"Cowering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Stinking Lake he dared not go. He tried to believe that it was fear of Clinch that made him shy of the home shanty; but, in his cowering soul, he knew it was fear of another kind—the deep, superstitious horror of Jake Kloon's empty bunk—the repugnant sight of Kloon's spare clothing hanging from its peg—the dead ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... she asked sharply, as she looked from the brave to the cowering child still held in his strong grip. "Are you bringing a daughter of the pale-faces into my keeping?" She ended with a ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade
... the quiet earth, they laid apart No man of iron mold and bloody hands, Who sought to wreak upon the cowering lands The passions that consumed his restless heart: But one of tender spirit and delicate frame, Gentlest, in mien and mind, Of gentle womankind, Timidly shrinking from the breath of blame; One in whose eyes the smile of kindness made Its haunts, like flowers by sunny brooks ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... toward the corner where the termite-ruler was cowering behind the guards that surrounded it. Intellect to a degree phenomenal for an insect, this thing might have; but of the blind fierce courage possessed by its subjects, it assuredly had none! In proof of this was the fact that when the half dozen specialized soldiers ringing it round might have leaped ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... an inhabitant was to be seen. It seemed a city of the dead. Into Berlin, Vienna, and other capitals had the French army entered, but never had it seen anything like this utter solitude. The inhabitants, so the surprised soldiers fancied, must be cowering in terror within their houses. This desolation could not continue. Moscow was known as one of the most bustling cities in Europe. As soon as the people learned that no harm was meant them, the streets would again swarm with busy life. Hugging this flattering opinion to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... snatched him up as Odo entered. Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with Filomena's call—"Where are ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... apparently living together in their poverty, gashed and battered in the dead of the night, and left in their blood, stripped of their little all. The motive, too, for all this horrible housebreaking and bloodshed, being a lump of cheese or a side of bacon, and the shuddering creatures cowering in the corner of a hovel, being too paralyzed with terror to utter a cry, and never dreaming of making resistance to the wild-eyed assassins, who came to slay rather ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Skipping Rabbit sat cowering together at the foot of the tree where they had been set down. For one moment Moonlight thought of her own lithe and active frame, her powers of running and endurance, and meditated a sudden dash into the woods, but one glance ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... one of those old-fashioned houses which belong to a former Paris a heavy iron lantern swung, creaking in the wind, and, battling with the darkness, shed flickering rays of light on the child who, with a faded red cotton shawl wrapped about her, was cowering in the deep doorway of the house. From time to time there would emerge from the whirling snowflakes the dark form of a man clad as a laborer. He would walk leisurely toward the doorway in which the shivering child was concealed, ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... alternative—his own. In them, toiling along, wearily, dejectedly, beneath the chain or yoke, he saw himself, toiling, grinding, at some sordid and utterly repellent form of labour, for a miserable pittance; no ray of light, no redeeming rest or enjoyment to sweeten life until that life should end. In them, cowering, writhing, beneath the driver's brutal lash, he saw himself, ever lashed and stung by the torturing consciousness of what might have been, by the recollection of what had been. Or did they fall exhausted, fainting, to die, or to undergo decapitation to ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... example, Eleanor shakes her head. If she gives in to him now their life will be one of cowering seclusion. There is something convincing in the light of day that drives from her heart all ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... cowering dwarf on his feet and by artful questions gets the whole story from him of the ring and the Nibelungs' woe. About the Tarnhelm, too, Mime tells Loge. At the recollection of the stripes he has suffered, he rubs his back howling. The gods laugh. That ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... heed, did not hear his threat. While Hildebrand put his hand to the hilt of his sword and loosened it in its sheath, Robert crawled to the steps of the altar, cowering, with ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... courageously, follow the other fellow; and then you have such a spectacle as was described here this afternoon in the witness-chair by Mr. Stener—that is, you have a vicious, greedy, unmerciful financial wolf standing over a cowering, unsophisticated commercial lamb, and saying to him, his white, shiny teeth glittering all the while, 'If you don't advance me the money I ask for—the three hundred thousand dollars I now demand—you will be a convict, your children will be thrown in the street, you and your wife ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... glide, and plaintive vent Thin hollow screams, along the deep descent. As in the cavern of some rifty den, Where flock nocturnal bats and birds obscene, Cluster'd they hang, till at some sudden shock, They move, and murmurs run through all the rock: So cowering fled the sable heaps of ghosts; And such a scream fill'd all ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... these disciples? Think of them in their by-past history, tossed on Gennesaret, cowering with dread in their vessel! Think of them in the Judgment-Hall of Pilate; think of them at the cross! Nothing there but pusillanimity and cowardice. Nay, when our Lord had spoken to them on a former occasion of this same ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... coming, and if it wasn't wolves, they thought it was likely to be a worse creature. They could see two black figures bounding along in the moonlight, and behind them came a huge dog, barking with all his might. Bang into the row of cowering slaves they ran, and the biggest black thing roared "baa," and the little one bleated "maa," right into Dromas' ear. The "whole pack of wolves" was just the old black ewe and her little black lamb. Argos ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... at one end of the boat attempting to navigate her out of the harbour. Each had his rifle across his knee and was keeping a wary eye on a party of half a dozen cowering Spaniards huddled in the ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... foreigners whom the grumpy officers jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They give themselves up to the higher aspirations of the soul, no matter how limited such ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... draped in black, cowering low, with the face turned up. It was Charles Nutter's face, fixed and stealthy. It was only while the fascination lasted—while you might count one, two, three, deliberately—that the horrid gaze met mutually. But there was no mistake there. She saw ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... they had 'leaped without looking,' and were 'in the trap' themselves; and, guessing that whoever had made that trap would soon be alongside, they were as much frightened as the poor doe. In this state we had actually found them—cowering and crouching, and more scared-like than the fawns themselves. You will think this a very improbable relation, yet it is quite true. An equally improbable event occurred not long after. Frank caught ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... and fro with clinking spurs and this thundering at the cowering old doctor calmed his anger. The storm had about blown over when unfortunately the general's notice was drawn to the report from the brigade that was being most heavily beset by the enemy and had suffered desperate losses and was holding its post only in order to make the enterprise as ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... be resorted to. On the lawn a line of men forms. They bend their necks, cowering before the fierce glow, but daring it, and prepared to face it at even closer range. You are to witness now an exhibition of that heroism which is commoner with us than we think, that spirit of do and dare ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... within; Then sank upon the sand, and gasped, and raved. This was her secret chamber, this her place Of refuge from the outstretched demon-deep, All eye and voice for her, Argus more dread Than he with hundred lidless watching orbs. There, cowering in a nook, she sat all night, Her eyes fixed on the entrance of the cave, Through which a pale light shimmered from the sea, Until she slept, and saw the sea in dreams. Except in stormy nights, when all ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and lightning and thunder, and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he was tender-hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastating typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in the centre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the "Admiral" without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think no friend of his would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Brooklyn. The city itself—its streets—its houses—all wore the livery of this "ruler of the inverted year"—while in many a garret and cellar of its crowded streets, ragged children huddled together, seeking to warm their frozen limbs beneath the scanty covering of their beds, or cowering over the few half-dying embers, which they misnamed a fire. Yet the social affections were not chilled—rather did they seem to glow more warmly, as though rejoicing in their triumph over the mighty conqueror of the physical world. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... ushered into the room already known to the visitors of the F. U. E. E., where the two children sat as usual in white pinafores, but it struck the ladies that all looked ill, and Lovedy was wrapped in a shawl, and sat cowering in a dull, stupified way, unlike the bright responsive manner for which she had been noted even in her lace-school days. Mary Morris gazed for a moment at Alison with a wistful appealing glance, then, with a start as of fright, put on a sullen stolid look, and kept her eyes ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their ears with its unutterable and penetrating power, and appalling their hearts by its supernatural weirdness. They shrank before it down the balcony and through the window into the drawing-room, cowering, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... bloom of Oriental youth; the knees knocked together; and at last, with a faint exclamation of pain, like the cry of one who receives a death-blow, he bowed his face over his clasped hands, and so remained—still, but cowering. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... menacing tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts to break away, as if he meant incontinently to jump overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and cowering wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to suspect the sincerity of every great passion. His Spanish, too, became so mixed up with German ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... about the mess tent, bearing huge dishes of tempting viands. Grooms, and grasscuts are busy leading the horses off to the course. The cold raw fog of the morning fills every tent, and dim grey figures of cowering natives, wrapped up over the eyes in blankets, with moist blue noses and chattering teeth, are barely discernible in ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... praised her frankness, and he liked it. The trembling of her frame still fascinated his eyes, but her courage and the absence of all womanly play and cowering about her manner impressed him seriously. He stood looking at her, biting his moustache, and trying to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... spoke, and a hush seemed to hang over all. There was no cheering this morning—even that was done. The rain splashed pitilessly down on these men who had won a great victory, who now hurried hither and thither, afraid of they knew not what, cowering beneath ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... an hour, when suddenly, without any warning, Wagtail rushed into the underwood and vanished. They listened with all their ears, and in a few moments heard his joyous bark, followed instantly, however, by a howl of pain; and, before they had got many yards in pursuit, he came cowering to my father's feet, who, patting his side, found it bleeding. He bound his handkerchief round him, and, fastening the lash of Sim's whip to his collar that he might not go too fast for them, told him to find Theodora. Instantly ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... whether anything else in the world could have restored the fighting spirit to Jill's cowering soul at that moment: but the reference to Lady Underhill achieved this miracle. That deep mutual antipathy which is so much more common than love at first sight had sprung up between the two at the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... A frightful moment!—the cowering patients—the officers in a state of almost frenzied excitement, searching bed after bed. At the last bed, occupied by a badly wounded and quite helpless youth, the officer carrying the dagger brought the blade of it so near to ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proclaims. Why name his countless triumphs, whom to meet Is to be famous, envied in defeat? The keen debaters, trained to brawls and strife, Who fire one shot, and finish with the knife, Tried him but once, and, cowering in their shame, Ground their hacked blades to strike at meaner game. The lordly chief, his party's central stay, Whose lightest word a hundred votes obey, Found a new listener seated at his side, Looked in his eye, and felt himself ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the houses, one soldier to each house, in which he took his station, cowering the occupants ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... mind would embark on. No one can blame us for that, at least. You are far too easily discouraged, my darling. Wait till the morning." The voice was the soft, sonorous voice of Saxby, and a lightning flash revealed to the girl cowering among the trees that it was he who held Isabel van Cannan ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Men ran madly away from it. A dog rushed out yelping—and on the yelp, from the other quarter, came the next shell. Along the broad straight street not a vehicle, not a white man was to be seen. Only a herd of niggers cowering under ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... passage was soon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from the general level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passed in or out, I crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and in the little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I wintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... The cruiser's duty-officer, cowering, thrust over the emergency-lever which would put the ship through pre-recorded commands faster than orders could ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to the darkness; and as a very faint glimmer of light stole in over the door of the dungeon, he was enabled to see objects around him, though very indistinctly. With a shudder, he glanced around him; and there, cowering in one corner, like some hideous reptile, its green eyes fixed upon him, sat the Image of the Dead Man—the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... be possible his ears did actually detect a sound of human respiration through the keyhole? Was Bayard Shaynon just the other side of that inch-wide pressed-steel barrier, the fire-proof door, cowering in throes of some paralysing fright, afraid to answer ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... at the door, as he was ordered to do, his family name of Roulot, under which he buried the De Varandeuil and the former courtier of the Comte d'Artois. He lived there alone, buried, forgotten, hiding his head, never going out, cowering in his hole, without servants, waited upon by his daughter, to whom he left everything. The Terror was to them a period of shuddering suspense, the breathless excitement of impending death. Every evening, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... down at her feet. It was a white grouse and it remained cowering on the ground. Sheen looked up and she saw a hawk above. And when she looked round she saw a man coming across the bog. The hawk flew towards him ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... rather pathetic—the brave look had gone from his eyes, and his face and hands were more shrivelled than ever. He gave the impression of cowering in bed as though wishing to avoid a blow. Harry was with him continually now, and the old man was never happy if his son was not there. He rambled at times and fancied himself back in his youth again. Harry had found his father's room a refuge ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... no reply; his frightened eyes were fixed on the man-monkey cowering in the shade, with the revolver tight ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... firths of Ocean boil. The Sire himself in midnight of the clouds Wields with red hand the levin; through all her bulk Earth at the hurly quakes; the beasts are fled, And mortal hearts of every kindred sunk In cowering terror; he with flaming brand Athos, or Rhodope, or Ceraunian crags Precipitates: then doubly raves the South With shower on blinding shower, and woods and coasts Wail fitfully beneath the mighty blast. This fearing, mark the months and Signs of heaven, Whither retires him Saturn's icy star, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... and awful self-humiliation) must have struck all travellers. It stands in the centre of the arched rotunda, which is common to all denominations, and from which branch off the various chapels belonging to each particular sect. In the Coptic chapel I saw one coal-black Copt, in blue robes, cowering in the little cabin, surrounded by dingy lamps, barbarous pictures, and cheap faded trumpery. In the Latin Church there was no service going on, only two fathers dusting the mouldy gewgaws along the brown walls, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wait of agonising suspense, the elevator boy remained cowering in a corner of the car, staring at Lanyard as at some shape of terror, while the ignored buzzer droned without cessation to ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... clearing and a miserable log-hut near by. The family had fled, frightened by the cannonade. We found them cowering in the woods,—a man, his wife and daughter. The land all around them was exceedingly rich, but they were very poor. All they had to eat was hog and hominy. They had been told that the Union troops ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... suddenly, whistles are blowing, there is a rattling of horses' hoofs. "Fire! Fire!" Richard, who was passing Soho Square at the time, heard the cry and dashed into the burning house. In a room full of smoke he perceived a cowering woman. Hyacinth! To pick her up was the work of a moment, but how shall he save her? Stay! The telegraph wire! His training at the Royal Circus stood him in good stead. Treading lightly on the swaying wire he carried Hyacinth ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... grew dark, and Terry frowned. Had the douanier been insolent, my peppery Irishman would have been insolent too, perhaps, in the hope of cowering the man by truculence more swashbuckling than his own; but he had been as polite as his countrymen proverbially are, if not goaded out of their suavity. "Look here, Prince," said Terry, hanging onto his temper by a thread (for he also was hungry), "suppose you leave this matter ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... various societies become saints, mediums, warlocks, or conjurers. But Scheffer shows that the Lapp experts try, voluntarily, to see sights, whereas, except when wrapped in a bull's hide of old, or cowering in a boiler at the present day, the Highland second-sighted man lets his visions come to him spontaneously and uninvoked. Scheffer wished to take a magical drum from a Lapp, who confessed with tears, that, drum or no drum, he would still see visions, as ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... By fair means and foul, by spies and lawyers and friendly agents, Lassalle's frenzied energy had penetrated through every defence to the inmost entrenchment where she sat cowering. He had exacted the father's consent to an interview. Only Helene's own consent was wanting. His friend Colonel Rustow brought the sick Hercules the account of her refusal—a refusal which made ridiculous his moving ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... me, "O thou that sittest cowering among the splinters of the bridge, securely now return to me." Whereat I moved and came swiftly to him. And the devils all pressed forward, so that I feared they would not keep their compact. And thus I once saw the foot-soldiers afraid, who came out under pledge from Caprona,[1] ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... spoke to it; the poor brute was evidently beside itself with terror. It showed all its teeth, the slaver dropping from its jaws, and would certainly have bitten me if I had touched it. It did not seem to recognize me. Whoever has seen at the Zoological Gardens a rabbit, fascinated by a serpent, cowering in a corner, may form some idea of the anguish which the dog exhibited. Finding all efforts to soothe the animal in vain, and fearing that his bite might be as venomous in that state as in the madness of hydrophobia, I left him alone, placed my weapons ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... inhabitants were cowering in terror; the Little Ones and their strange cavalry were encamped in the square; the sun shone upon the princess, and for a few minutes she saw herself glorious. The vision passed, but she sat on. The night was now ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... nimbly to one side, and the monsters shot past him with bellowings that shook the earth. They turned and Jason poised for the leap. As they passed a second time, he grasped the nearest by the horn and lightly vaulted upon its back. The bull, unused to the burden, sank cowering to the ground. Jason patted its neck caressing it, and gladly it shared ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Quill as he sat in his strange abode, a hundred years ago, cowering over the fire or reading perhaps by the light of a huge old-fashioned lanthorn. He thought of him hanging by the neck back in the dark recess, victim either of his own conscience or the implacable hatred of the enemy "down the river." ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... fix on thy beloved name! The hapless Minstrel may not feign; But thou, I know, canst all explain— Yet let me from this place depart, To nurse my fainting, sicken'd heart! Yet let me in a cloister dwell, The veiled inmate of a cell; To raise this cowering soul by prayer!— Reproach ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... up his horses with a shout,—he had nearly driven over me. After some searching, he discovered the small object cowering down in the mist, handed me a letter, with a muttered oath at being intercepted on such a night, and lumbered on and out of sight in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... The cowering form rose up; but, seeing who it was, sank down again, with its face groveling in the dust, and with another ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... quickly from her detaining grasp, and strode to the door. As he passed the bar he caught a glimpse of a ring of cowering frightened faces within, huddled together like sheep, and staring with saucer eyes. The mist spanned the doorway ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... he could paint on the canvas of my fancy! Under the spell of his music I would drop anchor in the harbor of the fairest dream. Now, it would be a landscape the brush of his bow would paint—a midsummer day with sheep gently grazing on some hillside: again, it would be a forest, with treetops cowering ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... wild shriek, she sprang to her feet, and darted round the rock, against which she had been cowering; she saw the little red gleam through the chinks of the hut; she ran up to it and fell against its wooden walls, which she began to hammer with clenched fists in an almost maniacal frenzy, while ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... rest on acknowledged weakness—taught me but too well the meaning of this fearful, trembling anxiety to please, or rather not to offend. I suppose that even a brutal master hardly likes to see a child cower in his presence as if constantly expecting a blow; and this cowering was so evident in my bride's demeanour, that, after trying for a couple of hours to coax her into confidence and unreserved feminine fluency, I began to feel almost impatient. It was fortunate that, just as my tone involuntarily betrayed to her quick and watchful ear some shade ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... her stoop down, and once more with that almost superhuman strength which seemed to belong to her for those few moments, she lifted the strange object who lay cowering there, high above her head. From the shore they realised what was going to happen, and a great shout arose. She stood on the side of the boat and jumped, holding her burden tightly in her arms. So they went down ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Wyoming valley. By the light of a tiny fire under the bank some twenty forms can be seen stretched upon the sand,—they are wounded soldiers. A little distance away are nine others, shrouded in blankets: they are the dead. Huddled in confused and cowering group are a few score horses, many of them sprawled upon the sand motionless; others occasionally struggle to rise or plunge about in their misery. Crouching among the timber, vigilant but weary, dispersed in big, irregular circle around ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Mount he found that his followers had set up a golden calf, which they were worshipping; and in his wrath Moses broke the tablets on which the Law was inscribed. The power shown in his attitude, the affrighted faces of the cowering Jews, the thunder and lightning as an expression of the wrath of the Almighty are all painted in Dore's ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... the open country, the speed of the train increased. The smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and began ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... with the officer in command, we decided to try getting around the town to the station by way of the ring of outer boulevards. We got through in good shape, being stopped a few times by soldiers and by little groups of frightened civilians who were cowering in the shelter of doorways, listening to the noise of fighting in the town, the steady crackle of machine guns, ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... and then he had gone out armed with a heavy hunting-crop, found Cyril Lamont, and had thrashed the man within an inch of his life. It was one of Hector's pleasantest recollections, the thought of his cowering form, his green silk smoking-jacket all torn, and his eyes sightless. Cyril Lamont's talents had not run in the art of self-defence, and he had been very soon powerless in the hands ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... times would have freely indulged their religious propensities, find themselves nowadays, as it were, frozen; or the agnostic vetoes upon faith as something weak and shameful, under which so many of us today lie cowering, afraid to use our instincts. In many persons such inhibitions are never overcome. To the end of their days they refuse to believe, their personal energy never gets to its religious centre, and the latter ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the provinces, and unsupported by the glory of his ancestors? While the senate was debating in such uncertainty, the pretorians discovered Claudius in a corner of the imperial palace, where he had been cowering through fear lest he too be killed. Recognizing in him the brother of Germanicus, the pretorians proclaimed him emperor. An act of will is always more powerful than a thousand scruples or hesitations: the senate ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... unutterably disgusted that, for a moment, their impulse was to kick him out of the cabin like a craven hound and henceforward ignore his existence. But this impulse lasted only for a moment; they recalled to mind the insolent arrogance with which this same cowering creature had treated them when he deemed himself secure from retaliation; and they determined that, while his miserable life was not worth the taking, he should still receive so salutary a lesson as should effectually ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... cowering at the foot of the monument, her face buried in her hands, when the Doctor touched her on the shoulder. She started and turned up to him the saddest face the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... up, lit the candle, and began to walk up and down, with his arms behind him. She was cowering on the bed and crying, and suddenly he stopped in front of her, and said: "Then it is my fault that you have no children?" She gave him no answer, and he began to walk up and down again, and then, stopping again, he continued: "How old is your child?" "Just six," she whispered. "Why did ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... within the thatch, was most exposed to the tempest. A light was struck, and the dying embers once more kindled into a blaze. The old woman, whom I could not but observe with emotions of awe and curiosity, sat cowering over the flame, her withered hands half-covering her furrowed and haggard cheeks; a starting gleam occasionally lighted up her grey and wasted locks, which, matted in wild elf-knots, hung about her temples. Occasionally she would turn her head as the wind came hurrying on, and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... sobered, shaking, cowering in the corner, with his little plaster hands before his face, came his poor wife. (Oh, but she did it well!) Gently, timidly, bravely, she laid a trembling hand upon his shoulder, and coaxed his hands from before his frightened eyes, then, backing, stood ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... beside the sleeping child, taking care not to waken her, and lay there thinking of his new responsibility. At every shiver of the cowering cabin and rising shriek of the wind, his heart went out in love toward the helpless little creature whose dead mother lay in the cold and deserted shanty, and whose father was wandering perhaps breathless and despairing ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... much less of a boomer. He dared to be original as to colour, and has been shivering and cowering and looking miserable ever since in terror of his own independence; he looks only a sort of unhappy white rabbit, overgrown in the hinder half. But there is encouragement to be got from the case of the boxing boomer. The kangaroo will never become clever of himself, but perhaps the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... cried they saw Pharaoh Meneptah cowering behind the double line of Guards, and they saw the Queen Meriamun who cowered not, but stood silent above the din. Then she thrust her way through the Guards, and yet holding the body of the child to her breast, she stood before them with eyes that flashed more brightly than the uraeus crown upon ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... cloud, purple and piled, heavy with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In the shadow of that strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees, the birds ceased their calling, and the cattle and the sheep gathered cowering under the hedges. A gloom fell upon all the land, and men stood with their eyes upon the strange cloud and a heaviness upon their hearts. They crept into the churches where the trembling people were blessed and shriven by the trembling priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... still in the ravine then; but whether dead or alive could not be determined. The dog Marengo, by a wise instinct, had not attacked the bear, but had escaped to one edge of the table, where he was crouching and cowering with fear, taking care not to put himself in the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... and overwhelms it with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master, there is no denying that he enjoys it immensely; and as he is ourself for the moment, or at least the chief portion of ourself (the other half-self retiring into a dim corner of semiconsciousness and cowering under the storm of sneers and contumely,—you follow me perfectly, Beloved,—the way is as plain as the path of the babe to the maternal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief part of us for the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and Marjorie Butler awoke half the school one night by loud and repeated screams, and when Miss Frazer rushed into their room, imagining fire or burglars, she found them cowering behind the bed curtains, in mortal terror of a large bat that had made its way through the open casement. Earwigs were a constant nuisance, and everyone grew almost accustomed to catching green caterpillars, which crept in from the roses that surrounded ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... unterrified Democracy of the —— ward, earnestly beseeching them to go into the street. My efforts were at last crowned with success. I was left alone amid the wreck of my household gods; but for an hour afterward, as I lay cowering on the sofa, I could hear disconnected speeches from my door-steps, encouraged from time to time with tremendous cheers for Lawk, cheers for Butterby, and cheers for "Jinny." The same general mystification and uncertainty regarding my ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... reached the top, and as he paused for a moment to look round him he saw another headless man cowering in the very bell itself, waiting till Hans should seize the bell-pull in order to strike him a blow with the clapper, which would soon have ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... Anderson proved true to his bargain. He immediately reversed his engines, and, when he had backed in as close as he thought safe, sent a boat ashore for us. We got into it without any obstruction from the cowering natives, who only shrank from us in horror, now that their prayers had failed to move us. The moment our boat was made fast to the steamer's davit ropes and we were pulled out of the water, "full speed ahead" was rung from ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... even in that supreme moment, when life and death swung in the balance, an awful revulsion seized him. He beheld now with a sickening shudder the woman cowering at his feet whose beauty an hour ago had melted his soul: she was flesh to him only—her beauty was of the earth, and flesh and the earth were passing, and it was other things on which such moments as these were opening—things such as shone in the transfigured face of Lilian—of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... small species of antelope with trained eagles; and it certainly is a marvellous sight to see the great bird soar and soar till he is nothing but a black speck in the sunlight, and then suddenly come dashing down like a cannon-ball upon some cowering buck that is hidden in a patch of grass from everything but that piercing eye. Still finer is the spectacle when the eagle takes the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... of passing shadows, and simple creatures, and boy's rough gifts and cold hands. But I—with me it was ever evening, when the blackbird bursts harshly away. Then it was so still in the orchard, and in the curved bough so solitary, that the nightingale, cowering, would almost for fear begin to sing, and stoop to the bending of the bough, her sidelong eyes in shade; while the stars began to stand in the stations above us, ever bright, and all the night was peace. Then would I dream on—dream of the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane, All creeds, all seasons, time, eternity: All that was hated, and all that was dear, All that was hoped, all that was feared by man, He tossed about as tempest withered leaves. Then smiling looked upon the wreck he made. With terror now he froze the cowering blood, And now dissolved the heart in tenderness, Yet would not tremble, would not weep himself, But back into his soul retired, alone. Dark sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously On hearts and passions prostrate at his ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... my belief, as I saw him raise his piece, and stand confronting me—in an attitude that too plainly bespoke his intention. Another surprise awaited me—another stimulus to my indignation. Instead of looking ashamed of his work, and cowering under my glance, he appeared eager and determined to execute the dastardly design. There was even an expression of fierceness, ill becoming his countenance habitually meek. Under other circumstances, it would have been ludicrous enough. "Bravado," thought ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... figure, as maidens are; with slim, arched feet, dimpled at the ankle; and round, tapering fingers too, with a wrist so plump and soft that no manacles of bracelets could press it without slipping off the ivory hand. Dressed she was in a light mousseline, coyly cowering in loose folds around her budding bosom to the slender waist, where, clasped by a simple buckle of mother-o'-pearl, it fell flowing in gauzy, floating waves to her feet. Look at her, my gallants, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... bird is the big sky. Under it a cowering city stares. The houses are half-dead old people. A gaunt carriage-horse gapes grumpily. Winds, skinny dogs, run weakly. Their skins squeel on sharp corners. In a street a crazed man groans: You, oh, you— If only I could find you... A crowd around him is surprised and ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... boy cowering behind one of the upturned boats, and by his furtive peepings showing that he was in league with his sister. Ailasa, not thinking that she was discovering his whereabouts, turned quite naturally in that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... of tense silence. For all the bitterness that surged under his railing speech, Haig was not untouched by the sight of the girl, bent and cowering before him. But at the same time he was exasperated anew by the scene that was being enacted under the eyes of ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... morning. The bondman had become free; the slave of a degrading vice had been transformed into a quiet, dignified gentleman. His form was erect, and while his bearing was singularly modest and retiring, there was nothing of the old cowering, shrinking manner which suggested defeat, loss of self-respect, and hopeless dejection. All who knew him instinctively felt that the prostrate man had risen to his feet, and there was something in his manner that made them believe he would ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... not," she answered in so assured a voice that not only did it give him pause, but caused Richard, cowering behind her, to ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... and his committee were gone, taking the cowering Myrtle with them, and Leslie lay snuggled up on the couch, with Allison building up the fire and Cherry bringing a tray with a nice supper. Julia Cloud fixed a hot-water bag to warm the chilled hands and feet. It was so good to be at home! The tears rushed into her eyes ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... he stared," answered the Goodman, as he seized the cowering Zeb and swung him again to his seat on ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... was next heard of in the Baby's Walk. They held both ends of this passage, and then thought to close on me, but I slipped through their fingers by doubling up Bunting's Thumb into Picnic Street. Cowering at St. Govor's Well, we saw them rush distractedly up the Hump, and when they had crossed to the Round Pond we paraded gaily in the Broad Walk, not feeling the tiniest ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... eat; for they themselves, though they were merry folk, were exceeding courteous at table, and of great observance of manners: whereas these poor Runaways ate, some of them like hungry dogs, and some hiding their meat as if they feared it should be taken from them, and some cowering over it like falcons, and scarce any with a manlike pleasure in their meal. And, their eating over, the more part of them sat dull and mopish, and as if all things were forgotten for ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... she was waiting (strolling up Dods Hill while the random church bells swung a hymn tune about her head, the clock striking four straight through the circling notes; the glass purpling under a storm-cloud; and the two dozen houses of the village cowering, infinitely humble, in company under a leaf of shadow), the post, with all its variety of messages, envelopes addressed in bold hands, in slanting hands, stamped now with English stamps, again with ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... months ago all Europe had been cowering in confused alarm before the shadow of a new Roman empire. Ever since the first triumph of Luther, the cause of Reformation had been Steadily losing ground; on England and the Low Countries hung its only hope, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the hold and the cowering stowaways assumed that he had come to search them out. The impulse was to dash into the forepeak and so plunge overboard, flinging away all caution, but before their palsied muscles could respond, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... of silliness; when billowing black clouds heaped themselves in the west on a hot afternoon, she turned pale with apprehension, and the Captain and Cyrus ran for four tumblers, into which they put the legs of her bed, where, cowering among the feathers, she lay cold with fear and perspiration. Every night the Captain screwed down all the windows on the lower floor; in the morning Cyrus pulled the screws out. Cyrus had a pretty ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... half rise for an instant; then, overwhelmed by shame, resigning herself to her fate, she would fall back into her corner, and, pulling her shawl over her head in order to bury herself therein out of sight, she would sit like a dead woman, crushed, inert, insensible, cowering over her own shadow, like a bundle tossed on the floor which everyone might tread upon—having no control of her faculties, dead to everything except the footsteps that she was listening for—and that ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... brave priest stepped before, the cowering child, and, with one hand still resting protectingly on the girl's fair hair, he raised the other in stern and fearless protest, and ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... clouded with pity. The old thing sitting there so white and shrunken had once been a merry, noisy child, playing about in lanes and hay-lofts and farmhouse garrets; that had been eighty odd years ago, and now she was just a frail old body cowering under the approaching chill of the death that was coming at last to take her. It was not probable that much could be done for her, but Emma hastened away to get assistance and counsel. Her husband, she knew, was down at a tree-felling some little distance off, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... from the glance. And when the cannon mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud, And gory sabers rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall sink beneath Each gallant arm, that strikes below That ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so groveling. In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the turned-up female noses with which it was pervaded, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... unassimilated news of events, that made a thunder in her head, Aminta walked down the garden path, meeting Selina and bearing her on. She had a witch's will to rouse gales. Hers was not the woman's nature to be driven cowering by stories of men's bloody deeds. She took the field, revolted, dissevering herself from the class which tolerated them—actuated by a reflective moralty, she believed; and loathed herself for having aspired, schemed, to be a member ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the murderer's hideous exultation, and then, in an instant, as the single ray of red light from the setting sun streamed through the Gothic window and fell upon his evil head, you saw him shrink in abject fear, cowering in the shadow of his throne; and the dusky room was seemingly peopled with gliding spectres. That treatment was theatrical, but in no derogatory sense theatrical—for it comports with the great speech on conscience; not the fustian of Cibber, about mutton and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Dootleby took in at his first glance, and his second fell upon two figures in the center of the room, from whom had proceded the noises he had heard. One was that of a girl cowering on her knees and moaning in a voice from which reason had clearly departed. A big, unconscionably brutal-looking man stood over her, holding her down by her hair, which, braided in a single plait, was wound about his hand. He had just thrown the stick upon the floor with which he had ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... perish in the Tyrant's hall— Alas, alas!"—He ceased, and by the sail 3425 Sate cowering—but his sobs were heard by all, And still before the ocean and the gale The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail; And, round me gathered with mute countenance, The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale 3430 With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance Met mine in restless awe—they ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... on the light. Mr. Whitmore was leaning against a table, one hand pressed against his abdomen. Collins was cowering against ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... was doing in the Great War; another gambolled round and round him making noises like a rabbit. In Knightsbridge a Military Policeman wanted to arrest him as a deserter. The Babe hailed a taxi and, cowering on the floor, fled back to his hotel and changed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... transferred. A number of negroes, who were loitering about, were pressed into the service, and pushed it along; and the gentlemen, walking, brought up the rear. I don't know that I ever in my life felt so completely desolate as during that half-hour's slow progress. We sat cowering among the trunks, my faithful Margery and I, each with a baby in our arms, sheltering ourselves and our poor little burthens from the bleak northern wind ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... alarmed. To say that that first ten minutes in Paul's study alarmed her is to put it mildly indeed. As she looked at the place where her mother's portrait had been, as she stared at the trembling Mitch cowering against Maggie's dress, she experienced the most terrifying, shattering upheaval since the day when as a little girl of six she had been faced as she had fancied, with the dripping ghost of her great-uncle William. Not at once, however, was the battle to begin. Maggie gave way ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... principles of pure good husbandry. With them join'd all the haranguers of the throng, That thought to get preferment by the tongue. 510 Who follow next a double danger bring, Not only hating David, but the king; The Solyimaean rout; well versed of old In godly faction, and in treason bold; Cowering and quaking at a conqueror's sword, But lofty to a lawful prince restored; Saw with disdain an Ethnic plot begun, And scorn'd by Jebusites to be outdone. Hot Levites headed these; who pull'd before From the ark, which in the Judges' days they bore, 520 Resumed ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... would have been perfect but for the Staines, who tramped through everything. Estelle perpetually saw them bursting into places where they weren't wanted, and shouting remarks which sounded abusive but were meant to be cordial to cowering Fanshawes and Arnots. It was really not necessary for Sir Peter to say in the middle of the lawn that what Mr. Fanshawe wanted ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... to irritate me by bringing the thing before me again, she had set herself to move her bed out of the way of the drip without my help, and she had knocked her knee. All her poor furnishings, I discovered, were cowering now close to the peeling bedroom walls; there had come a vast discoloration of the ceiling, and a washing-tub was in occupation of the middle of her ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the room to the kitchen, where the luckless Maini was cowering in anticipation of a coming storm. She was not deceived. Fatima seized her by the hair ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... "smile" had come again, and, brief though it was, its passing found the boy's sister lying on the ground in a dead faint, the boy's stepmother cowering back, with covered eyes and shrill, affrighted screams, and the boy's father leaning, shaken and white, against the empty cage and nursing ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... vanished with her triumph. She covered her face. The husband had turned round; he was looking eagerly at the notary and at his cowering bride. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... And, as his springing steps advance, Catch war and vengeance from the glance; And when the cannon-mouthings loud Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud, And gory sabres rise and fall, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall, Then shall thy meteor glances glow, And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Each gallant arm that strikes below ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... these inquiries in a half-hearty voice, he advanced into a poorly-furnished apartment, so small and low that it seemed a couple of sizes too small for him, and bestowed a kiss first upon the cheek of his old mother, who sat cowering over the fire, but brightened up on hearing his voice, and then upon the forehead of his daughter Nora, the cheerfulness of whose greeting, however, was somewhat checked when she observed the intoxicated state of ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Curtain, when, afar off, whether in or over some distant Quarter of the Town, I heard the same Voice, clearlie enow to recognise the Rhythm, though not the Words. I crept to Bed, chilled and awe-stricken; yet, after cowering awhile, and saying our Prayers, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... staggeringly upon the huge wave behind the boat. Mr. Mudge had a steering oar out; but the raft wabbled on the summit of the swell as though drunken. They saw the castaways upon the raft cowering helplessly. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... as the roads were passable Mrs. Nixey made her way up to the solitary farmstead. The last time she had seen old Marlowe he had been ailing, yet she was quite unprepared for the rapid change that had passed over him. He was cowering in the chimney-corner, his face yellow and shrivelled, and his eyes, once blue as Phebe's own, sunken in their sockets, and glowering dimly at her, with the strange intensity of gaze in the deaf and dumb. There was a little ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... rise before her mental vision a picture of a vengeful woman cowering over a handful of red embers, her mind set on one object and one object ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh |
