"Writhing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... alone—we were both twenty years of age—we were rivals—each was armed. We drew our knives—threw ourselves one upon the other, and Caradec fell from his horse, pierced through the body. To tell you what I felt when I saw him, bleeding and writhing in agony, would be impossible; I spurred my horse, and darted through the ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... and howling in a kind of shrieking chorus throughout the hours of darkness; one night they came up so close that the frightened horses had to be hobbled and guarded. On another occasion a large wolf actually crept into camp, where he was seized by the dogs, and the yelling, writhing knot of combatants rolled over one of the sleepers; finally, the long-toothed prowler managed to shake himself loose, and vanished in the gloom. One evening they were almost as much startled by a visit of a different kind. They were just finishing supper when an Indian stalked ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... shrieking and screaming which had gone on before, became as essential silence compared to the delighted uproar which now rose from the sleigh. The jerk had thrown most of the young people over backward into each other's arms and laps, where, in a writhing, promiscuous mass, they roared and squealed out their joy in the joke, and made ineffectual and not very determined efforts to extricate themselves. Sylvia had seen the jerk coming and saved herself by a clutch forward at the dashboard. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... lynx, and when Kazan understood this, he tore at the end of his trap-chains and snarled at the writhing body of his forest enemy. By means of a pole and a babiche noose, Kazan was brought out from under the windfall and taken to Henri's cabin. The two men then returned with a thick sack and more babiche, and blind Gray ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... separate lines or sheets, in the tail of the comet, and hence we find that the clays of one region are of one color, while those of another are of a different hue. Again, we shall see that the legends represent the monster as "winding," undulating, writhing, twisting, fold over fold, precisely as the telescopes show us the comets ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... flash of dismay rocked him, but neither was his gasp nor his dismay. That pressure snapped off; he was free. But the other wasn't! Knife still in fist, Shann turned and ran upslope, his torch in his other hand. He could see a shape now writhing, fighting, outlined against a light bush. And, fearing that the stranger might win free and disappear, the Terran spotlighted the captive in the beam, reckless of Throg ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... not to see it as fantastic. For him the sharp edges of fact were never shaded off into the dim and nebulous. Cuthbert, when he saw things at all, saw them steadily and whole. He would let down the writhing, swearing Magnus over the cliff as tranquilly as he let down loaves of bread, aware merely of its needing more muscular effort. Only he would take immense care ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... struggle, hopelessly beaten. Scientists tell us that life is due to a continuous series of bodily ferments. The body is in a constant state of ferment, and that gives rise to life. Good! We know that the human mind is in a state of incessant ferment. The human mind is a self-centered mass of writhing, seething, fermenting material thought. And that fermentation is outwardly manifested in its concept of body, and its material environment. The scientists themselves are rapidly pushing matter back into the realm of the human mind. Bodily states are becoming recognized as manifestations ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... he saw something hostile in the manner of the other, he commenced grunting dismally again, and writhing as if ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... transfixed with hate Of such disease, cries, as in Herod's time, Pointing its finger at her festering state, "Room for the leper, and her leprous crime!" And France, writhing from years of torment, cries Out in her anguish, "Let this Jew endure, Damned and disgraced, vicarious sacrifice. The honour of ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... caught my ear, and I turned to look at him. An extraordinary change had come over his face. It was writhing with inward merriment. His two eyes were shining like stars. It seemed to me that he was making desperate efforts to restrain a convulsive ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a lamb into the arms of trouble. He strolled along the main street, peering every yard of his way through the writhing gloom. Nobody was about. He reached Bell Yard, and turned into it. Then he heard something. Something that brought him to a sharp halt. Before he saw or heard anything more definite, he felt that he was surrounded. ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... there may be constant jerking movements of the head, nodding movements, or even bowing salaam-like movements. In mild cases we may note hardly more than a restless movement of mouth or forehead, or constant plucking or writhing of the fingers whenever the child's attention is aroused, when he is spoken to, or when he himself speaks. In nervous children these movements, which should properly be confined to moments of real emotional stress, become habitual, and are displayed apart from the excitement ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... away my brushes; resolutely crucified my divine gift, and while it hung writhing on the cross, spent my best years and powers cooking cabbage. "A servant of servants shall she be," must have been spoken ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Snake. On entering the lodge, he perceived the Mohawk strangely disordered: he rose from his mat, on which he had been sleeping, with a countenance fearfully distorted, his eyes glaring hideously, his whole frame convulsed and writhing as in fearful bodily anguish; and casting himself upon the ground he rolled and grovelled on the earth, uttering ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... the table on end, or side, with the legs out in the room. Before the "grabber" could get the lay of things and get past it, the spooks would have gone through the trap, closed it, pulled up the ladder, and the "grabber" would have found the medium writhing and groaning and bleeding from the mouth. The bleeding was for effect, and was caused by sucking very hard on ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... blood streamed forth upon the imperial purple. There was a picture! The splendid hall, the fighting groups! A torn flag upon the ground, the tricolor was waving above the bayonets, and on the throne lay the poor lad with the pale glorified countenance, his eyes turned towards the sky, his limbs writhing in the death agony, his breast bare, and his poor tattered clothing half hidden by the rich velvet embroidered with silver lilies. At the boy's cradle a prophecy had been spoken: 'He will die on the throne of France!' The mother's heart dreamt of a ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... an army of twenty thousand advanced to meet the duke at the head of three times that number. In the battle that ensued the Burgundians were entirely defeated, and Charles narrowly escaped with his life. Writhing under his disgrace, and vowing revenge, the duke raised a much more numerous ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... commotion, such as he had never before seen in any home latitude—a mass of darkly variegated vapours manifesting a peculiar and appalling unrest. It seemed tormented by a gyrating storm, twisting and contorting it with unceasing change. Now the gray came writhing out, now the black came bulging through, now a dirty brown smeared the ashy white, and now the blue shone calmly out from eternal distances. At the season he could hardly think it a thunderstorm, and stood absorbed in the unusual phenomenon. But again, louder and more hurried, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... repentance. Have not prayers against sudden death a tendency to interfere with or obstruct that daily walk with God, which alone can fit us to meet the king of terrors? When heart and strength fail; when the body is writhing in agony, or lying an insensible lump of mortality; is that the time to make peace with God? Such persons must he infatuated with strange notions of the Divine Being. No, my reader, life is the time to serve the Lord, the time to insure the great reward. Sudden death is a release from much ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... it writhing and twisting upon the table, and noted its peculiar markings of black and yellow. Its eyes were bright and searching. I had read of the fascination which a snake's gaze exercises over its prey, ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... When I was very young she was still living on the place, and was to me a curiosity, the last of her race, I was told. I did not know what this meant, but it gave her words great weight. Once she pictured hell for me, the roaring furnace, the writhing of the damned, and no reason and no reading has ever served to clear my mind of her awful painting. With her as the advocate I could hear the groans of lost souls; and in my childish way I believed that the old woman was inspired to spread the terrors of perdition; nor has education and the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... had she come to Rome? What had changed the world so? Some wounded writhing thing seemed to be struggling in her own breast—while she was holding it down, trying to thrust it out of sight ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... walking right on to them, and looking to the sky, when, with throbbing temples and tense lips, Dawson rose, ran at him, and gripped him. He had the throat in the crutch of his right hand, and strangled the man's yell as it was conceived. They went down together, writhing and clutching, Dawson uppermost, the man under him scratching and slapping at him with open hands. He drew up a knee and found a lean chest under it, drove it in, and choked his man to silence ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... occasionally it would quite vanish for an instant. Accompanying this manifestation there was a clawing and reaching of shadowy arms: altogether, it was as if some titanic spectral grasshopper, with a heart of fire, were writhing and kicking in convulsions of phantom agony. Such an apparition, in an hour and a place so lonely, might stagger a less superstitious soul than that of Don Miguel ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... sharp, clean crack, and the funeral dog started on the right way at last toward his dead master. Another crack, and the yellow cur leaped from the ground and fell kicking. Another crack and another, and with each crack a dog tumbled, until little Satan sat on his haunches amid the writhing pack, alone. His time was now come. As the rifle was raised, he heard up at the big house the cries of children; the popping of fire-crackers; tooting of horns and whistles and loud shouts of "Christmas Gif', 'Christmas Gif'!" His little heart beat furiously. Perhaps he knew just what he was doing; ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... all be true," he admitted promptly. "It would be true if—but she is not writhing. She is no more unhappy than you or I. She is only anxious, and I could swear that she is only anxious about one thing. The moment in which I swore fealty to her was when she said to me, 'I want to be quite safe—until after. I do not care for myself. I will bear anything or do anything. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... resort to the use of some things which no time could, I should imagine, make palateable. Their dexterity at the chase is very great, although in hunting the kangaroo they become so nervous that they frequently miss their mark. I have seen them sink under water and bring up a fish writhing on the short spear they use on such occasions, which they have struck either in the forehead, or under the lateral fin, with unerring precision. Still some of our people come pretty close to them in many of their exercises of the chase, and the young settlers on the Murray very ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... hurled his host upon their ranks Shut in, and hampered. Not so much o'erwhelmed As Caesar's soldiers is the hind who dwells On Etna's slopes, when blows the southern wind, And all the mountain pours its cauldrons forth Upon the vale; and huge Enceladus (9) Writhing beneath his load spouts o'er ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... the ground; but the Dragon had got his teeth fixed in the iron horse, which was now useless. The youth now hastened to fasten down the chains to the ground by means of the enormous iron pegs which he had provided. The death struggle of the monster lasted three days and three nights; in his writhing he beat his tail so violently against the ground, that at ten miles' distance the earth trembled as if with an earthquake. When he at length lost power to move his tail, the youth with the help of the ring took up a stone which twenty ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... with clumsy fingers managed to relight it. Even after the flame had leaped out and he saw what shared the pit with him he could barely credit his senses. The nature of his deliverance was uncanny, supernatural—it left him dazed. He had beheld death stamped upon Cobo's writhing face even while the fellow braced himself to keep from falling, but what force had effected the phenomenon, what unseen hand had stricken him, Johnnie was at a loss to comprehend. It seemed a miracle, indeed, until he looked closer. Then he understood. Cobo lay in a formless, ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... raised himself upon his elbow, and said: "If you want to kill me, do so where I am; I won't get up. Give me a spear and club, and I'll fight you all one by one!" He had scarcely spoken, when he was speared from behind; spear after spear followed, and as he lay writhing on the ground, his savage murderers literally dashed him to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... happened just then to come up, room was immediately made for me and my hat, and I was asked to give my opinion as to what ought to be done with the culprit. I suggested kicking, and as I walked away, I saw him writhing under the boots of two sturdy executioners, amid the applause of the spectators. "The style is the man," said Buffon; had he lived here now he would rather have said "the hat is the man." An English doctor who ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... measure of flattery in Loge's pretended fright, he at the prompting of the same changes himself into a toad, which has but time for a hop or two, before Wotan places his calm foot upon it. Loge snatches the Tarnhelm off its head and Alberich is seen in his own person writhing under Wotan. Loge binds him fast, and the gods, with their struggling prey between them, hurry off through the pass by ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... faint gleam of moonlight enabled them to see the boat of mercy plunging towards them through a very chaos of surging seas and whirling foam. To the rescuers the wreck was rendered clearly visible by the lurid light of her burning tar-barrels as she lay on the sands, writhing and trembling like a living thing in agony. The waves burst over her continually, and, mingling in spray with the black smoke of her fires, swept furiously away ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... No separate existence. Architecture, Existing in itself, and not in seeming A something it is not, surpasses them As substance shadow. Long, long years ago, Standing one morning near the Baths of Titus, I saw the statue of Laocoon Rise from its grave of centuries, like a ghost Writhing in pain; and as it tore away The knotted serpents from its limbs, I heard, Or seemed to hear, the cry of agony From its white, parted lips. And still I marvel At the three Rhodian artists, by whose hands This miracle was wrought. Yet he beholds Far nobler works who looks upon ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... writhing about, in a great many strange attitudes, and often twisting his face and eyes into an expression like that which is usually produced by eating gooseberries very early in the season, was by this time awake also. Seeing that Mr Quilp invested himself ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... trance of burning hope which obliterated all else, this noise and all others near and distant, was suddenly lost in a loud clatter of writhing and twisting boughs which set the forest in a roar and seemed to heave the air ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... out and spread itself rapidly over her features: true horrible revelation. Her fingers tightened and loosened about the necklace until it was forced out through them, until it glided, crawled, as though it were alive and were being strangled and were writhing. She spoke ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... studio was a second Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black, against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,—deeper, because more natural, than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance: ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in, and mace-bearers came in, and ladies ran downstairs screaming "fire;" for the smoke was drifting through the house and oozing out of the windows, and bellying along the verandahs, and wreathing and writhing across the gardens. No one could enter the room where Mellish was lecturing on his Fumigatory, till that unspeakable powder ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... stood above the swaying figure; then, suddenly, he felt the great bare arms close about his waist with a painful grip. He struck at the bleeding face below him and wrenched at the circling bands which wheezed the breath from his lungs, but the whaler squeezed him writhing to his breast, and, rising, unsteadily wheeled across the floor and in a shiver of broken glass fell crashing against the ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... grieve, and the cause of religion to languish. This was the time, famous in church history, when a great reaction set in against Cotton Mather theology, who proclaimed that the pleasure of the elect would be greatly enhanced by looking down from the sublime heights of heaven upon the non-elect writhing in hell. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... faded splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and tail are not there, poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by the bye-tricks of a hump and cloven foot; to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... to relying upon their own honest industry, would sail lazily around on wide-spread pinions, watching with the air of unconcerned spectators the methodical toil of the plodding gannets. But the instant that one of the latter rose from a successful plunge, with a plump captive writhing in his grasp, all appearance of indifference would vanish, and some dark-plumaged pirate of the lagoon, pouncing down like lightning upon his unwarlike neighbour, would ruthlessly despoil him of his hard-earned prize. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... however, reflections on the cost of his joke for the moment set aside, seemed to have fallen into his happiest mood. Unable to disguise his merriment at such close range from his victim, he had slipped out into the yard, and Allen could see him writhing in the folds of darkness as he slapped his thighs and raised his heavy boots in a soundless dance ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared, a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the centre of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... started there was only a ragged remnant near me. We fired a dozen volleys lying there. The man at my elbow rolled upon me, writhing like a worm in ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... from their houses and torture them to discover the hiding-place of the food which they were supposed to have hidden, and when they failed, put them to the sword. She saw the Valley of the Kidron and the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives covered with captive Jews writhing on their crosses, there to die as the Messiah whom they had rejected, died. She saw the furious attacks, the yet more furious sallies and the dreadful daily slaughter, till at length her heart grew so sick within her, that ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... volume absently, intending to restore it to its place in the bookcase. On his way he opened the book, and a half sheet of note paper fell from it and fluttered to his feet. He picked it up, read what was written on it, and stood for a moment motionless, his eyes fixed on the carpet, his lips writhing. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... you will find not one harsh word, not one ignoble thought or unkind insinuation. In all of them, though so many are for the use of persons placed in the most trying circumstances, and some of them are for persons writhing under a sense of intolerable injury, sweetness and light do ever reign. Even 'yours truly, Jacob Langton,' in his 'letter to his Daughter's Mercenary Fiance',' mitigates the sternness of his tone by the remark that his 'task is inexpressibly painful.' And he, Mr. Langton, is the one writer ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... side, lolling out their tongues, and staring as wide and horribly with their eyes as they could open them. After this mummery had continued some minutes, the men separated for them to pass, and the boys were now led over the bodies lying on the ground. These immediately began to move, writhing as if in agony, and uttering a mournful dismal sound, like very distant thunder. Having passed over these bodies, the boys were placed before the second figures, who went through the same series of grimaces as those who were seated on the former stump; ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Tip McCay emitted a whoop that the others echoed. The charge had been stopped, and very effectively. The big beam lay on the ground, with the writhing bodies of four men around it. The "scatter gun" had accounted for three of them; Kid Wolf had put the other out of business with bullets through both legs. A little to one side were two more of the outlaws, one of whom had been brought down by Tip McCay, the other by ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... Then abruptly I felt something touch my face! Alan and I were lying in shadow. No one had noticed my writhing movements, and Alan was still in drugged unconsciousness. Something tiny and light and soundless as a butterfly wing brushed my face! I jerked my head aside. On the floor, within six inches of my eyes, I saw the tiny ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... oppressed, and reading in their sacred books, that they should be delivered from their oppressors by the appearance of their great deliverer when their sufferings were at the heighth; was it extraordinary that the Jews, writhing under the lash of tyrannical conquerors, and considering their then circumstances, to expect this deliverer at that time? And to conclude, does it, after all, appear that this rumour prevailed in the life time of Jesus, or not till about ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... death?" said Trevylyan, with a writhing smile. "These sunny scenes should not call ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... itself let loose could present no such spectacle as this myriad mass of brute life sweeping over the lonely plain under the elfin light of the new-risen moon. Clouds of steam, wreathing themselves into spectral shapes rose from the dusky, writhing mass, and the flaming of myriad eyeballs in the gloom presented a picture more terrible than ever came into the imagination of the writer of ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... violets grew Blue as the eyes they were likened to, The touches of his hands have strayed As reverently as his lips have prayed; While the little brown thrush that harshly chirped Was dear to him as the mocking bird; And he pitied as much as a man in pain A writhing honey-bee wet with rain. Think of him still as the same, I say He is not dead—he is ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... and snow; then wind and sleet, the latter dissolving into icy tears, encircling captive Nature in thousands of weird, glossy crystals; every tree of the forest, according to its instinct, its nature, writhing in the conqueror's cold embrace—rigid, creaking, ready to snap in twain rather than bend, as the red oak or sugar maple, or else meekly, submissively curving to the earth its tapering, frosted limbs, like the silver birch— elegant, though fragile, ornament of the Canadian park, or else, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... ignorance. He made me laugh heartily at the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly. He was called upon in his turn, at a large party, and having nothing to aid him in an exercise to which he was new save the example of his predecessors, lifted his glass after much writhing and groaning and gave, "The reflection of the moon in the cawm bosom ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... obscure in form, but already formidable in suggestion. Cut the second, 'The Fiend in Discourse,' represents him, not reasoning, railing rather, shaking his spear at the pilgrim, his shoulder advanced, his tail writhing in the air, his foot ready for a spring, while Christian stands back a little, timidly defensive. The third illustrates these magnificent words: 'Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the man, his gun leading. She heard a report and one dreadful cry of terror and pain. She saw Conroy crumple and fall writhing upon the ground. She saw the blood streaming from his stomach. Then the further horror came to her staring eyes as she saw James stand over his victim and fire shot after shot into the hideous, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... poor old clerk had to rummage among his barrels to get a suitable tune, and the operation, even if successful, took at least ten minutes, during which time a large amount of squeaking and the sounds of the writhing of woodwork and snapping of sundry catches were heard in the church. But the congregation was accustomed to the performance and thought little of it. (John Smallwood, 2 Mount Pleasant, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... flourished the rag in the air with a shout of defiance, and hit his opponent between the eyes with such force as to lay him a second time flat on the floor. A fierce struggle now ensued, during which the light was extinguished. The alarmed neighbours found them there, a few minutes later, writhing in each other's arms, and punching each other's heads ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... other side: and after some hesitation she pressed down her lip with one finger to show the place. "O, I hope 'twill soon be better! I don't mind a sting in ordinary places, but it is so bad upon your lip," she added with tears in her eyes, and writhing a little from ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... read of fields heaped high with slain, Of vineyards flooded red, but not with wine, Of writhing heaps of groaning anguished pain, Of wounded ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... twisted their prisoner around and the morgels crept closer, their eyes fixed upon that young, writhing body. Garin knew that he must take a hand in the game. The Ana was tugging him to the right, and there was an open archway leading to a balcony running around the side ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... his ears, the Baron found himself in inky darkness again. This time he did not hesitate to grope madly for the door, but hardly had he reached it, when, with a fresh sensation of horror, he stumbled upon a writhing form that seemed to be pawing the panels. He was, fortunately; as quickly reassured by hearing the voice of Mr. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... enemy was taken violently worse again, and, being unable to stand the sight and sound of his writhing and groaning, she fled forward; and, reflecting on this strange and awkward meeting, went down to her own berth, where, with lucid intervals, she remained helpless and half stupid for the next three days. On the fourth day, however, ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... boiled with dumb, helpless rage, having to fight this wicked unrest. He never doubted its wickedness, and considered himself forever shut out from those rewards that would fall to the righteous who loved church and could sit still there without jiggling or writhing ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... did not succeed: she had hardly set about it than she was afraid lest she might succeed only too well; and, even while she was beginning to choke and desperately clutching at the rope and trying to loosen it with stiff fumbling fingers, there was writhing in her a furious desire to live. And since she could not escape by death,—(Christophe smiled sadly, remembering his own experiences,)—she swore that she would win, and be free, rich, and trample under foot all those who oppressed her. She had made it a vow in her ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... began to scorch, That juice was wormwood to her tongue, She loathed the feast: Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung, Rent all her robe, and wrung Her hands in lamentable haste, And beat her breast. Her locks streamed like the torch 500 Borne by a racer at full speed, Or like the ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... have to be careful," said Frank, as he kicked aside the still writhing body of the disgusting looking reptile. "There is just a chance that Muley-Hassan, with the cunning of an Arab, may have put several more of those customers in here to guard ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and she dropped at his feet, grasping at the ground, and writhing in agony. Her soul seemed striving to recover the shock, and recollect its faculties. She half arose upon her elbow, supported her head upon her hand, and with her other hand drew the steel out from her bosom, and laid it down. The blood followed, and with the ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... no heart for talking. I have returned to the country from Sechelis, where I had to fly from Boer oppression. Our hearts are black and heavy with grief to-day at the news told us, we are in agony, our intestines are twisting and writhing inside of us, just as you see a snake do when it is struck on the head. . . . We do not know what has become of us, but we feel dead; it may be that the Lord may change the nature of the Boers, and that we will ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... that Paine was forging reasons—his active brain was at work, and his sensitive spirit was writhing under a sense of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... which combined into one riving roar. The subaltern jumped up and dropped straight into the fire. Grey soldiers' figures moved about in all directions like apparitions, throwing up their hands and falling and writhing on the black earth. The young officer ran past Andersen, fluttering his hands like some strange, frightened bird. Andersen, as if he were thinking of something else, raised his cane. With all his strength he hit the officer on the head, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... be thus flung aboard was our cocassier Leroy. He fell soft upon a heaving, writhing mass of humanity, which only gradually shook down and sorted itself out on the bottom of the lighter when the hatches overhead were being nailed down. Yet by an odd chance the young Capuchin and Leroy, who had been companions in the chain, were not separated even now. Amid the human ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... to say: "Why are you here then?" The most horrible punishments are inflicted on those who offend against the laws of the country. A woman and lad, who had been accused of bewitching the sultan's brother, were found with their arms tied behind them, writhing in torture on their faces. No sympathy was shown them from the jeering crowd. The lad at last cried out: "Take me to the forest; I know a herb remedy." He was allowed to go, while the woman was kept in the stocks ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mazarin, writhing beneath this simple eloquence, "your majesty does not understand me; you judge my intentions wrongly, and that is partly because, doubtless, I ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... themselves. They sometimes wished, it is true, that he had not been quite so quick-witted, and also that he would fling away his staff, which looked so mysteriously mischievous, with the snakes always writhing about it. But then, again, Quicksilver showed himself so very good-humored, that they would have been rejoiced to keep him in their cottage, staff, snakes, and all, every day, and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... she stood poised, one foot on the ground, the other on the stool, both hands gripping the high shelf, she felt the reptile whipping, writhing, jerking, lashing, flogging at her ankle and instep, coiling round her leg.... And in the fraction of a second the thought flashed through her mind: "If its head is under my foot, or too close to my ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... fate, are all things of the past; in the actual course of the tragedy he simply writhes under one revelation after another of bygone error and unwitting crime. It would be a mere play upon words to recognize as a dramatic "struggle" the writhing of a worm on a hook. And does not this description apply very closely to the part played by another great protagonist—Othello to wit? There is no struggle, no conflict, between him and Iago. It is Iago alone who exerts any will; neither Othello nor Desdemona makes the smallest fight. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the explorers' approach that they were glad to retire, and leave this curious contrast of hideousness and beauty to the fire-flies and the moons. Marching along in Indian file, the better to avoid treading on the writhing serpents that strewed the ground, they kept on for about two hours. They frequently passed huge heaps or mounds of bones, evidently the remains of bears or other large animals. The carnivorous plants growing at their centre ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Alec to himself; and watched and waited. There was no wind below. The leaves of the black poplar, so ready to tremble, hung motionless; and not a bat came startling on its unheard skinny wing. But ere long a writhing began in the clouds overhead, and they were twisted and torn about the moon. Then came a blinding flash, and a roar of thunder, followed by a bellowing, as if the air were a great dram, on which Titanic hands were ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... on which he stood, a man's figure was writhing and embracing the rungs kneeling on the ground. He was strangely dressed, in some sort of a loose gown, in a tight silk night-cap, and his feet were bare. The man's head was dropped, and the priest could not see his face. He looked ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the iris-maids lighted the six little fires of black-birch, spice-wood, and sassafras, and crouched to inhale the aromatic smoke until, stupefied and quivering in every limb with the inspiration of delirium, they stood erect, writhing, twisting, tossing their hair, chanting the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... flooded the room in harsh gray-green light, and stopped the high-pitched, humming whine of his dynamos. A shadow picture writhing on the wall, projected from a lead-glass barrel, disappeared suddenly, the great color filters and other machines lost their semblance of horrible life, and a regretful sigh seemed to come from the metal creatures as they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... ears a piercing scream which diminished gradually until it ended in a series of dismal moans. The voice seemed partly human, yet so hideous that it might well have emanated from the tortured throat of a lost soul, writhing ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unhappy young nun lay expiring in her room. She had taken poison, although the report was spread in the capital that failure of the heart had caused her death. How she came into possession of the poison no one ever discovered. While she was writhing in terrible agony her half-crazed mother put a cup of milk to her lips as an antidote. She dashed it passionately aside and the spilt milk left ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... shots were fired. When the great mouth of the monster opened something shot out from the boat and landed squarely between the extended jaws of the crocodile. There was a snap, a crunching sound, then the water was whipped into commotion by the writhing body ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... strong stomach a medical man should have! The delusion of the para is that these squirming, writhing objects are delightful! Paras develop an irresistible craving for them! It is as if men on an Earth-like world develop an uncontrollable hunger for vultures and rats and—even less tolerable things. These ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to her heart. And as if the clouds knew she had come, they burst into a fresh jubilation of thunderous light. For a few moments, Diamond seemed to be borne up through the depths of an ocean of dazzling flame; the next, the winds were writhing around him like a storm of serpents. For they were in the midst of the clouds and mists, and they of course took the shapes of the wind, eddying and wreathing and whirling and shooting and dashing about like ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... and at that time he could not reach her, and at last, growing anxious, he went away to find what had happened meanwhile to his body. For a long time he went to and fro seeking it in vain and fearing that it must have been killed, and then he found it at the bottom of the shaft in Baker Street, writhing furiously and cursing with pain. Its leg and an arm and two ribs had been broken by its fall. Moreover, the evil spirit was angry because his time had been so short and because of the painmaking violent movements ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... dark and murky with the humidity of the summer night; but unlike the morning hours it was alive with a writhing, chattering, fighting mass of humanity. Doorways were overflowing. The narrow alley itself seemed fairly thronging with noisy, unhappy men and women. Hoarse laughs mingled with rough cursing, shot through ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the population will no longer be unconstitutionally juggled, under cover of law, out of their right to take their secret ailments to a skilled physician of their own sex, and compelled to go, blushing, writhing, and, after all, concealing and fibbing, to a male physician; the picked few no longer robbed of their right to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... sufferer the frightful apparatus of his disgraceful dissolution. It is a dreary subject to discuss; but surely it is a matter of deep regret, that in England, criminals doomed to die, from the uncertain and lingering nature of their annihilation, are seen writhing in the convulsions of death during a period dreadful to think of. It is said, that at the late memorable execution of an african governor for murder, the miserable delinquent was beheld for fifteen ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... are numerous. Another of the most typical, is that of a girl writhing and dancing a pas seul with a glass of water on her head. This is known ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I—Constant!" said the faithful valet de chambre. "I heard in the antechamber your majesty's groans and cries; I rushed in and saw you writhing on the easy-chair. A bad dream seemed to torment your majesty, and I therefore ventured ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... green, A palsied hag he roasted, And what took place, I ween, Shook his composure boasted; For, as the torture grim Seized on each withered limb, The writhing dame 'Mid fire and flame Yelled forth this ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... half-naked Titans rushed the plastic bars, like hot sealing-wax, between the wheels. "Come on," said Horrocks in Raut's ear, and they went and peeped through the little glass hole behind the tuyeres, and saw the tumbled fire writhing in the pit of the blast-furnace. It left one eye blinded for a while. Then, with green and blue patches dancing across the dark, they went to the lift by which the trucks of ore and fuel and lime were raised to the top of the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... observed sundry hands descend quickly, and, as I thought, kindly, lest he should lose his hat, upon the crown of it, until it encased more of his head than could be deemed either fashionable or comfortable. Presently, however, he was again seen viciously elbowing and writhing his way back to me, which after immense exertions he performed, in the full receipt of numerous anathemas and jocular insults. As he neared me, I inquired what he had been doing; why he had left me for such a short, difficult, and unprofitable journey—which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the warmth of the caterpillar's blood. They produce a brood of larvae which devour the caterpillar alive. A pretty child dances on the village green. Her feet crush creeping things: there is a busy ant or blazoned beetle, with its back broken, writhing in the dust, unseen. A germ flies from a stagnant pool, and the laughing child, its mother's darling, dies dreadfully of diphtheria. A tidal wave rolls landward, and twenty thousand human beings are drowned, or crushed to death. A volcano bursts suddenly ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... and the whole line of the shore seemed as if alive with creatures that were issuing from the ocean to clamber on the rocks. Roswell had often seen that very coast peopled with seals, as it now appeared to be in activity with fragments of ice, that were writhing, and turning, and rising, one upon another, as if possessed of the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... groping and staggering out of the chaos. Unharmed, herself, and no one badly hurt? Ah, hear the sudden wail of that battery boy as he finds his one-armed brother! Anna kneels with him over the writhing form while women fly for the surgeon, and men, at her cry, hasten to improvise a litter. No idle song haunts her now, yet a clamoring whisper times itself with every pulsation of her ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... head violently, tightening his fingers about his throat. As he did, Forrest writhing in the chair under his attack, began to fumble with his hand at his hip as if instinctively seeking something there. Stephen's eyes followed the movement, even while he, too, relaxed his hold to seize with his ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... onslaught of the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their ferocious attacks. With a sudden tightening of the muscles he repulsed the Danish hounds, which rolled over writhing on the ground, and then, with formidable baying, returned more furiously ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... over, however, the skill of their doctors was in requisition; for almost all of them were made quite ill by excess, and were seen at evening lying at full length on the ground, groaning and writhing ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... And again a spectacular, writhing collapse—and this time, the mirror fell free, supported by only two tubes, and permanently out of focus, incapable ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... only thought Is that they'll soil his fame. Ah yes, they'll try, But they'll not hurt it. For all time to come It stands there, firm as marble and as pure. They can do nothing that the sun and rain Will not erase at last. Not even Voltaire Can hurt that noble memory. Think of him As of a viper writhing at the base Of some great statue. Let the venomous tongue Flicker against that marble as it may It cannot wound it. I am far more grieved For you, who sit there wondering now, too late, If it were some suspicion, some dark hint Newton had heard that robbed ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... of Irony couldn't have devised a more intolerable situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... creatures in whose company it is no fame to die: a little crying boy, a greasy unkempt sniveller, and a confessed desperado. Her base and fugitive son, to know the infamy of his cowardice and die of his shame, should have seen his mother writhing in her seat upon the throne ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... reaches the place where the moonbeams touch the floor, LEEK fires—he has very quietly and unobtrusively drawn his revolver. GEORGE drops the candle and the figure, writhing, drops to the floor. It coughs once a choking cough. MALCOLM goes slowly forward, touches it with his foot, and kneels by figure, lifts figure up, gazes at it, and pulls the red wig off, discovering HIRST. MALCOLM gasps out "DOCTOR." LEEK places the revolver on chair, ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... strike the deadly blow, he was writhing and struggling in the powerful grasp of a tall, stout man, who at that crisis rushed into ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... not how long I remained in this condition, but at last, while writhing on the bed in a fit of spasmodic fury, I suddenly perceived the Abbe Serapion, who was standing erect in the centre of the room, watching me attentively. Filled with shame of myself, I let my head fall upon my breast and covered my face with ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... milky cloud increased in density, and the whole mass of water became turbid. The fishes kept constantly near the surface, swam languidly, and snatched mouthfuls of atmospheric air. The Eel became bloodshot about the gills, and, writhing, gasped for breath. The Soldier-Crabs hung listlessly from their shells, and no longer went about in quest of food. Even the Actinise shrunk to half their former size; and the Buccina, crawling above the water, ranged themselves in a row upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Idealism puts its prism to the eye and shows all things in those gorgeous hues, which to-morrow fade. Such mind and temper shock the physique, shake it down, strain the nervous organization; and the body, writhing under fierce cerebral thrusts, goes tottering to the grave. Is it strange if doubts belong to those writhings? Are there no such creatures as constitutional doubters, or, possibly, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... sudden dullness seized me. I lifted my eyes to see Beverly free and Rex directing the charge; cattle, mules, and ponies turned back toward safety, and something crawling and writhing about my feet; Jondo's great shout of victory far away, it seemed, miles and miles to the north; a cloud of dust sweeping toward me; the crimson east aflame like the Day of judgment; the dust cloud rolling nearer; ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... an infallible sign of great mental refinement to bespatter our fellow-creatures, while every nerve is writhing in honor of our pigs, our cats, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... They met in Lone Sahib's room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by a clinking among the photo frames on the mantelpiece. A wee white kitten, nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of purpose, but it was a manifestation of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Sinking and creeping, Swelling and sweeping, Showering and springing, Flying and flinging, Writhing and ringing, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting, Around and around With endless rebound; Smiting and fighting, A sight to delight in; Confounding, astounding, Dizzying, and deafening the ear ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... begging to be allowed to have his way with the weasel. But I knew what he did not: I knew that in anything like a fair encounter the weasel would get the first hold, would draw the first blood, and hence probably effect his escape. So I carried the animal, writhing and scratching, to a place in the road removed from any near cover, and threw him violently upon the ground, hoping thereby so to stun and bewilder him that the terrier could rush in and crush him before he ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... flames. The fire went springing up, licking the white bones of the Jabberwock. In their excitement the younger children scarcely noticed that their treasures were actually burning up, also, till Kenneth suddenly caught sight of his "Dacob," writhing, and curling, and jumping about in the most uncanny way, as if in mortal agony. The poor baby darted forward to ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... Yorimasa's opportunity. Aiming about a foot to the right of where he saw the eye glare, he drew his yard-length shaft clear back to his shoulder, and let fly. A dull thud, a frightful howl, a heavy bump on the ground, and the writhing of some creature among the pebbles, told in a few seconds time that the shaft had struck flesh. The next instant Yorimasa's retainer rushed out with blazing torch and joined battle with his dirk. Seizing the beast by the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... found in the same painful position by a clergyman returning from attendance on a death-bed, who, as he advanced, thought he heard groans, and, bending over the dyke, discovered a child seated on a stone, writhing from pain, and with ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... wall, we now come to the finest of all the frescoes, the magnificent scene of the "Damnation." So vivid is the realisation, so life-like the movements and gestures, that the writhing mass appears really alive, and one can almost hear the horrible clamour of the devils, and the despairing yells of the victims. The general effect is of one simultaneous convulsed movement, one seething turmoil. In detail, the horror is most dramatically rendered. The malignancy of the ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... hours of the day,—whirling clouds of blinding snow in their faces, hurling the decayed limbs and trunks of the older tenants of the wood to the earth around them, in the fury of its blasts, and rattling and creaking through the colliding branches of the writhing green trees, as it swept over the wilderness,—yet, for all these difficulties of the way and commotions of the elements, they faltered not, but continued to move forward in stern and moody silence, hour after hour, in the footsteps of their indomitable leader, until they reached ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... worm, not the hint or the ghost of one; yet that bird took three long, low hops, made some quick motion with his beak—I swear it never seemed to touch the ground, even, let alone dig—-executed a kind of jump in the air—some say he used his legs in the air—and there he was with a great, big, writhing horror of a worm as big as a snake ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... animal leaped forward. For a moment there was a tangle of striking hoofs and wriggling coils of the foiled reptile, while Charley leaning over in his saddle struck with the butt-end of his riding whip at the writhing coils. Though it seemed an eternity to the helpless watchers it was really only a few seconds ere the pony sprang away from its loathsome enemy and Charley with difficulty reined him in a few paces ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... enjoyed the prospect of once more gloating over the miserable Murray writhing under the ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... cross-bar, Butch Brewster blindly crashing into an upright. But now, all their pent-up joy flowed forth in a mighty torrent! Singing, yelling, dancing, howling, the Bannister Band leading them, the Gold and Green students, alumni, Faculty, and supporters, snake-danced around Bannister Field. A vast, writhing, sinuous line, it wound around the gridiron, everyone who possessed a hat flinging it over the cross-bars. The victorious eleven, were borne by the maddened youths—Captain Butch, Pudge, Beef, Monty, Roddy, Ichabod, Tug, Hefty, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... crawled downstairs, clinging to the banisters, and writhing and groaning so piteously that the tenants, in alarm, came out upon their landings. Schmucke supported the suffering creature, and told the story of La Cibot's devotion, the tears running down his cheeks as he spoke. Before very long the whole house, the whole neighborhood indeed, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... division, with no abatement of courage, marched in good order over the naked plain, dashed forward with ever-thinning ranks, and then, receding sullenly before the storm of fire, left, within a hundred yards of the stone wall, a long line of writhing forms to mark the limit of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... him, hand and foot, and writhing, foaming, like the untamed wild beast that he was, they thrust him ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... scandal. This crime is so ingenious that I believe it has a more powerful motive than mere robbery. You are now at the head of a great house of finance and society. You must guard your mother and your sister, and those yet to come. A deadly snake is writhing its slimy trail somewhere: here—there—'round about us! Who knows where it will strike next? Who knows how far that blow may reach—even unto China, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... was a struggle—quick, hard, silent, and furious, as if two great cobras were writhing together, seeking each other's death. Mok was not armed. Banker could not use knife or pistol. They stumbled, they went down on their knees, they rose and fell together against the rail. Instantly Banker, with his left arm and the strength ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... Mr. Landseer, before he gives us any more writhing otters, or yelping packs, reflect whether that which is best worthy of contemplation in a hound be its ferocity, or in an otter its agony, or in a human being its victory, hardly achieved even with the aid of its more sagacious brutal allies ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of their feelings for a few minutes, would prefer to miss the chance of making an intelligently indignant protest against slavery, and would allow the bodies and souls of their fellow-men to continue writhing ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... is a sound tannun," he said. He plied the strap in perfect silence upon the writhing man, who swore and yelled, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Pomposet was writhing, poor thing, on the horns of a dilemma. Painful position, very. She was the greatest of great ladies, full of fire and fashion, and with a purple blush (she was born that colour) flung bangly arms ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... "shin plasters." Claude's uncle, Mark Clark joined the Northern Army. His master did not go to war but remained on the plantation. One day at noon during the war the gin house was seen to be afire, one of the slaves rushed in and found the master badly burned and writhing in pain. He was taken from the building and given first aid, but his body being burned in oil and so badly burned it burst open, thus ended the life of the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the door and flung it open as a second squeal rent the air, and found Master Maloney writhing in the grip of a tough-looking person in patched trousers and a stained sweater. His left ear was firmly grasped between ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... behind the cedars, and, picking up a sharp-edged bit of limestone, tipped his hand dexterously and sent it clean as a knife cut across the space. It struck the snake just below the head, half severing it from the body. Another leap and Burleigh had kicked the whole writhing mass—it would have measured five feet—off the stone into the sunflower stalks and long grasses ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... wrenched himself free at the same instant that the bloody-stained Indian rolled, writhing in convulsions, away from Wetzel. The outlaw dashed with desperate speed up the trail, and disappeared in the gorge. The borderman sped toward the cliff, leaped on a projecting ledge, grasped an overhanging branch, and pulled himself up. ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... wracked his body. Moans escaped from his lips, moans of agony, as if unconsciously he was protesting against the painful return to consciousness. And Garman smoked, artistically and with luxurious enjoyment, his attention concentrated upon his cigar, while Ramos watched the writhing Indian with a sneering smile to betray his enjoyment of ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... The woman, cooler than he in both senses of the term, dodged it easily. How she had contrived to pin him in such a helpless manner, I could not imagine. The motive was obvious. A little girl lay writhing and sobbing on the floor amid the fragments of a broken mug and a scattering ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... ball hung unmoving; it would hold automatically to the direction and speed that had been established. The hand of the master-pilot found it quickly. They were in dangerous territory now—a vast void under a ceiling of black, star-specked space. No writhing, darting wraith-forms caught the rays of the distant sun. Their ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... thyself beneath from the eye of the Living God! By-and-by His Day shall come! His Terrible Lightning shall flash from the East to the West! His Dreadful Flaming Thunder-bolt shall fall, riving thy secret fastnesses to atoms, and leaving thee, poor worm, writhing in the dazzling effulgence of His Light, and shrivelling beneath the consuming ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... grew brighter—reaching higher and higher—spreading wider and wider over the midnight sky. Then they could see the flames—threadlike streaks and flashes in the dark cloud of smoke at first but increasing in volume, climbing and climbing in writhing, twisting columns of red fury. The wild, long-drawn shriek of the fire whistles, the clanging roar of the engines, the frantic rush of speeding automobiles awoke the echoes of the cliffs and aroused the sleeping creatures on the hillsides. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Writhing with anguish and contempt, she turned away from the wrought stone whose semblance had beguiled her to her mortal loss; and as she passed from the step, another hand lit a consuming blaze beneath her staff and scrip, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Observe the critical period at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!—on the very eve of the publication of our last number,—affording no scope for explanation for a full month,—during which time I must needs lie writhing and tossing under the cruel imputation of nonentity.—Good heavens! that a plain man must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... extinguished by the steady sleet of a husband's repudiation. When love is dead, and regret is decently buried, and the song of hope is hushed for ever, then revenge mounts the chariot and gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx—woman's nature, babble of one weighty fact, one conquering law,—that only the mother-joy, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... potatoes at a ruinous loss, our keen and knowing youngster glories in the opportunity of making a bargain by which he shall profit to the amount of a hundred per cent., though the seller return to his agitated family writhing with despair. The malleable intellect of our youth is annealed by the Demon of Gain upon the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... evil gaze upon the bed, held the candle aloft, the mulatto, with a curious preparatory writhing movement of the mighty shoulders, lowered his outstretched fingers to the disordered ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Ray, writhing and cursing, was the first to be hanged. He got his finger under the rope around his neck and died hard, but died. Stinson, also cursing, went next. It was then time for Plummer, and those who had this work in hand felt compunction at hanging a man so able, so urbane and so commanding. ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... it out of its pain, so dressing himself quickly he descended, and by the light of the moon went across the green in the direction of the sound. He reached the hedge bordering the widow's garden, when he stood still. The faint click of the trap as dragged about by the writhing animal guided him now, and reaching the spot he struck the rabbit on the back of the neck with the side of his palm, and it ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the "fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to give him a fine one too. In Barbie, at least, your returning student is never met at the station with a brass band, whatever may happen ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... from being the view of Rome or of Spain, of the Catholic missionaries, or of the Irish exiles abroad. They represented and perhaps believed the Irish people to be writhing under a religious oppression which it was burning to shake off. They saw in the Irish loyalty to Catholicism a lever for overthrowing the heretic Queen. Stukely, an Irish refugee, had pressed on the Pope and Spain as early as 1571 the policy of a descent on Ireland; and though a force ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... with disease like "the strong man prepared to run a race," but it had now seized her with giant grasp, and she lay helpless and writhing, with the fiery fluid burning in her veins, sending dark, red flashes to her cheeks and brow. Her eyes had a fierce, lurid glare, and she tossed her head from side to side on the pillow with the wild restlessness of an ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... She should have kept her nerves to herself, rasped, as they were to a treacherous tenuity. And as the state of her nerves was owing to Kitty, she held Kitty responsible for the crisis. She writhed as she thought of it. She writhed as she thought of Mr. Lucy. She writhed as she thought of Kitty; and writhing, she rubbed her own ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... Writhing like a wounded serpent, lifted from the field of war, He was carried by his soldiers to the shelter ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... doubt gnawing through his mind into certainty. He took up a dozen of the stories, analyzed them carefully, word for word, sentence by sentence. Then he sat back, his body tired, eyes closed in concentration, an incredible idea twisting and writhing and ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... heart of this banian-tree? While he stood gazing at the tree, waiting for the spirit to address him, or the man to appear, he was startled by a black, shiny head, and the loathsome coils of a python, writhing in the branches. The serpent! Piang had heard that it could fascinate animals, keeping them prisoner by its mystic powers, until ready to devour them. Ganassi was, then, an evil spirit in the form of a serpent! Piang uttered a ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... demons of the Far North seemed to have taken an outside passage on that blizzard, so tremendous was the roaring and shrieking, while the writhing of tormented snow-drifts suggested powerfully ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... sweep around the chasm and hug the shore, as if in mortal terror, despairing of escape, rushed upon each other like two storm fiends. The war of waters was most terrific. The very earth shook. Locked in deadly embrace, and writhing as if in direst agony, the mighty floods plunged the abyss, while far above floated the white plume of the presiding genius of old Niagara. The impression upon me was overwhelming. I saw Niagara Falls from the right stand-point. Whether I was equally fortunate ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... Dick, nor Del, nor crimsoned snow, nor sky, were there; only the smoke writhing up a pillar of ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps |
