a long time. Underneath his mustache the upper lip was twisted as if in pain, and the sunken eyes were mercifully closed. He had gone back to his youth, the happy time of strength and hope when he had expected to be ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... many Eastern Indians was a wigwam, or tent-shaped lodge. It was formed of saplings set upright in the ground in the form of a circle and bent together at their tops. Branches wound and twisted among the saplings completed the frame, which was covered with brush, bark, and leaves. A group of such wigwams made a village, which was often surrounded with a stockade of tree trunks put upright in the ground and ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... pot was nearly always of metal, tall, and, in old models, of graceful curve, with a slightly twisted ornamental beak in the form of an S, attached below the middle of the vessel. A handle ornamented in the same way formed a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... what is this? The sacred beetle, bound upon the breast Of the blind heathen! Snatch the curious prize, Give it a place among thy treasured spoils Fossil and relic,—corals, encrinites, The fly in amber and the fish in stone, The twisted circlet of Etruscan gold, Medal, intaglio, poniard, poison-ring, —Place for the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the little bed, in the round wattle and daub hut, and pressed her fingers against her eyes to still their throbbing. Then she looked round at her surroundings, and a little wry smile twisted her lips. A rough floor of ant-heap composition and cow-dung hardened to cement, with some native reed matting laid down; a small stretcher bed; a packing-case for a washhand-stand, and enamel ware. Another packing-case for a dressing-table, and a little cheap glass nailed ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... given; she turned and twisted much, but said that on this subject she had said all she possibly could; if she said anything ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... hunger, nor the prayers of the party Whip. He gave up his country house because when he journeyed to it in the train he would become so absorbed in his detective stories that he was invariably carried past his station." The member of Parliament twisted his pearl stud nervously, and bit at the edge of his mustache. "If it only were the first pages of 'The Rand Robbery' that he were reading," he murmured bitterly, "instead of the last! With such another book as that, I swear I could hold him here until morning. ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... some fine specimens; and, while he was at that work, he fell in with a piece that looked very solid at the root and unnaturally heavy. On a nearer examination this proved to be a foreign substance incrusted with coral. It had twined and twisted and curled over the thing in a most unheard-of way. Robert took it home, and, by rubbing here and there with lemon juice, at last satisfied himself that this object was a silver box about the size of ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... bowers, Bending on their twisted stems, Glow the myriad ocean-flowers, Fadeless—rich as orient gems. Hung with seaweed's tasselled fringes, Dyed with all the rainbow's tinges, Rise the Triton's palace walls. Pallid silver's wandering veins Stream, like frostwork, o'er the stains; Pavements thick, with golden ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... the SMALL TESTAMENT immediately on the back of the occurrence, and the time when he wrote the LARGE TESTAMENT five years after. On the latter occasion nothing is too bad for his "damsel with the twisted nose," as he calls her. She is spared neither hint nor accusation, and he tells his messenger to accost her with the vilest insults. Villon, it is thought, was out of Paris when these amenities escaped his pen; or perhaps the strong arm of Noe le Joly would have been again in requisition. So ends ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... advice, remained mostly in her bed. In fact, she had kept back the announcement of this ailment of hers, just so long as she could resist its obvious encroachment. The twisted ankle had been, for long, a convenient explanation of more than its ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... off a portion which was carefully stowed away in a basket; this was intended, we understood, for an offering to their idols. A dance was now commenced, and was as savage as could well be imagined. They shrieked, they leaped, they whirled their lances above their heads, and twisted and turned their bodies about in the most fantastic manner, making at the same time the most hideous faces, until, exhausted with their exertions, they all squatted down on the ground. Once more at a sign they rose, when they repeated the same dance round the fetish basket. ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... Chinks?" the Kid said as he examined the wreck more closely. The mass of twisted metal lay still in the moonlight like some once-living thing that had ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... Then he rose and twisted the man round, and listened at his back between the shoulder-blades before making him open his mouth, and ended by looking into his eyes, while the father ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... of spinning, where no spindle was used, was to fasten the strands of goats' hair or wool to a stone which was twirled round until the yarn was sufficiently twisted when it was wound upon the stone and the process repeated over ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... necessary, and which consist principally of various pairs of scissors, and the ACIAL, two short sticks tied together with whipcord at the end, by means of which the lower lip of the horse, should he prove restive, is twisted, and the animal reduced to speedy subjection. In the girdle of the esquilador are stuck the large scissors called in Spanish TIJERAS, and in the Gypsy tongue CACHAS, with which he principally works. He operates upon the backs, ears, and tails of mules and borricos, which are invariably ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... again—which is the least hurtful; one which sets it rolling in waves, like the waves of the sea—which is more hurtful; and one, the most terrible of all, which gives the ground a spinning motion, so that things thrown down by it fall twisted from right to left, or left to right. But what kind of earthquake will take place, no one ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... unbound and falling loosely about her; she had almost forgotten this till now. A wave of colour swept over her face,—but she mastered her embarrassment, and gathering the long tresses together in her left hand, twisted them up slowly, and with an evident painful effort. The King watched her, a little ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... last night. Even here, in every crevice where a few grains of soil had collected, delicate little ferns might be seen struggling for life, and thrusting out their green fronds towards the light. It was the most extraordinary walk imaginable over that vast plain of lava, twisted and distorted into every conceivable shape and form, according to the temperature it had originally attained, and the rapidity with which it had cooled, its surface, like half-molten glass, cracking and breaking beneath our feet. Sometimes ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Theodorus, to be shut up in one of her ordinary prisons, and endeavoured to win him over, at one time by flattery, at another by ill-treatment. When none of these measures proved successful, she ordered a cord of ox-hide to be bound round his head, over his forehead and ears and then to be twisted and tightened. She expected that, under this treatment, his eyes would have started from their sockets, and that he would have lost his sight. But Theodorus refused to tell a lie. The judges, for want of proof, acquitted him; ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... in and out among the maple branches. Nobody but he could have twisted and turned in such a helter-skelter fashion. It made Kiddie Katydid almost dizzy just to watch him. But Kiddie didn't take his eyes off Benjamin, because he intended to jump—and jump fast and far—in case ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... little black dress she looked so slight, with her slim body and thin pale face, that several of the girls went on with their work again immediately, having lost interest in her. Sally, confronted by Miss Summers's cat-like eyes, which were a gooseberry green, twisted her fingers, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... wearily at full length upon the ground and for a moment it seemed to her she could never rise again. She was too weary to lift her hand or to move the foot that was twisted under her into a more comfortable position, too weary to even think. Then suddenly the sound of the animal moving steadily away from her roused her to the necessity of securing him. If he should get away in this wide desolation ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... table. One hand rose to his moustache. It was his right hand. The other was invisible. Quade pulled himself together and stepped to the end of the table, his two empty hands in front of him. Aldous, still smiling, faced Rann's glittering eyes and covered him with his automatic. Culver Rann twisted the end of his moustache, ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of palsy. He appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps or convulsive contractions of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus' dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair buttons of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings and silver buckles. Upon this tour when journeying he wore boots and a very wide brown cloth great-coat with pockets ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... until they reached some place where they could obtain aid. These morasses, as they proceeded, became deeper and deeper, the water sometimes reaching to their girdles; and when they slept, they had to creep up among the twisted roots of the mangrove trees, which grew in clusters in the waters. Of all the party, Ojeda alone kept up his spirit undaunted. He cheered his companions; he shared his food among them; whenever he stopped to repose in the mangrove trees, he took out his treasured picture ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... attendant coaxingly; "and this one shan't cost more than eighteenpence, trimming and all," and she produced a big shady-brimmed, flexible straw, for which was shown as trimming a pretty soft flowered ribbon, to be loosely twisted around the crown. Then came a length of blue serge for a warm dress, and two pieces of print, one with blue flowers all over it, and the other with pink ones. Jessie thought them both perfectly lovely, and while they were being chosen she slid ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... always mean the best steel. Your friend the woodchopper will tell you what kind to buy in your neighbourhood. The handle should be straight-grained hickory and before buying it you will run your eye along it to see that the helve is not warped or twisted and that there are no knots or bad places in it. The hang of an axe is the way the handle or helve is fitted to the head. An expert woodchopper is rarely satisfied with the heft of an axe as it comes from the store. He prefers to ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... Jack twisted uneasily. If there was any comfort to be derived from Miss Lorne's last speech, it was certainly of a most ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... wears her lure. Blush of our being between birth and death: Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: Her wily semblance nought of her denies; Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies, The generous Goddess yields. And she can arm Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm; Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. But scorn she has for them that walk alone; Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. The men as chief of criminals she disdains, And ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... black as tar, and to-day was clothed in a yellow homespun frock. Her hair was twisted and bound into two upright tags that projected above her temples. Altogether, she was not unlike a gigantic black-and-tan moth, a resemblance heightened by the aforementioned antennae, albeit lessened by the baby she always ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... in an iron box; in the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box, and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes and scorpions and all the other crawling things around the box in which the book is; and there is a deathless snake by the box.' And when the priest told Na.nefer.ka.ptah, he did not know where on earth he was, ...
— Egyptian Literature
... David laid a red and white carnation on a bit of smilax, tied them together, twisted a morsel of silver foil about the stems, and laid it before Christie as ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... about, Cleena had tripped and thrown the lad to the ground. She was more powerful than even his boasted muscle, and he quite unprepared for what she meant to do. The life-line made from her cherished bedclothing was twisted about his wet shoulders like a flash. Yet there seemed nothing violent nor vindictive as she rolled him over and over, wisely winding and binding first his hands and feet. After that the punishment she administered was but a question of endurance on her part, and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... hero, Maui. He lassooed the sun with ropes and beat him till he had to go slower, and so the day grew longer. The first ropes thus used were of flax, which burned and snapped in the sun's heat. Then Maui twisted a cord of the tresses of his sister, Ina, and this stayed unconsumed. It was Maui who went to fetch for man's use the fire which streamed from the finger-nails of the fire goddess, and who fished up the North Island of New Zealand, still ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... afternoon—a little old man, sadly twisted with rheumatism; his head was abnormally large, thatched with long, wiry black hair; his face was heavily lined and swarthily sunburned; his eyes were deep-set and black, with occasional peculiar golden flashes in them. A strange ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... afraid to act at once. A resolute grip in the right place with firm fingers will do well enough, until a twisted handkerchief, stout cord, shoestring, suspender, or an improvised tourniquet[53] is ready to take its place. If the flow of blood does not stop, change the pressure until the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... noble, strong, and bold than he. It makes one more good- humored to look at him, and the sunlight follows him straight into the cave. Something else follows him too, for he is leading a big brown bear by a cord twisted around its neck. He sends the bear at the dwarf, who screams and runs away in terror. The young man seems to have caught the bear in the woods just to frighten the dwarf, and he lets it go again when the dwarf ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... men seemed suddenly burthened by obtrusive self-consciousness. Buckton twisted his mustache nervously and flicked at the ashless tip of his cigar, glancing toward the house. "Oh, I quite forgot to deliver Miss Kitty's message to Irene—to Mrs. Mostyn, I should say. She was to drive out with us, but at the last minute Dr. Regan found that he could get off and asked ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... enigmatical, for ever beyond reach like the stars of heaven—and as indifferent. Above and below, the forests on his side of the river came down to the water in a serried multitude of tall, immense trees towering in a great spread of twisted boughs above the thick undergrowth; great, solid trees, looking sombre, severe, and malevolently stolid, like a giant crowd of pitiless enemies pressing round silently to witness his slow agony. He was alone, small, crushed. He thought of escape—of something ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... fled from the town and hid themselves in a marsh to evade pursuit. The result of this venturesome travestissement was the death of both his friends, and an attack of inflammatory rheumatism which twisted Scarron for life into the shape of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... his intellect a clear, plain, geometric mirror, brilliantly sensitive of all objects and impressions around it, and imagining all things in their correct proportions—not twisted up into convex or concave, and distorting everything, so that he cannot see the truth of the matter without endless groping and manipulation—healthy, clear, and free, and all round about him. We never can attain that at all. In fact, the ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... transept door his work is commemorated in a sculptured and coloured representation of his arms—the fleur-de-lis of France, quartered with the lions of England—surmounted by a cardinal's hat, with its tasselled strings, twisted into a true-lover's knot, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... that short, thin, twisted branches are developed from the buds in the axils of the lower leaves, and that these bury themselves in the ground. (8/12. 'Bulletin Soc. Bot. de France' tome 7 1860 page 468.) They there produce flowers not offering any peculiarity in structure, excepting that their corollas, ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... cut by saws like this, only bent in the form of a cylinder and turned round and round, going in a little deeper at each revolution. A queer sort of saw is coming into use. It is a cord made of three steel wires twisted loosely together. This cord is stretched tightly over pulleys and moves very rapidly. Every little ridge of the cord strikes the stone and cuts ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... a pretty fix, for he could not bite with the wad of cotton in his mouth, neither could he run and jump for in trying to get the bandage from between his teeth, he had gotten it twisted around his legs and fast between two of his toes, which made it only possible for him to ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... tent village, who had run out to see the race. One of the Kirghiz turned suddenly back in the opposite direction from which he had started. The wheel struck him at a rate of fifteen miles per hour, lifting him off his feet, and hurling over the handle-bars the rider, who fell upon his left arm, and twisted it out of place. With the assistance of the bystanders it was pulled back into the socket, and bandaged up till we reached the nearest Russian village. Here the only physician was an old blind woman of the faith-cure persuasion. Her massage treatment to replace the muscles was really ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... his burden and brought together a little heap of dried reeds and flag blades. This he fired after many failures by striking together his chisel and a stone. Rachel hid the blaze from the Nile while he made and lighted a torch of twisted reeds and stamped out the fire. In the feeble moonlight he discerned a stairway of rough-hewn steps leading into a cavity in the wall. The southern side of the ascent was sheltered by an outstanding buttress ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and gave order (for which I had a warrant) for a great quantity of the strongest cable and bars of iron. The cable was about as thick as packthread, and the bars of the length and size of a knitting needle. I trebled the cable to make it stronger, and, for the same reason, I twisted three of the iron bars together, binding the extremities into a hook. Having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many cables, I went back to the northeast coast, and putting off my coat, shoes, and stockings, walked into the sea, in my leathern ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Before the one in which Ross was flying could again soar over its target the second sea-plane had dropped three of her missiles. All fell close to the bridge. The work of demolition was accomplished, for when the smoke and dust cleared away the substantial fabric had been precipitated, a mass of twisted steel, into ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... the warmth of the dress, and did not produce any outer wrap or shawl, and I, only anxious to go, said nothing, but twisted up my loose hair, and went back into the large stony room before spoken of, from which a great noise had ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... scattered near the base of the rock, with sea-weed growing amongst them. Above our heads the rock was perpendicular for a considerable height, nay, as it seemed, to the very top, and on the brink of the precipice a few sheep, two of them rams with twisted horns, stood, as if on the look-out over the wide country. At the same time we saw a sentinel in his red coat, walking backwards and forwards between us and the sky, with his firelock over his shoulder. The sheep, I suppose owing to our being accustomed ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... things," was the reply, "although the brave child makes light of them all. One leg is badly withered and the foot of the other is twisted out of shape. She can stand on that foot to dress herself— which she insists on doing unaided—but she cannot walk a step. Irene has suffered a great deal, I think, and she's a frail little body; but she has the sweetest temperament ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... was dead, but the lion still alive; though the horns of the gemsbok had passed through his body. At the sight of the hunters, the lion, pierced through as he was, raised his head with a loud roar, and struck out with his paw, as he twisted towards them, his eyes glaring like hot coals, and showing his tremendous fangs. Alexander was the first who fired, and the ball penetrating the brain of the noble animal, it fell down dead upon ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to his place beside the mantel, and put his shoulders against it, and faced Van Bibber, with his fingers twisted in ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... where stood Hringhorn, Baldur's vessel, the biggest in the world. When the gods tried to launch it into the water, in order to make on it a funeral fire for Baldur, the ship would not stir. Then they despatched one to Jotunheim for the sorceress called Hyrrokin, who came riding on a wolf with twisted serpents by way of reins. Odin called for four Berserkir to hold the horse, but they could not secure it till they had thrown it to the ground. Then Hyrrokin went to the stem of the ship, and set it afloat with a single touch, the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... wrench, Lightbody twisted himself free, while one hand flung appealingly back, begged for time to master the emotion which burst ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... that we might think of this sweet story of Alice, and how she too "tried the ropes," and found them "all right." But there was one great difference, was there not? The spider's ropes are spun out of his own body; they are twisted so strongly and firmly by his own feet; but Alice knew that if she was to be safe in life and in death, nothing of her own was strong enough to hold by; she could be saved only because the Lord Jesus Christ had finished the work which God gave to Him to do. It was because Alice ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... afterwards, two parties of armed men appeared in good order, clothed and armed like those they had seen at Cotoche. In the next place, ten men in very long white mantles came from one of the temples, having their long black hair twisted up in rolls behind. In their hands these men held little earthen fire-pans, into which they cast gum anime, which they call copal, with which they perfumed the Spaniards, ordering them to depart from the country on pain of death. They then began to beat upon small kettle drums, and to sound their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr |
