"Snaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certainly with more reason, considering the sex of the Veiled Lady,—that the face was the most hideous and horrible, and that this was her sole motive for hiding it. It was the face of a corpse; it was the head of a skeleton; it was a monstrous visage, with snaky locks, like Medusa's, and one great red eye in the centre of the forehead. Again, it was affirmed that there was no single and unchangeable set of features beneath the veil; but that whosoever should be bold enough to lift it would behold the features of that person, in all the world, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the sight of a still body in the starboard gallery—a body from under which a snaky red line was crawling, zigzagging with each pitch of the liner—gave them any pause. This crew was well blooded, ready ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... gwine beautiful.' 'How?' says t'other. 'He'll nibble like hanything,' was the answer, and then I hearn a nasty sort o' laugh. Soon after, I see you with a bootiful young lady, and I see that hinfidel a-watchin' yer, with a snaky look in his eyes. And so I kep on watchin', and scuse me, yer honour, but I can guess as 'ow things be, and I'm fear'd as 'ow this waccination dodge is a trick o' ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that; Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... make you mean, selfish, beastly. It shall transform you into monsters. The noblest king among men-folk shall feel its curse. Such is gold, and such it shall ever be to its worshippers. And the ring which you have gotten shall impart to its possessor its own nature. Grasping, snaky, cold, unfeeling, shall he live; and death through treachery shall ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... thunderously for the tree-fern forest. They were gigantic, those things from the morass. They were hideous. They were things out of nightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what might have been gigantic frogs, save that frogs possess no tails. And there were long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vast palpitating bodies following those impossible small brain-cases, and long tapering tails that thrashed mightily as the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... while she wears only one gown at a time she will live with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give them the fair test of living with them ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... 's cause he 's afeerd too, 'sah," she replied, her snaky eyes showing. "Ah 's a voo-doo, an' ah don't care 'bout 'em tall, but good Lor', dar ain't no white man wants ter stay in des yere house mor'n ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... and ye eternal lamps That restless keep his course in order due; Thou, Phoebe bright, that scatterest the damps Of darksome night, I make my plaints to you. And thou, Alecto, hearken to my call; Let fall a serpent from thy snaky hair; Tisiphone, be swift to plague them all, That make a pastime of my care and fear! And thou, O Jove, that by thy great foresight Rulest the earth and reign'st above the skies; That wreak'st the wrongs of them that master right Against ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... it, Ellhorn went away and forgot the earnest of his future good behavior. Emerson smiled that evening as he saw it trailing its snaky length over the back of a chair and stuffed it in the side pocket of his coat, thinking he would give it to Ellhorn the next time his friend should ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... through all lands, lugging through the air, horses, giraffes, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and dropping them at the door of the ark. One has crossed the Atlantic with rattlesnakes, copperheads, and boas twined around him, almost crippling his wings with their snaky folds; and another with a brace of skunks, one under each wing, that the renewed world may not lack the fragrance of the old. What a subject for the pencil of a Raphael or Dore! Had the "hardened spectators" beheld such a scene as this, Noah and his cargo would have ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... oars in quickest movement, and beheld a galley coming down upon him. The tall prow seemed doubly tall, and the red light playing upon its gilt and carving gave it an appearance of snaky life. Under its foot the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... "with stinted sums assigned," in the shape of pin-money, beware how you indulge that taste for pretty bonnets, hats, caps, and turbans, with which all bountiful Nature has so liberally gifted you; for, alas! "beneath the roses fierce Repentance rears her snaky crest" in form of a bill, the payment of which will "leave you poor indeed" for many a long day after, unless your liege lord, melted by the long-drawn sighs heaved when you remark on the wonderfully high prices of things at Paris, opens his purse-strings, and, with something ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... fierce rapacious soul With Essex' sudden and accomplish'd fall. The trampled corse of all his envy'd greatness, Lies prostrate now beneath thy savage feet; But still th' exalted spirit moves above thee. Go, tell the queen thy own detested story: Full in her sight disclose the snaky labyrinths, And lurking snares, you plant in virtue's path, ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... him and around him, slugging, kicking, and pushing. He fought mechanically, and with incredible efficiency, striking with a snaky speed and accuracy that would have amazed any one capable of noting it. But they were too many for him. He was shoved from the step, crowded back, stumbling downward, losing his balance, struggling gamely ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... less appalling to one's aesthetic sense was the clerk himself. Squatting behind his wretched desk, Elias Droom peered across the litter of papers and books with snaky but polite eyes, almost as inviting as the spider who, with wily but insidious decorum, draws the guileless into ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Halt! halt!" Maisanguaq stopped the dogs. Before them a snaky space of water, blacker than the darkness about them, and capped with faintly phosphorescent crests of tossing waves, separated them—Ootah knew ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... flying leap right over the three-headed mastiff, and stood at the door of the palace in an inconceivably short time. The servants knew him both by his face and garb; for his short cloak, and his winged cap and shoes, and his snaky staff had often been seen thereabouts in times gone by. He requested to be shown immediately into the king's presence; and Pluto, who heard his voice from the top of the stairs, and who loved to recreate ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... moors with their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, on the north-east; but, to the north ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... I am worth to him—nothing could be plainer. His best policy now is to act promptly and liberally toward me, for I pledge you my word that if I see any disposition to evade my requirements I will blow out the bottom of everything," and a snaky glitter in his small black eyes showed how remorselessly he could scuttle the ship bearing ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the world seemed just sunshine and a sky. There would have been hours as long, when existence passed like a shade among shadows, in the multitudinous tappings of rain that dripped from leaf to leaf in the wood, and slipped so to the ground. He would have known little snaky paths, narrow enough to be filled by his own small feet, or a goat's; and he would have wondered where they went, and have marvelled again to find that, wherever they went, they came at last, through loops and twists of the branchy wood, to his own ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... at length Weston carefully clamped down a big copper cap on a length of snaky fuse and inserted it in ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis, the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head, his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing booming music, and in the sunlit space ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... out upon the crest of the dam." 7 "A foraging fish-hawk winging above." 15 "The otter moved with unusual caution." 19 "Suddenly rearing his sleek, snaky body half out of the water." 23 "Poked his head above water." 33 "Sticky lumps, which they could hug under their chins." 41 "Twisted it across his shoulders, and let it drag behind him." 54 "Every beaver now made a mad rush for the canal." 58 "It was no ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... boys, she was as withered and wrinkled and brown as an old frosted punkin-vine; and her little snaky eyes sparkled and snapped, and it made yer head kind o' dizzy to look at 'em; and folks used to say that anybody that Ketury got mad at was sure to get the worst of it fust or last. And so, no matter what day or hour Ketury had a mind to rap at anybody's door, folks gen'lly ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at variance, and whether she meant to do it or not is all the same to me. I own I took a dislike to her when I first saw her. She was one of the light-haired, blue-eyed sort, with an innocent look and a snaky waist—not at all to be depended on, as ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Worm uncoiled its snaky twine from around the hill, and came to its rock in the river. When it perceived the Childe waiting for it, it lashed the waters in its fury and wound its coils round the Childe, and then attempted to crush him to death. ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... had expected. Perhaps that annoyed us. Instead of being able to laugh at him, we found something oppressive, chilling, to me frightful, in the cold, sneering smile which seemed perpetually hovering about his thin lips—in the fixed, snaky glitter of his still, intent gray eyes. His face was pale, his manners were polished, but to meet his eye was a thing I hated, and the touch of his hand made me shudder. While speaking in the politest possible manner, he ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Russell, a real estate salesman who had been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a fool ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... as everywhere along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind, we become drift-matter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women, who commonly allow the lead to men, getting it for themselves only by snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulity—the continued trust in the man—is the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... great admirer of the Saint of Umbria. It was a landscape that suggested asceticism. Crags of bluish or reddish rock lined the roadway on either side, with pines and cypresses rising from the hollows, and extending black, winding, snaky roots out over the fallow soil. At intervals, white shrines with tiny roofs harbored mosaics of glazed tiles depicting the Stations on the Via Dolorosa. The pointed green caps of the cypresses, as they waved, seemed bent on frightening away the white butterflies ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... must have thought that the situation called for the sudden and stern action he had taken. Of course, Nan Sherwood thought, that snaky-looking Mexican was not wearing those two silver-mounted pistols in ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... the world! The water of the great bay was absolutely calm. A red and green beacon marked the entrance to the basin. The city climbed a hill in the background, the houses shining white even in the dark, from the millions of lights that suggested a festival. What a waste of gas! Long snaky stripes of color came out over the surface of the water, flecked here with the harbor lights of a merchant vessel, there with the distinguishing marks of a man-o'-war. Off in this direction was the European city—the brightest section, the restaurants and bazaars ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... area where Hollisters cedars had stood was a red chaos out of which great flames leaped aloft and waved snaky tongues, blood-red, molten gold, and from which great billows of smoke poured away to wrap in obscurity all the hills beyond. There was nothing they could do now. They watched it ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... degrees, and threatening to engulf him bodily; and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... of the Silent Pools and from half a dozen other villages to the west. The ground here was different from the ground they had traversed in coming to the fort. This was boggy; here and there the foot sank with a sough into the pulp of morass and rotten leaves; the lianas were thinner and more snaky, the greenery, if possible, greener, and the air close and moist as the air of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... all the ills of it, The axe of sharp Detachment ye would whet, And cleave the clinging snaky roots, and lay This Aswattha ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... present to you and your mocking friends. But you, O my mother, and you, O my friends, avert your faces from what I have brought." Saying this Perseus drew out the Gorgon's head. Holding it by the snaky locks he stood before the company. His mother and his friends averted their faces. But Polydectes and his insolent friends looked full upon what Perseus showed. "This youth would strive to frighten us ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... thing alone they said, Beating and dinning at my head. I could not fly. I could not shun it. Slimily twisting, slow and blind, It crept and crept into my mind. Whispered and shouted, sneered and laughed, Screamed out until my brain was daft.... One snaky word, ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... from New York vanquished his last "fried in crumb," and victory perched upon his knife. Just then the gas-burners began to meander queerly before his eyes. Around and above him he beheld showers of glittering sparks,—snaky threads of light,—fantastic figures of fire,—jets of liquid lustre. He communicated, in confidence, to Mr. Glover, that his seat seemed to him of the nature of a rocking-chair operating viciously upon a steep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... death with chusing to suppose that I could get it into all the Reviews at a moment's notice.—I!! who have been set up as a mark for them to throw at and would willingly consign them all to Hell flames and Megaera's snaky locks. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... which there is an immense multiplication of vegetable growth that floats perpetually to the Bay, and is called "lilies," though having the look of small cabbages. The stream is almost as broad as the Ohio, and, in its snaky turns, crooked as the Mississippi. The banks seem to be prevented from washing away by the dense matting of grasses, and the overhanging thickets, imposing in luxuriance. The houses are close to the water, for the tidal river does ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... I'd not play harps, but horns When I chased the unicorns— Magic tubes with pistons greasy, Slides that pushed and pulled out easy, Cylinders of snaky brass Where the fingers like to fuss, Polished like a looking-glass, Ending in ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... was a painful sense that, unless he came up with her in time, something fearful would come to pass; but the ship would not sail. All around floated the sargasso beds, clogging her bows with their long snaky coils of weed; and still he tried to sail, and tried to fancy that he was sailing, till the sun went down and all was utter dark. And then the moon arose, and in a moment John Oxenham's ship was ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... arrived at a place well behind the line, and not at all wrecked, except for holes here and there. But the river! Oh my aunt! It's marvellous. It winds in and out of low hills, and as I saw it this evening, from an eminence, it looked more snaky than ever. Huge great loops with the lovely pale sedges on either side. The almost yellow hills are dotted with junipers. I long to see it to-morrow morning. There's no doubt it's one of the most fascinating rivers I've seen. Hooded crows sailing over the uplands, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... only exception to this style of hair dressing I saw was the manner in which Ci-ha-ne, a negress, had disposed of her long crisp tresses. Hers was a veritable Medusa head. A score or more of dangling, snaky plaits, hanging down over her black face and shoulders gave her a most repulsive appearance. Among the little Indian girls the hair is simply braided into a queue and tied with a ribbon, as we often see the hair upon the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... Juda's Land The dredded Infants hand, The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside, Longer dare abide, Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swadling bands controul ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... about over pots and stew-pans, getting supper; old Peter stood at the table peeling potatoes. In an arm-chair before the fire sat another old woman with snaky-black eyes, hooked nose, and ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... whatever it was that followed her. Hastily descending the cliff I ran to her assistance, when I saw Moira spring on to a flat rock upon which she generally landed from her canoe. At the same moment a snaky tentacle rose out of the sea and caught her, while other tentacles quickly enveloped her. The monster now dragged its shiny bulk upon the rock, and except in a nightmare surely no man had beheld such a creature before. It resembled a monstrous ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... streaming skipper, "that was a near thing for you and me when she shipped it. If I hadn't been on the right side of the mast, both on us must have gone." Dawn rose slowly; the sky became blotched with snaky tints of dull yellow and livid grey; the gale kept on, and the schooner was hove-to to meet a sea of terrifying speed and height. Two of the ladies were below, only craving to be left alone even by the stewardess; but the hideous ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... dust and sharp as needles, was caught up bodily by the wind in great masses—here in snaky coils, there in whirling eddies, elsewhere in rolling clouds; but these had barely time to assume indefinite forms when they were furiously scattered and swept away as by the besom of destruction, while earth and sky commingled in ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a sneering emphasis in her words, and the snaky black eyes gleamed like daggers on ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... along the pavement in a curved line. It may be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out of which he had once wrought a head ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... girl had bargained for. The fantastic shuffling and capering of the long-legged metis were wonderful to behold. The tassel of his long red tuque dangled and bobbed behind him like the pigtail of a Chinaman trying to imitate a dancing Dervish. His flushed face, long snaky black locks, and flashing eyes all spoke of the wild fever in his blood and his Gallic origin. Still, the girl noted he was not what might be termed an ill-looking fellow; he did not look bad-natured, nor was he in drink. He was merely ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... remembered when he had torn off and thrown away his jacket although the sticks of giant-powder which had been in his pocket lay near him upon the stone. Sparks leaped from the drill which Carroll held and fell among the coils of snaky fuse; but that did not trouble them; and it was only when Vane was breathless that he changed places with his companion. They heard neither the turmoil of the flood nor the crashing of the timber, and the foam that lapped their ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... exceedingly fierce and made the bristles of the spectators stand on their ends. And as those heroes endued with mighty energy fought on, the two mighty elephants, the Kurus beheld them with wonder. And those brave bulls among men assailed each other with arrows of snaky forms and resembling blazing fires. And as the couple of quivers belonging to the Pandava was inexhaustible, that hero was able to remain on the field immovable as a mountain. And as Aswatthaman's arrows, in consequence of his ceaseless discharge in that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were heavy and it seemed to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... humbly. I only wished he would not smile in such a detestable fashion and suddenly assault me with 'How are you now? All right, eh?' I suppose he was practising his English. And as the finishing touch was put on the washer with a thin, snaky file, he asked suddenly if ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... loudest; it whirled round and round the quaint castellated building, battering the gates and moving their heavy iron hinges to a most dolorous groaning; it flung rattling hailstones at the narrow windows, and raged and howled at every corner and through every crevice; while snaky twists of lightning played threateningly over the tall iron Cross that surmounted the roof, as though bent on striking it down and splitting open the firm old walls it guarded. All was war and tumult without:—but within, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... he first came from his hole on the morning of this story. He had lain all night coiled up like a rope among the rocks, and his tail felt very cold. But the glad sun warmed the cockles of his heart, and in an hour or two he became limber, and this made him happy in his snaky fashion. But, being warm, he began to be hungry, for it had been a whole month since he had eaten anything. When the first new moon of August came, his skin loosened everywhere and slipped down over his eyes like a veil, so that ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Confederates against the sovereign day, Children of older and yet older sires, Whose living coral berries dropped, as now On me, on many a baron's surcoat once, On many a beauty's wimple—would proceed No poison-tree, to thrust, from hell its root, Hither and thither its strange snaky arms. Why came I here? What must I do? [A bell strikes.] A bell? Midnight! and 'tis at midnight.... Ah, I catch —Woods, river, plains, I catch your meaning now, And I obey you! Hist! This ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... without noticing that he was watched by one who waited till he was out of sight, and then, though the door was open, preferred to enter by the window, leap on to a desk, and then slowly proceed from one to the other; not in a bold open way, but in a slinking, snaky, crawling fashion, as if about to spring upon some object ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... and fiercely driven as those terrible thorns were, they could do no more than dent his heavy armor. His powerful left arm, driving the double-razor-edged dirk in short, resistless arcs, managed to keep the snaky tendrils from coiling about his right arm, which was wielding the heavy, trenchant sword. Every time that mighty blade descended it cleaved its length through snapping spikes and impotently grinding leaves; but more than once a flailing ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... though at a depth of seven or eight fathoms. Ordinarily, these fish must be taken with a live bait; but, remembering my experience with the dolphin, I determined to try a carefully arranged strip of fish from one recently caught. In precisely the same way as the dolphin, these long, snaky rascals carefully tested the bait, lying still for sometimes as long as two minutes with the bait in their mouths, ready to drop it out on the first intimation that it was not a detached morsel. After these ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows to the other, I probably ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... lead color, streaked with foam, and the hissing of the whitecaps had a curiously snaky sound, as they spit water into the boat. The rocking had opened a seam in the bottom, and Lincoln was forced ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Wainwright had changed front with the speed of light and attacked with horse, foot and guns. She failed to see, she had declared, where this poor, lone girt was in great fault. Of course it was probable that she had listened to this snaky. tongued Rufus Coleman, but that was ever the mistake that women made. Oh, certainly ; the professor would like to let Rufus Coleman off scot-free. That was the way with men. They defended each other ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Almighty God, and afterward, horribile dictu, pitchforks for little Margaret, and a vivid incandescent state to be maintained through eternity at vast cost of pit-coal to a gentleman who carried over his arm, so as not to step on it, a long snaky tail with a point ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the moment he was under way, I started for him; when the space between us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked Sir Sagramor out of the saddle! Great Scott, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thus named had all the appearance of an original character. He was tall and thin as the blade of a rapier, with a cynical expression of countenance, and long snaky tresses of hair hanging down over his shoulders, like thongs ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... presence if unaddressed, and to go on with, although she did not understand one word in ten of what was being spoken, she gathered the gist of it, and this did not tend to compose her. She threw away the snaky stem of water-pipe, and gripped both hands on the trooper's sword, till the muscles stood out ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... had scarcely been uttered when there came the sounds of 'commotion on deck. A voice cried out in sharp command, the rudder chains creaked loudly, the ship heeled over to starboard, and then we who were at the open port saw a long, snaky object shoot out from the edge of the haze ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... hear his hoarse, strong voice above the roar of wind and waters. For the sea was rising like the gable of a house, but the yacht was in no trouble; she had held her own in far worse seas. In the morning the sky was of snaky tints of yellow and gray, but the wind had settled and the waves were flatting; but John saw bits of trailing wreckage floating about their black depths, making the Firth look ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... assume but valor's excrement, To render them redoubted. Look on beauty And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it; So are those curled, snaky golden locks, Which make such wanton gambols with the wind Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowers of a second head; The scull that bred them in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the treacherous shore To a most dangerous sea! Thou meagre lead casket, Which rather rebuffs than dost ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... rifle clattered down. I pulled myself together, absolutely mad with fear, because I kept on thinking of the last time I went on guard and the court martial and the death sentence. I ground my teeth and stared at the tree again. But the trunk began to wobble with snaky undulations and the green blur grew bigger and bigger in sudden jerks, while I tried frantically and desperately to keep it small. But it got the better of me and all at once it obscured everything with a rush and I dropped forward and knocked my ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... strangle, some would starve; But still it breathes, and passed from hand to hand, And suckled at a hundred half-clad breasts Comes slowly to its stature and its form, Calms the rough ridges of its dragon scales, Changes to shining locks its snaky hair, And moves transfigured into Angel guise, Welcomed by all that cursed its hour of birth, And folded in the same encircling arms That cast it like ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... evening, till a strong breeze blew them away, they were intolerable. Aunt Judy goes about in a dignified silence, too full for words, only asking two or three times, "W'at I dun tole you fum de fust?" The food is a trial. This evening the snaky candles lighted the glass and silver on the supper-table with a pale gleam and disclosed a frugal supper indeed—tea without milk (for all the cows are gone), honey, and bread. A faint ray twinkled on the water swishing against the house and stretching away into the dark woods. It looked like ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... laughed horribly, while the snaky moustache on his upper lip writhed as if it had truly a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the possibility of a supernatural appearance on the stage existed (says an old writer) about the beginning of the eighteenth century. A dance of infernals having to be exhibited, they were represented in dresses of black and red, with fiery eyes and snaky locks, and garnished with every pendage of horror. They were twelve in number. In the middle of their performance, while intent upon the figure in which they had been completely practised, an actor of some humour, who had been accommodated ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... discolored with tobacco. The eyes were light green, with the space which should have been white suffused with yellow and red. It was one of those gifted countenances which could change in a moment from a dog-like fawning to a snaky venomousness. ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... lain; blessed spirits adoring, float upward to God, while the abyss seizes its victims. Here one of the ascending spirits seeks to save his condemned brother, whom the abyss already embraces in its snaky folds. The children of despair strike their clenched fists upon their brows, and sink into the depths! In bold foreshortenings, float and tumble whole legions between heaven and earth. The sympathy of the angels, the expression of lovers who meet, the child that at the sound ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Mr. Thoburn, with his snaky eyes on me, "I think I may say that you might go almost anywhere without my turning out to recover you. But ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of ten or twelve years of age opened the door. The child's big black eyes, and long snaky locks falling about a pale face, gave her an elfish look quite in keeping with the character of the house. She at once ushered the callers into the front parlour, where a lady and gentleman were sitting, who proved to ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... forgiven. A moment later, however, the grim outlook before her presented itself again. There were two things for her to choose from; one was that fitly named Roaring River along whose bank the road wound its snaky trail and the other consisted in the cheap little pistol in her bag. Well, there might be comfort after all in this wild land, upon the scented fallen needles of the pines or under that pure white ice. Her features, which for a moment had become stony and hard, now ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... "Christabel" that stood before him in this infidel lady. A magnificent witch she was, like the Lady Geraldine; having the same superb beauty; the same power of throwing spells over the ordinary gazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to some solitary, unfascinated spectator the same dull blink of a snaky eye; and revealing, through the most fugitive of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what else to all others seemed the form of a lady, armed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in dolce far niente, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... darkened, and his eyes looked snaky, as though he would like to strike, but dared not. We motioned to him, and led the way to the small private room where Mr. Critchet was lying, and when he saw his uncle's wan features, he turned pale, and his ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... cased in the red leather boots of the country, with heavy silver spurs strapped over them. A black sombrero, with its band of gold bullion and tags of the same material, completed the tout ensemble of his costume. He wore neither beard nor moustache; but his hair, black and snaky, hung down trailing over the velvet embroidery of his manga. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Juda's land, The dreaded Infant's hand, The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide, Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. Our Babe, to shew his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling-bands control the ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... and Sheil would no more have dreamed of uttering the watchword of 'Repeal' in Gaelic than of uttering it in Zulu. Grattan could hardly have brought himself to believe that the real repeal of the Union would actually be signed in London in the strange script as remote as the snaky ornament of the Celtic crosses. It would have seemed like Washington signing the Declaration of Independence in the picture-writing of the Red Indians. Ireland has clearly grown away from England; and her language, literature, and type of patriotism are far less English than ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... heard them talking, and he stuck his head farther out of the shell, and he looked around with his snaky neck, and he came a little more out of the ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... who traded in the Piazza with fruit and indifferent photographs. Nothing went very well—thanks to that unspeakable old Marco! His girl grew longer and lazier and handsomer, with a shapelier bust and a pair of arms like that snaky Bacchante in the Opera. Maso had to quail more than he liked to admit before the proud stare of her eyes; and when she dropped the heavy lids upon them and sauntered away, arms akimbo under her ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... like his brother to come down to "brass tacks." If Lester were only as cautious as he was straightforward and direct, what a man he would be! But there was no guile in the man—no subtlety. He would never do a snaky thing—and Robert knew, in his own soul, that to succeed greatly one must. "You have to be ruthless at times—you have to be subtle," Robert would say to himself. "Why not face the facts to yourself when you are playing for big stakes?" He would, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... could have started and turned on him with a more tigerish quickness than they did, on hearing the first words that passed his lips. The next moment they were bowing and salaaming to him in their most polite and snaky way. After a few words in the unknown tongue had passed on either side, Mr. Murthwaite withdrew as quietly as he had approached. The chief Indian, who acted as interpreter, thereupon wheeled about again towards the gentlefolks. I noticed that ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... repaired to the place of meeting. The treaty which initiated the great league was then and there ratified by the representatives of the Canienga and Oneida nations. The name of Odatsehte means "the quiver-bearer;" and as Atotarho, "the entangled," is fabled to have had his head wreathed with snaky locks, and as Hiawatha, "the wampum-seeker," is represented to have wrought shells into wampum, so the Oneida chief is reputed to have appeared at this treaty bearing at his shoulder a ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... cry of myriad cranes; Its voice, the bolts that whistle through the air; Its dance, that bow whose arrows are the rains. It staggers at the winds, and seems to smoke With clouds, which form its black and snaky ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... the folds of the Kamlayka. But instead of getting up and looking his enemy in the face, he wriggled along on his belly, still under cover of the Kamlayka, till he got to the bear-skin, pushed it aside with a motion of the hooded head, and crawled out like some snaky symbol of darkness and superstition ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the eyes of Jakie grew more pronounced; grew even snaky, in the opinion of Happy Jack. "It is that I am no more permitted the privilege of preparing the food for fich I have the judgment, yes?" His voice purred too much to be convincing. "It is that I am no more the chef to ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... certain niceties of word adjustment to follow as for instance the substitution of "a thin dirk-slot" for "a dagger-slot," the word "thin" carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding lines—pauses ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... no Sphinx with golden nails ensnare, No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds, No Siren lull it ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... forbiddeth sleep! Close-clinging cares around my soul Enkindle fears beyond control, Presageful of what doom may fall From the great leaguer of the wall! So a poor dove is faint with fear For her weak nestlings, while anew Glides on the snaky ravisher! In troop and squadron, hand on hand, They climb and throng, and hemmed we stand, While on the warders of our town The flinty shower comes ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... trains flowing after them, appear to have adopted a sort of measured tread, by way of impressing a regular cadence upon the music of their feet. The chains of gold were exchanged, as luxury advanced, for strings of pearls and jewels, which swept in snaky folds ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... light, do those dismal things, Its gleam they dare not face. Their snaky writhings, their bat-like wings, Their quaking menace of fangs and stings Make ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... this way, with what thoughtfullness we should contemplate the Graces, the Muses, the Furies, the Fates, Nemesis, Vesta, Fortuna, Diana, Eris, Ceres, the majestic port of Juno, the frosty splendor of Minerva, the melting charm of Venus, the snaky horror of Medusa, Egvptian Isis, throned among the stars, and Scandinavian Hela, crouching in ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... to glose: Yet proud she was (for lofty Pride that dwells In tower'd courts, is oft in shepherds' cells), And too-too well the fair vermillion knew And silver tincture of her cheeks that drew The love of every swain. On her this god Enamour'd was, and with his snaky rod Did charm her nimble feet, and made her stay, The while upon a hillock down he lay, 400 And sweetly on his pipe began to play, And with smooth speech her fancy to assay, Till in his twining arms he lock'd her fast, And then he woo'd with kisses; and at last, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... third time by one of these balls he whipped round, picked it up in his mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just as a warning. At least, he thought it was a tiny pinch. The ball retaliated with unexpected ferocity. It twisted and turned. It emitted long, snaky spirals of some elastic substance, which clogged his teeth and tickled his throat and wound themselves round his tongue and nearly choked him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his mistress, who, with weeping and with laughter, removed the writhing horror from his ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... closely together in separated but compact battalions. Some, as the sound of a human footstep warns them of danger, rush for safety among the submerged clefts and crevices of their temporary retreat, only to be mercilessly and fatally enveloped by the snaky, viscous tentacles of the ever-lurking octopus, for every hole and pool among the rocks contains one or more of these hideously ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... she used to sit on the front-porch step nursing the baby, while he smoked or read, in the evenings: where they could see the salt marshes. Jane liked them, for their color: a dead flat of brown salt grass with patches of brilliant emerald, and the black, snaky lines up which the tide crept, the white-sailed boats looking as if they were wedged in the grass. She liked that. Her tastes were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the evidence on Joanna's trial; for Southey's "Joan" of A. Dom. 1796 (Cottle, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets, that she never in her life attended—1st, Mass; nor 2d, the Sacramental table; nor 3d, Confession. Here's a precious windfall for the doctors; they, by snaky tortuosities, had hoped, through the aid of a corkscrew, (which every D. D. or S.T.P. is said to carry in his pocket,) for the happiness of ultimately extracting from Joanna a few grains of heretical powder or small shot, which might have justified their singeing her a little. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... whirled, shot out its snaky length, and his trained horse braced himself skillfully to the black's weight on the rope. For a few minutes the animal at the loop end of the riata struggled desperately—plunging, tugging, throwing himself this way and that; but always the experienced cow-horse ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the grandmother squaw was even uglier than the grandchildren; a thousand and one lines seamed her coppery face, which was the colour of an old penny piece rather burnished from use. And she had eyes, Bob, little and wide apart, and black as sloes, with a snaky look. I don't think she ever took them off me, and 'twas no manner of use to stare at her in return. So, as I could not understand what they were saying,—gabbling a sort of patois of bad French and worse English, with a sprinkling of Indian,—and as the old lady's gaze was getting ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... land The dreaded Infant's hand; The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyen; Nor all the gods beside Longer dare abide Nor Typhon huge ending in snaky twine: Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in His swaddling ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... buttonless flannel shirt which revealed a hairy breast; upon his trousers hung a variety of patches, in many stages of grease and decrepitude; a gray slouch hat shaded his little fishy eyes and hollow, yellow cheeks; and the snaky ends of his yellow mustache were stiff with accumulations of dried tobacco juice. His fat, waddling wife, in a greasy black gown, followed with bare feet, and, arms akimbo, listened in ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... stretched himself. Then he flew up from the book with a hissing sound, like a radiant streak. Once more he turned around toward the scholar, and his head had already grown to the size of a barrel, while his body must have been a full fathom in length. He gave one more snaky twist, and then there was a terrible crash of thunder and the dragon went sailing through ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... the flash, and who were driven off only by a volley of musketry and a charge of grape. In 1860 a whaler and crew were attacked by their war-canoes sallying out from behind Scotchman's Head. These craft are of two kinds, one shaped like a horse- trough, the other with a lean and snaky head. The "Wrangler" lost two of her men near Zunga chya Kampenzi, and the "Griffon" escaped by firing an Armstrong conical shell. They have frequently surprised and kept for ransom the white agents, whom "o negocio" deterred from reprisals. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... at his stubby mustache and looked the bunch over. "You know that country?" he asked, still doubtfully. "Them Navvies are plumb snaky, lemme tell yuh. Ain't like the Pueblos—you're taking a risk when yuh ride into the Navvy country. They'll get yuh if they get a chancet; run off your horses, head yuh ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... revolution has failed,' he said; and walking across quite suddenly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away at last. And as I saw the long snaky tail of it disappear ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... slaughters wrought, At last they called for devouring fire, Two burning pines against the tower they brought, So from the palace of their hellish sire, When all this world they would consume to naught, The fury sisters come with fire in hands, Shaking their snaky locks and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Mortimer, not Edward's head For he's a lamb, emcompassed by wolves, Which in a moment will abridge his life. But, if proud Mortimer do wear this crown, Heavens turn it to a blaze of quenchless fire! Or, like the snaky wreath of Tisiphon, Engirt the temples of his hateful head! So shall not England's vine be perished, But Edward's name survive, though Edward dies. Leices. My lord, why waste you thus the time away? They stay your answer: will you yield your crown? K. Edw. Ah, Leicester, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... the woods and bushes, and fairly upon the broad prairie. Now and then a Shawanoe passed us, riding his little shaggy pony at a "lope"; his calico shirt, his gaudy sash, and the gay handkerchief bound around his snaky hair fluttering in the wind. At noon we stopped to rest not far from a little creek replete with frogs and young turtles. There had been an Indian encampment at the place, and the framework of their lodges still remained, enabling us very easily to gain ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... LINK." I was startled when I first saw it. It was—shall I say?—a man, and the mate, I cannot write the husband, of the ugly woman. It was about fifty. The lofty Aino brow had been made still loftier by shaving the head for three inches above it. The hair hung, not in shocks, but in snaky wisps, mingling with a beard which was grey and matted. The eyes were dark but vacant, and the face had no other expression than that look of apathetic melancholy which one sometimes sees on the faces of captive beasts. The arms and legs were unnaturally long and thin, and the creature sat with the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... heads prostrated in a manner which the Prince could hardly have thought possible. The other brute sprang right at the Prince himself, as if to destroy him, so that he was inclined to draw back; but the man Courage, who had run down from the castle, put his foot upon the creature's snaky neck, and crushed it ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... world below the earth, to which all we mortals must one day come, grant me to tell a simple tale and declare unto you the truth. Not to look upon the blackness of Tartarus have I come hither, nor yet to bind in chains the snaky heads on Cerberus. It is my wife I seek. A viper's sting has robbed her of the years that were her due. I should have borne my loss, indeed I tried to bear it, but I was overcome by Love, a god well known in the world above, and I think not without honor in your kingdom, unless the story ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the window sills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Jennie, who admired John greatly from her lowly sphere, and who for her own sake as well as Dorothy's was jealous of Queen Mary. "They do walk together a great deal on the ramparts, and the white snaky lady do look up into Sir John's face like this"—here Jennie assumed a lovelorn expression. "And—and ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... artificial life And manners finely wrought, the delicate race Of colours, lurking, gleaming up and down Through that state arras woven with silk and gold; 565 This wily interchange of snaky hues, Willingly or unwillingly revealed, I neither knew nor cared for; and as such Were wanting here, I took what might be found Of less elaborate fabric. At this day 570 I smile, in many a mountain solitude ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Pallas (Athena) wore on her shield the head of the snaky-haired monster Medusa, one ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... on circumstances. I must know first if Mr. Engelman has really set his heart on the woman with the snaky movements and the sleepy eyes. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... still current among negroes affected by the voodoo superstitions of the South. The witch, too, had the power of riding winds, usually with a broomstick for a conveyance, after she had smeared the broom or herself with magic ointment, and the flocking of the unhallowed to their sabbaths in snaky bogs or on lonely mountain tops has been described minutely by those who claim to have seen the sight. Sometimes they cackled and gibbered through the night before the houses of the clergy, and it was only at Christmas that their power failed them. The meetings ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... York City, is the home of the Standard Oil. Its countless miles of railroads may zigzag in and out of every State and city in America, and its never-ending twistings of snaky pipe-lines burrow into all parts of the North American continent which are lubricated by nature; its mines may be in the West, its manufactories in the East, its colleges in the South, and its churches in the North; its head-quarters may be in the centre of the universe ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... frogs sitting up on water-lily leaves; frogs with awful goggle eyes that looked at you out of the darkness of your bedroom for many, many nights afterwards. There were mud-turtles that paddled their queer little rafts right up to yours, and poked their dreadful snaky heads right up at you out of the water. And besides all the creepy, crawly things that swarmed down in the golden-brown depths and made your hair stand on end when your bare feet touched the water, there were thousands of frightful leggy things that wore skates and ran swiftly at you right ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... very next year (1851) Mr T.R. Crampton, with Messrs. Wollaston, Kuper, and others, made and laid an improved cable between Dover and Calais, and ere long many other parts of the world were connected by means of snaky submarine electric cables. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... now only a question of sturdy fighting and squirming one's way through the meshes of a gigantic basketwork of every variety of fantastic branch and stem and stout strangling thorn-set vine, made the denser with snaky roots—not merely twisting about one's feet, but dropping from the boughs in nooses and festoons for one's neck; air-plants too, like birds' nests, further choking up the meshes, and hanging moss, like rotting carpets, adding still more to the murk and ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... their right spread broad marshy lagoon after lagoon, in which swam, dived or waded, countless ducks and crane. Here, writhing its snaky neck and curious head and beak, was the flamingo, all white and rose; there, soft grey cranes and others, with a lovely crest, as if in imitation of the rays of ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... to look up that snaky lodger of Captain Boomsby's," answered Washburn. "There was certainly a lodger there, who furnished his own room, and ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... those days, when you could whip this from your side at a wrong done and have the life of the man that wronged you. The sweet morning air, the patch of green turf, shoes off—in shirt and breeches—with the eyes of the man you hate in front of you, and this glittering, beautiful, snaky thing thirsting for his heart's blood. And then—"—he stood in tierce, left hand curved, holding in tense fierceness the eyes of an imaginary opponent—"and then a little clitter-clatter of steel, ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... his way up the avenue towards the Villa Mimosa, wondered whether he was not indeed finding his way into fairyland. On either side of him were drooping mimosa trees, heavy with the snaky, orange-coloured blossom whose perfumes hung heavy upon the windless air. In the background, bordering the gardens which were themselves a maze of colour, were great clumps of glorious purple rhododendrons, drooping clusters of red and white roses. A sudden turn revealed a long pergola, smothered ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... loved theirs, will feel at once the grand political significance of such a scene, in which patriotism and religion become one—and feel, too, the exquisite dramatic effect of the innocent, the weak, the unwarlike, welcoming among them, without fear, because without guilt, those ancient snaky-haired sisters, emblems of all that is most terrible and most inscrutable, in the destiny of nations, of families, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley |
