"Clenched" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an' if ye hear puir "Brownie" skreighin' come your ways straucht here for me—an' we'll see if we canna tackle the evil—an' with the help o' Heaven, scotch it.' His eye lit, his mouth tightened; he clenched his fist, ready for immediate ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... crests of the foemen come onward, their rush is the rush of a wave Rolled on by the war-god's breath! almighty one, hear us and save From the grasp of the Argives' might! to the ramparts of Cadmus they crowd, And, clenched in the teeth of the steeds, the bits clink horror aloud! And seven high chieftains of war, with spear and with panoply bold, Are set, by the law of the lot, to storm the seven gates of our hold! Be near and befriend us, O Pallas, the Zeus-born maiden of might! O lord ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... we had winter-wind enough, and cold enough, there was not much love in the business. My arm was firmly clenched in Christian Buol's, and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling out songs in Italian dialect, with still recurring canaille choruses, of which the facile rhymes seemed mostly made on a prolonged amu-u-u-r. It is noticeable that Italian ditties are ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... story to his mother, assuring her that he was Eily's murderer. After the first extreme agitation, the lady declared that he overrated the measure of his guilt. She reproached him for his lack of confidence, after all the love she had showered upon him. He clenched his hand, and she affected to fear that he intended to strike her. At her outcry of fear he sank to her feet, lowering his forehead to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... become embarrassing, he spoke briefly of his encounter with the mob and of Lucius' timely aid and clever ruse. Marcia listened closely, nodding her head from time to time, but her colour had deepened and her hand was clenched tight when the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... and the flutter of robes emphasized the discussions going on on every side. Here a rumour-monger was telling his tale to a gaping cluster of pallid faces; there a plebeian pot-house orator was arraigning the upper classes to a circle of lowering brows and clenched fists, while the sneering face of some passing patrician told of a disdain beyond words, as he gathered his toga closer to avoid the contamination of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... expose the article. He used to carry it in his coat-pocket, which was made of leather; and every few minutes, instead of taking it in the usual manner, with thumb and finger, would take out a handful and snuff it from between his thumb and clenched hand. We might infer from this circumstance that his voice could not have been very ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... tremor subsided. He clenched his teeth and drew down his eyebrows. He had not exhausted his means of defense; a new design had shaped itself in his mind—another plan of battle. Raising the front end of the strip of board, he carefully pushed it forward through the wreckage at the side ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the doorway stands The doctor, while the draft puffs in a breath— The dead coals leap to life, and clap their hands, The flames flash up. A face as pale as death Turns slowly—teeth tight clenched, and with a look The doctor, through his specs, reads like ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... the old negress just as another knife of pain set her writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth clenched tight, and her thick lips curled ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Boldwood shook his clenched fist at him. "You juggler of Satan! You black hound! But I'll punish you yet; mark me, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the roots of his close-cropped hair. Then he went very white and took a half-step toward the Arab. His fists were clenched. Suddenly he thought better of ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dressing room in his night shirt, that showed his athletic muscles; he offered her water, going so far as to pick up the bottles of perfumes in his confusion as if they could serve him as sedatives, and finally he knelt down, trying to kiss the clenched little hands that thrust him away, catching at his ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Amos Carhill's fists clenched. He leaned across the table. "You still don't believe we're near Sol, do you? You're getting senile, Hugh! You know the mathematics of our ...
— An Empty Bottle • Mari Wolf
... eyes of his seemed able to see as well in the dark as in the light. He threw up his left hand and caught the other's wrist before that deadly blow he aimed could descend and at the same instant he dashed his own clenched fist full into the ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... with his arrows Partha, his chariot, charioteer, and horses. Arjuna, thus assailed in battle by the Panchala warrior, forgave not his foe. Eager to slay him at once, he pierced with a number of arrows his antagonist's horses, flags, bow, clenched (left) fist, charioteer, and the attendant at his back. Then Satyajit, finding his bows repeatedly cut in twain and his horses slain, desisted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... back; he flung up his arms in a gesture of finality, shaking clenched fists into the sky. He was at the point of surrender. The torture had reached his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... though there were to him moments of acute despair when he realised that the cup of happiness might be dashed from his lips at any moment, right up to the last. At such times he was full of passion—desperate and remorseless—and he ground his teeth and clenched his hands in a wild way as though some taint of the old Berserker fury of his ancestors still lingered in his blood. On the Thursday of that week he looked in on Sarah and found her, amid a flood ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... looked upon it from the same ground and could not discern the waters in the channel, so much had they fallen below their ordinary level. On the summit of the great eminence which we ascended, there remained the half-burnt planks of a boat, some clenched and rusty nails, and an old trunk; but my search for the bottle Mr. Oxley had left ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the misty cloud before the rays of the morning sun. He buckled on the armor of his strength, departed for TAFFY'S house, determined to wreak his vengeance thereon, and scatter TAFFY, limb for limb, throughout his own corn-field. "Woe, woe to TAFFY," he muttered between his clenched teeth. "I will make mincemeat of him; I will enclose him in sausage skins, and will send him to that good man, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... She clenched her hands, set her teeth, and looked about her as if ready for any desperate act that should set her free from the dark and dreadful ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... see it. And yet—and yet—I wouldn't spoil Ted's chances for worlds." She rose and walked a few paces to and fro. "Let me think, let me think!" She stood still, an image of abstract Justice, with one hand folded over her eyes, and the other clenched as if it held the invisible scales of destiny, weighing her present, overcharged with agreeable sensations, against her lover's future. Apparently, after some shifting of the weights, she had made the two balance, for she clapped her hands suddenly, and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... crouching in a corner, her elbows on the old chopping-block, her face hidden on her tightly-clenched hands, while she struggled angrily with the shaking sobs. For a moment she struggled, then mastered herself somehow and looked up, perhaps because she meant to rise and set about her work. She had been crying hard and tears do not improve the average face, certainly ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... over his features; a deathlike paleness overspread his countenance, his eyelids became half-closed, his breathing grew short, his hands clenched, and a nervous tremor shook his entire frame. For a few moments I feared he was at the point of death. I promptly assisted ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I straightened out my fingers, conscious for the first time of my clenched fists, and even opened and closed them once or twice to ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bridge, passed up the hill, and traversed the road along the margin of the Yaupaae, and were now just entering the lane that runs down to the house. The storm was raging with unabated fury, and the constable, with clenched teeth, and bent head, and half-shut eyes, was breasting the driving flakes, and congratulating himself with the idea that his exposure would soon be over, and he by the side of a warm stove in one of the stores, the hero of the ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... as it is cut. When the bridegroom arrives at the marriage-shed he is met by the bride's mother and conducted by her to an inner room of the house, where he finds the bride standing. He seizes her fist, which she holds clenched, and opens her fingers by force. The couple then walk five times round the chauk or sacred space made with lines of flour on the floor, the bridegroom holding the bride by her little finger. They are preceded by some ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Her hands clenched. "Yes," she said, very faintly. And then: "Of course! Always. It is what I have wanted, what I have ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... "It is quite out of the question for you to undertake nursing her. I could not allow it in any case, but it would be unfair to Mrs. Jarvis. She must expect your return any day?" She looked up inquiringly, and Elizabeth's clasped hands clenched each other again. She made a desperate attempt to be brave, and turned squarely towards her aunt. The very necessity of the case drove her ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... to shore, and so had sat forgotten and unnoticed save by the girl, his figure erect with something of the Indian's stoical indifference. Then when, for a moment, he imagined himself free from observation, his expression abruptly changed. His hands clenched tense between his buckskin knees, his eyes glanced here and there restlessly, and an indefinable shadow of something which Virginia felt herself obtuse in labelling desperation, and yet to which she discovered it impossible to fit a name, descended on his features, darkening them. Twice he glanced ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... already another innocent sacrifice, wretched man!" continued the female, tearing away her arm, which the beggar still held clenched in his left hand. "Thou art not sated with the innocent blood thy false witness has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... answer. "Did you see anything unnatural?" He shook his head, "no." He made signs to the grandmother that his lungs were pressing so hard against his sides that he could not talk. He kept beating his side with his clenched hands. The grandmother got out her medicine bag, made a prayer to the Great Spirit to drive out the evil spirit that had entered her grandson's body, and after she had applied the medicine, the prayer must have been heard and answered, as the boy commenced telling her ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... her head upon her clenched hands. How empty, empty her hopes had been! Even his boyhood had disappointed her, in spite of his cleverness at his books. The irritability of his childhood had become moroseness, and he had alienated more often than he had attached his friends. A certain passionate sincerity, however, had never ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... ecclesiastical—ensigned by their crowns, coronets, necklaces, miters and helmets—huddled together in hideous confusion; some are dead, others dying,—angels and devils draw the souls out of their mouths; that of a nun (in whose hand a purse, firmly clenched, betokens her besetting sin) shrinks back aghast at the unlooked-for sight of the demon who receives it—an idea either inherited or adopted from Andrea Tafi. The whole upper half of the fresco, on this side, is filled ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... down before his writing-table and let his clenched fist fall in helpless anger upon the desk. He had not even the satisfaction of being able to direct his wrath against anybody or anything. The fault lay in something uncalled-for and apparently unavoidable, an evil, and at the same time necessary, outcome ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... fast-clenched hand was found an envelope addressed to Mr. John Harkaway, and on a closer examination a pin's point was seen sticking ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... a yard, that of the single key amounted to three inches * * * even from five to six inches * * * The valves of the keys and the whole mechanism being clumsy, playing with the finger was not to be thought of, but the keys were obliged to be struck with the clenched fist, and the organist was often called 'pulsator organum' ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... had," muttered Ralph, his hands clenched and his teeth set, "his son must have struck him dead where he stood. To accept that from a woman, and then ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... the days when he copied Andrea Mantegna's struggling sea-monsters, or when he drew the stern matured warrior angels of his Apocalypse fighting, with their historied faces like men hardened by deceptions practised upon them, like men who have forbidden salt tears and clenched their teeth and closed their hearts, who see, who hate; even from these early days, the energy of his line was capable of all this, and his spontaneous sense of arabesque could become menacing and explosive. There are two or three drawings of angry, crying cupids (Lipp., 153 and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... screen door, her hands clenched, her face scarlet, her whole demeanor indicating the intensity of her struggle for self-control. Priscilla looked at her aghast, all sorts of alarming speculations racing through her mind. "Oh, what is ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... her possession. She had felt that she could not part with it, that it was something that had been a part of her own dear mother, a keepsake that must be treasured to the very last. And now the moment had come. She placed the little purse in her muff, clenched her hand tightly upon it, and went out again ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... him—he urged in his horse—the animal was strong and fearless. Bravely it swam on, encouraged by its master's voice. Shot after shot was fired at him—still he held on. He was mounting the one bank when his pursuers reached the other, uttering cries of disappointed hate. He shook his clenched fist at them, and galloped on. He did not stop nor think himself safe till he had reached the nearest town. He there gave notice of what had occurred, and the governor sent off for troops to punish the rebels. The mujicks, meantime, with shouts of vengeance, went back to his house. His wife and ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... not tell you that somebody would be drowned by those waves? Watch that boat! watch it! it is doomed; and the scoundrel, the villain, who is in it will never reach the shore alive!" and he hissed the last word through his clenched teeth. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... and trembling, seemed stricken with a great fear. It was Bondon. Together they entered the little hall. As soon as Bocardon saw his enemy his eyes blazed with fury, and, uttering an inarticulate roar, he rushed out of the bureau with clenched fists murderously uplifted. The terrified Bondon shrank into a corner, protected by Aristide, who, smiling like an angel of peace, intercepted the onslaught of the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... shots were drowned in the long, spattering roll of an irregular volley from the plain, and the air was full of the phit-phit-phit of the bullets. The tourists all huddled behind the rocks, with the exception of the Frenchman, who still stamped angrily about, striking his sun-hat with his clenched hand. Belmont and Cochrane crawled down to where the Soudanese soldiers were firing slowly and steadily, resting their rifles upon the ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with you!" declared Bob through clenched teeth. "I'm going! You've had all out of me you're going to get. Let ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... clenched hands and passionate pain, Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side; Again the loon laughed mocking, and again The echoes bayed far down the night and died, While waking I recalled ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... comin' into this wurrld killed its mother. That was an unnat'ral thing, Josey,' sez he—'There was no God in it, only a devil!' and 'is lips trembled more'n ever—'no woman ought to die in givin' birth to a child—it's jes' wicked an' cruel! I would say that to God Himself, if I knew Him!' An' he clenched 'is fist 'ard, an' then 'e went on— 'But though I wanted to kill the little creature, I couldn't do it, Josey, I couldn't! It's eyes were like those of my Dearest. So I let it live; an' I'll do my best by it, Josey,'—yes, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... about the palace, in search of her sister, her hands clenched, her eyes blazing, her teeth set. But she could not find her. At last a page, terrified to death at her aspect, confessed that her sister had fled from the palace alone, mounted on the fleetest steed ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... to lay hands on me, and I aye keepit on saying ower and ower to mysel' as if it were a lesson, 'The big yin's nose, and your e'e, and the ither chap's jaw!' They could see my knuckles clenched middlin' firm—and so they stoppit to think about it. There was nae crowdin' to be ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... was covered with blood. Then she remembered putting her hand against his cheek. As if fascinated she stared for a second or two before her wits returned. Mrs. Strong must not see that bloody hand. She would know! Guiltily she clenched her fingers again and thrust her hand behind her back. She shuddered at the feel of the moist, sticky substance, and turned suddenly sick. Her one thought was to get to her room where she could wash away the tell-tale evidence. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... instinct—the new revolutionary psychology which he had so painfully acquired, and which made continual war upon his old-time docilities. It seemed that this was the moment, if ever in his life, to show the stuff he was made of. He clenched his hands, and everything in him turned to iron. "WHO ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... convulsed her face, effectually terrified me, and disengaging myself from her grasp, I screamed as loud as I could for help; the blind woman continued to pour out a torrent of abuse upon me, foaming at the mouth with rage, and impotently shaking her clenched fists towards me. I heard Lord Glenfallen's step upon the stairs, and I instantly ran out; as I past him I perceived that he was deadly pale, and just caught the words, "I hope that demon has not hurt you?" I made some answer, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... less the picture of O'BRIEN'S fist Clenched playfully beneath a colleague's nose-piece Lets me foresee—a sanguine optimist— That Union which shall bring to ancient foes peace, When all who lap the Boyne Beg on their knees to be allowed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... could effect his own escape that way, so thickly were the sleeping savages dispersed about the entrance to the tunnel. In this predicament, and with the intensity of his thinking, great beads of perspiration started to his forehead, and he clenched his hands ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to his loyalty. Accordingly, while the legal forms of the transfer were being gone through, the young chief made a remark extremely offensive to Paulet, which was resented by a blow in the face with his clenched fist. Instead of returning the blow, young O'Dogherty hurried away to consult the M'Davitts, whose advice was that the insult he received must be avenged by blood. The affair having been immediately reported to the lord deputy, who apprehended ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Cassy clenched her small fist. "No matter. He did not intend to and don't you see if I were to accept a ha'penny of his wretched money, I would be benefiting by a crime for which may God forgive my poor, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... hardly touched the slope that seemed to run down with her. At the bottom she stumbled, shot forward, throwing her arms out, and fell heavily. She jumped up at once and turned swiftly to look back, her clenched hands full of sand she had clutched in her fall. The face was there, keeping its distance, visible in its own sheen that made a pale stain in the night. She shouted, "Go away!"—she shouted at it with pain, with fear, with all ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... a dead silence. I stood naked and bareheaded before them. They stood opposite to me, with their sticks clenched in their hands, ready to strike. I looked at them, and they at me. They hesitated; no one would strike me first. I saw that they wavered, and instinctively, in a moment I felt that I had won. This sudden revulsion of feeling—though I was still externally motionless—sent the blood throbbing ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... finally reached the upper part of the city. There he struck into a dark cross-street. Once free from the crowd, and where few could observe him, his smothered feelings broke out; and muttering to himself, grating his teeth, blaspheming, now striking his clenched fists as if aiming a blow, he darted on. He did not pause until he came to the house of no less a person than Harry Harson. He crossed the door-yard hastily, as if he feared his resolution might give way; opened the front door, for Harry had no enemies, and his door was unbolted, and entered ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... the blot Of these foul sins were stain'd." He answering thus: "Vain thought conceiv'st thou. That ignoble life, Which made them vile before, now makes them dark, And to all knowledge indiscernible. Forever they shall meet in this rude shock: These from the tomb with clenched grasp shall rise, Those with close-shaven locks. That ill they gave, And ill they kept, hath of the beauteous world Depriv'd, and set them at this strife, which needs No labour'd phrase of mine to set if off. Now may'st thou see, my son! how brief, how vain, The ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his back and began to worry a root that stuck up, grumbling to himself as he chewed it, or slapped it with his paw for not staying where he wanted it. Presently Mooney, the mischief, began tugging at Frizzle's ears, and got his own well boxed. They clenched for a tussle; then, locked in a tight, little grizzly yellow ball, they sprawled over and over on the grass, and, before they knew it, down a bank, and away out of sight ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... A little later, when delight and a more tempered feeling permitted examination, a lock of human hair was discovered entangled in the teeth of the dog, and the following week the bodies of Baptiste and the peasant of Berne were found still clenched in the desperate death-gripe, washed upon the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... lamp. But as the daylight came through the window only half was lit up by the lamp. And though he looked terrible and magnificent and would chuck the Forest, he said, and come to the Slade, and be a Turkish knight or a Roman emperor (and he let her blacken his lips and clenched his teeth and scowled in the glass), still—there lay ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... off with smiles, good humour, and shakes of the hands, till I came to a man who had the colour and expression upon his face of his satanic majesty from the regions below. It took me all my time to smile and say kind things while he was pacing up and down opposite his tent, with his hands clenched, his eye like fire, step quick, reminding me of Indian revenge. He was speaking out in no unmistakable language, "I should like to see you hung like a toad by the neck till you are dead, that I should, and I mean it from my heart." When I asked him to point out anything I ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Ruth discovered him. She was about to rush to his side, when she saw his clenched hands rise and fall upon the sand repeatedly. Her heart swelled to suffocation. To go to him, to console him! But she stirred not from her hiding place. Instinctively she knew—some human recollection she had inherited—that she must not disturb him in this man-agony. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Hard clenched his teeth and bent his eye on his rifle. In another moment the invaders would be upon them—when, sharp and decisive came the sound of shots; shots from among the foothills, followed by yells. There was a cry from the Indian who led the rush; a ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... I cried. "We must believe the other until we prove it false. We can't afford to give up heart now, when we need heart most. The branch was carried down by a river, and we are going to find that river." I smote my open palm with a clenched fist, to emphasize a determination unsupported by hope. "There!" I cried suddenly. "See that, Bradley?" And I pointed at a spot closer to shore. "See that, man!" Some flowers and grasses and another leafy branch floated toward us. We both scanned the water and the coastline. ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... loud cry. I felt her arms interlace my neck, her clenched fingers sink deep into my flesh, and all was over. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... professor, "but then I didn't have my hand clenched. Now my fist is closed and I have the specimen in it. Oh, boys, it's a beauty. One of the finest I have ever seen. It ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... Beard spoke these last words, his face was tense, his fists clenched and a somber fire burned in his pale eyes. Then, slowly, the fire died out and he turned his eyes, once more cool and rational, ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... paused the priest anew, And hard his laboring breath he drew, While, with set teeth and clenched hand, And eyes that glowed like fiery brand, He meditated curse more dread, 260 And deadlier, on the clansman's head, Who, summoned to his chieftain's aid, The signal saw and disobeyed. The crosslet's points of sparkling wood He quenched among the bubbling ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... his clenched fist on the railing of the vessel. While he stood there, his mind ran back into the past. He lived over again those passionate days when he had won and betrayed a young, beautiful, impressionable girl. His heart beat with a swifter ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... drenched to the skin. Your Uncle Matthew never said one word to me the whole road home. He just held his head high and stared straight in front of him, and when I looked at him, though the night was dark, I could see that his fists were clenched and his lips were moving, though he didn't speak. You never see no plays like that, these days, John. The last piece I saw in Belfast was a fearful foolish piece, with a lot of love and villainy in it. The girl was near drowned in real water, and then ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... book is all humour. That would be false art. Part of it is humour and part is Furchbarkeit. That passage is specially designed to frighten Admiral Jellicoe. And he won't read it! Potztausand, he won't read it!"—repeated the general, his eyes flashing and his clenched fist striking in the air—"What sort of combatants are these of the British Navy who refuse to read our war-books? The Kaiser's Heligoland speech! They never read a word of it. The Furchtbarkeit-Proklamation ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... two gentlemen to come out. One was thin and pale and seemed a suave, cool fellow, Job thought. He was elegantly dressed in gray. His companion, larger and more strongly built, seemed to have become very red in the face from suppressed emotion. His linen ruffles were awry and his fists clenched as he emerged. Without looking at Job, he jammed his cocked hat upon ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... her room, little fists clenched, her soul in passionate turmoil, Beatrice went over it all again as she had done through a sleepless night. She had given him so much, and he had seemed to give her even more. Hours filled with a keen-edged delight ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... got to the battle ground we could see where they had fought, clenched and rolled over and over. The blood of the dogs was sprinkled all around on the snow. We saw that it was the large bears which did the fighting. They would not leave the small ones but fought for them. We saw in one place, where the fight was the most severe, one bear had attempted ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... wiry little arm with a clenched fist at the end of it, as if he were a young Hercules ready to play ball with the stove if she gave him leave. Glad to see him in such good spirits, she pointed to the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... of beholding some 'old, old man, with beard as white as snow,' whom he might question concerning this deserted mansion, our hero turned to a little oaken wicket-door, well clenched with iron-nails, which opened in the court-yard wall at its angle with the house. It was only latched, notwithstanding its fortified appearance, and, when opened, admitted him into the garden, which presented a pleasant scene. [Footnote: Footnote: ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... took another turn and clenched his right fist tight shut, and threw the knife in the air from that, and it turned another somersault clean, and landed straight up in the ground. And he did the same with his left hand clenched. He was ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... seat, his eyes gleaming in a fixed and intense glare at the attorney; his hands were clenched, his lips parched, and his mummy-like cheeks sucked, as before, into his toothless jaws. In addition to all this, there was a bitter white smile of despair upon his features, and his thin gray locks, that were discomposed in the paroxysm by his own hands, stood out in disorder upon his ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he was fighting it, didn't you? They wanted to prevent children under fourteen from working in the cotton mills. Wygant sent Jack Pemberton up to the Capital for nothing at all but to beat that law." Samuel sat with his hands clenched tightly. Before him there had come the vision of little Sophie Stedman with her wan and haggard face! "But why does he want the children in ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... sorrow and the joy of deliverance at the same time. He saw life's responsibilities clearer, duties swam grandly before him. It was a large dream, in which, for the time, he was not conscious of those troubles which, yesterday, had clenched his hands and knotted his forehead. He had come a step higher in the way of life, and into his spirit had flowed a new and sobered power. His heart was sore, but his mind was lifted up. The fatal wrangle of the pumas ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his jaw clenched, the huge scarred head bare and covered with night dew, but ready to talk. Across his legs, Mowbray ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... quarter of a mile dead ahead—but no more like the everyday Moskoe-stroem, than the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognized the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves together as if ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... and his clenched fist was raised to strike, but Patsy and his crutches lay in a little huddled heap ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... she saw her father's body lying like a shadow stretched right across the floor, with the grey dirty fingers of one hand clenched. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... and clenched her pocket-handkerchief ball fashion in one hand. She looked at him with a sudden change to severity. "What have you done to our ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" she says in perpetual iteration, through her clenched teeth. But to look at her face and eyes you might think it was rather the devil ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... great importance of knowing how to distinguish real from imaginary death need not be explained. The appearances which mostly accompany death, are an entire stoppage of breathing, of the heart's action; the eyelids are partly closed, the eyes glassy, and the pupils usually dilated; the jaws are clenched, the fingers partially contracted, and the lips and nostrils more or less covered with frothy mucus, with increasing pallor and coldness of surface, and the muscles soon become rigid and the limbs fixed in their position. But as these same conditions may also exist in certain ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... beg my pardon," insisted the other. "If he don't, I'll take it out of him," and his clenched fist indicated his meaning only ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... well forward and aft, of sound Oak, clear of Sap, sided 7 inches and moulded 9 inches Midships. The ends moulded 7 inches and sided 6 inches. To be bolted through the floors and Keel with 3/4 inch Copper Bolts well clenched on a ring, under ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... rested on the table, clenched and whitened beneath its begrimed skin. His eyes fathomed distances immeasurably removed beyond the confines of that grim cellar. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... proved eventful to her, she had gone to the stables, as was her daily custom, and going into the stall where the big black horse was wont to stand, she found it empty. Her spirit rose hot within her in the moment. She clenched her fists, and began to stamp and swear in such a manner as it would be scarce ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... bridled, clenched her hands, and stiffened visibly. Had the man been her social equal or any other than her master, her pent-up wrath and indignation would have broken forth in a torrent ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the dwelling were not all dead of the fever long ago. She almost gave over her task when a huge toad crawled upon her foot from its resting-place among the shavings. She shrunk from it, and was glad to see it make for the door of its own accord. Platt again growled, and clenched his fist at her. He probably thought that she had again broken a charm for which he had paid money. She spoke kindly and cheerfully, again and again; but he was either deaf or too ill to understand. To relieve the sense of dreariness, she went ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... umbrella is reassumed. If anything were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambition, possibly in achievement, who sit in a row under a fence, with their teeth grimly clenched upon clay pipes, their eyes screwed up in perpetual and ungenial observation. Their conversation is telegraphic, smileless, esoteric, and punctuated with expectoration. If Phaeton and the horses of the sun were to take a turn round the fair field these critics ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Dona Victorina square in the breast. She rolled up her sleeves, clenched her fists, and, gnashing ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... listening intently to the men's talk, set her white teeth, and clenched her shapely little hands, and then ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... just mentioned. There was a bright light in the hall behind me and I could see her figure quite plainly. She was holding a folded paper clenched against her breast, and her movement was so mechanical that I was sure she was asleep. She was coming this way, and in another moment she entered this room. The door, which had been open, remained so, and in my anxiety I crept to it and looked in after her. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... to death. And when I turned, the Pelagie that met my gaze was the Pelagie I had first seen in Mr. Gratiot's house: eyes blazing with wrath, little teeth close set between scarlet lips, and little hands tightly clenched. My heart froze at the sight. Could the Consul's plea for me have been ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... such news—such bad news—Mister Charley—.' Up jumped Katie from her sofa and stood erect upon the floor. She stood there, with her mouth slightly open, with her eyes intently fixed on Mrs. Richards, with her little hands each firmly clenched, drawing her breath with hard, short, palpitating efforts. There she ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... fury of despair, raised her clenched hands towards Heaven and could not utter a word. Impotent rage forced the tears from her eyes; and only after ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... tale Reyburn sat with stern countenance, his fingers clenched around the arms of the chair in which he sat, but he held himself quiet and listened with compressed lips, watching every expression that flitted across the sweet ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... drave them in the beginning to the quest? What perilous enterprise clenched them ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... lichens and festooned with apples, on the king's-arm slung across the shelf with the old pirate's-cutlass, on the snow-pile of the bed, and on the great brass clock,—dancing, too, and lingering on the baby, with his fringed gentian eyes, his chubby fists clenched on the pillow, and his fine breezy hair fanning with the motion of his father's foot. All this struck her in one, and made a sob of her breath, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... powerful religious order—no matter. Don Carlos knew these things better than she did. He had the ear of the Captain-General through that. "Sh! But the intrigues, the intrigues!" I saw her little hand clenched on the closed fan. There were no bounds to his audacity. He wasted their wealth. "The audacity!" He had overawed her father's mind; he claimed descent from his Irish kings, he who——— "Senor, my English cousin, he even dares aspire to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... whose arms and legs were "all doubled up." This gave her a shock, but she hoped no ill effects would follow. The child was an encephalous monster, with the extremities rigidly flexed and the fingers clenched, the feet almost sole to sole. In the next pregnancy she frequently passed a man who was a partial cripple, but she was not unduly depressed; the child was a counterpart of the last, except that the head was normal. The next child was strong and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... paying no attention to the roaring and whistling of his wounded rival, kept his teeth fast-clenched in a bulldog-like grip and braced himself against the repeated lunges the other made to get free. There could be but one result to this and, with an agonized wrench, the younger bull pulled himself free—tearing out several ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... more leisurely to-day, and the time passed very slowly; there is a loneliness about suffering which makes the hours drag heavily. Once she buried her face for a moment in the sofa cushions, and her bands clenched the cover and crumpled the delicate satin between her fingers. Her head sank lower, like a wounded bird that ruffles up the dust; she moved convulsively amongst the cushions. It was a grim fight with pain that she was making; she did not give in easily, ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... jaspers what kind of trees make shingles!" he gritted between clenched teeth; and his eyes, hard now as gray iron, fairly emitted sparks as he launched four torpedoes upon the sole remaining globe of the squadron of the void. "I've had a lot of curiosity to know just what kind of unnatural monstrosities can possibly have such fiendish dispositions ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... face of the great cruel world. Before I had sometimes been able to dull my emotions in unpleasant circumstances and thus achieve a dogged calm; now I was horribly conscious of my physical sensations, and, above all, of that deadly sinking in my stomach called fear. I clenched my hands, telling myself that I was happy, and trying to force my mind to pleasant thoughts; but though my head swam with the effort, I continued to be conscious that I was afraid. In the midst of my mental struggles I discovered ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... to spoil her make-up. She hid her face in her hands. Once she looked at him through her white fingers to see how he was taking it. Jimmy Challoner was taking it very badly indeed. He stood biting his lip hard. His hands were clenched. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... thick and violent for further utterance; she panted and wrought strongly, until at length she lay with locked teeth and clenched hands struggling in a fit which eventually, by leaving her, terminated in a ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... who prepared the way and then, finally, George stepped forward, but prolonged waves of cheering again and again prevented his beginning. Thereupon he started pacing to and fro along the edge of the platform, his big head thrown back, his small hands clenched as if in anticipation of coming battle. He no longer appeared small. His was the master mind ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... screamed, standing up again with clenched hands. "I was wrong. Leave it, for God's sake! I could not ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... disposition of the orchestra, I promised to effect the alteration after the rehearsal. He said no more, and took up his baton. In a moment I understood why he attached such importance to its form and size. He held it, not as other conductors do, by the end, but gripped it about the middle with his clenched fist, waving it so as to make it evident that he wielded his baton like a field-marshal's staff, not for ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... my niece. I'm a going to seek my Em'ly. I'm a going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would have drownded him, as I'm a living soul, if I had had one thought of what was in him! As he sat afore me,' he said, wildly, holding out his clenched right hand, 'as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down dead, but I'd have drownded him, and thought it right!—I'm a going ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... cried, howled to intimidate them, and rushed to meet them. Two of them missed with their hatchets, and the rest fled incontinently. Then the two also were sprinting away up the cavern, with hands clenched and heads down. I never saw men ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... to rejoin our party. I noticed in the melee that his sword-sweep had been even more terrible and deadly than that of Andre, but he had done his fearful work in comparative silence, with knitted brows, compressed lips, and clenched teeth. He was a full-grown man, the other a mere boy. Besides, Dobri Petroff had been born and bred in a land of rampant tyranny, and had learned, naturally bold and independent though he was, at all times to hold himself, and all his ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne |
