"Clawed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... along and peered into a small clearing just ahead. A lion was prancing about clawing at his mane, which was all snarled and full of blackberry twigs. The more he clawed the worse it became and the madder he grew and the more he yelled at himself, because it was himself he was yelling at all ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... wood, trying to daunt him, Led him confused in circles through the brake. He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking; Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!' Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom, Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... embarrassing abundance, and mingled with an incessant rain of sand and water. In the midst of this the demon suddenly passed away, striking the table as he went, so that it was scarred with the brand of a five-clawed hand, shattering all the objects upon it (excepting the stone and the books, which he doubtless regarded as sacred to some extent), and leaving the room involved ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... entering, saw Niccolosa astride of Calandrino. The former, seeing the lady, started up in haste and taking to flight, made off to join Filippo, whilst Dame Tessa fell tooth and nail upon Calandrino, who was still on his back, and clawed all his face; then, clutching him by the hair and haling him hither and thither, 'Thou sorry shitten cur,' quoth she, 'dost thou then use me thus? Besotted dotard that thou art, accursed be the weal I have willed thee! Marry, seemeth it to thee thou hast not enough to do at home, that thou must ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... if you please," said the usher, suppressing a grin by an heroic effort, as Mrs. Hornby, encumbered by her purse, her handkerchief and the Testament, struggled to unfasten her bonnet-strings. She clawed frantically at her bonnet, and, having dusted the Testament with her handkerchief, kissed it tenderly and laid it on the rail of the box, whence it fell instantly on to ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... untroubled on top. Old Whetstone was as wet at the end of ten minutes as if he had swum a river. He grunted with anger as he heaved and lashed, he squealed in his resentful passion as he swerved, lunged, pitched, and clawed the air. ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... whirlwind of hysteria shook the room. While the choir boys sprinkled holy water on the pontiff's nakedness, women rushed upon the Eucharist and, grovelling in front of the altar, clawed from the bread humid particles and drank and ate ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... rate, curving back her trunk and "roomping" out the perturbation of her spirit, she reared on her hind-legs, boosted herself upon the roof of the house, and clawed aft. This auto-shifting of cargo lifted the bow of the little schooner. Her jibs, swashing soggily about her bow, were hoisted out of the water, and a gust bellied them. On the pivot of her buried stern the Dobson swung like a top just as twin ledges threatened ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... all but striking the brick walls each side, and she was muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists and gave it a grip,—just twist enough to make the other hand come after his; and then he caught them both. She spit and kicked; it was all ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... river- course for the flooding freshets of corn. It is so built that both railway vans and vessels come immediately under its claws, as I may call the great trunks of the elevators. Out of the railway vans the corn and wheat is clawed up into the building, and down similar trunks it is at once again poured out into the vessels. I shall be at Buffalo in a page or two, and then I will endeavor to explain more minutely how this is done. At Chicago the corn is bought and does change hands; and much of it, therefore, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... swoop from behind greeted the proud thought; two hands clawed at his shoulders, and from his shoulders slipped to his waist, and from his waist slid down to his ankles, where for a moment they held, and sent the runner tripping over on his nose in the mud, with the ball spinning away ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... go his black with a yell as Nicanor released the gray, and the two beasts leaped at each other and closed in the middle of the ring, rolling over. Men clawed over one another's shoulders to see better; at opposite sides of the ring the owners squatted, each urging on his animal with hisses and clapping hands. The light from the smoking lamps and candles fell upon the crowd, throwing ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... I tell thee. For it would be as reasonable to expect a grizzled painter like thee to be fond of getting a javelin inside thee as to expect a man whose wits have been sharpened on the classics to like having his handsome face clawed by a wild beast." ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... more than ever in the mood for joyous company, Gonzague turned to re-enter the supper-room, but the hunchback clawed at him and brought him to a halt. Gonzague stared at his follower in a bewilderment which the hunchback proceeded partially to enlighten. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... go of his grip on the knees and clawed for the man's throat. Scotty concentrated on the Sten gun, grabbing the hot ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... laces at her throat, and clawed out a pendant that hung to a velvet band around her neck. I fairly gasped when she removed her hand. A sapphire of irregular shape flashed out its blue lightning on us. Such a stone! A true, rich, cornflower blue even by that wretched artificial light, with soft velvety ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... there chanced to be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw—the very same that had clawed together so much wealth—poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamed Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... that darkness was before light and that the latter had its birth from mice about the fifth generation at the new moon; and moreover that the liver of this creature diminishes in the wane of the moon. But they consecrate the lion to the sun, because the lioness alone, of all clawed four-footed beasts, brings forth her young with their eyesight; for they sleep in a moment, and when they are asleep their eyes sparkle. Besides, they place gaping lions' heads for the spouts of their fountains, because Nilus overflows the Egyptian fields ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... black kitten. I carried her home in my apron, a little ball of black fur, with bright blue eyes that turned yellow as she got bigger, and a white spot on her breast shaped like a diamond. I remember she spit and clawed at me all the way home, and made frantic efforts to escape, and for a day or two was quite homesick and miserable; but she soon grew accustomed to her surroundings, and was so sprightly and playful that she became the ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... on a central thick leg having a three-clawed foot was in that chamber, covered with a cloth on which was worked a picture from the story of Ruth. But only puzzling bits of the latter were to be seen, for on the circumference of the table-cover were books, placed at precise distances apart, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... doing some digging at the time, night-work, up forward, in clay so glutinous it would not leave the shovels and had mainly to be clawed out by hand—filthy, back-breaking, heart-rending labour. On calling the roll one dawn I found that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... Coon said. "Don't you remember that crows' eggs are a blueish green? That must have been a goshawk's nest. And a goshawk is the fiercest of all the hawks there are. It's no wonder your back is clawed. Come here and let me look ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... neck of the other, and the rostrum bent quite in an attitude of defiance, and looking most ridiculous. Another time, two were fighting for a female, who stood close by busy at her boring. They pushed at each other with their rostra, and clawed and thumped, apparently in the greatest rage, although their coats of mail must have saved both from injury. The small one, however, soon ran away, acknowledging himself vanquished. In most Coleoptera the female is larger than the male, and it is therefore ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... boys, this country ain't no place fer a white man," he volunteered. "When y'ain't freezin' ye're burnin' up, an' that's what happens in hell!" He spat a stream of tobacco juice over the wagon wheel and clawed his beard, his brown face twisted quizzically. "God A'mighty ain't nowheres near here! He didn't come this fur West—stopped down to Rat Portage![1] Well, anyways, good luck to ye both; but ef ye don't git it, young fellers, don't ye go blamin' me, by Jupiter!" He ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... just at the moment when his first spring had spent itself, he was no match for the protector of the herd. No bone could resist the impact of those heavy terrible hoofs. No skull was thick enough to save. The cougar squealed, clawed, and bit wildly, but in an incredibly quick space he was trampled to death and lay quite still. The boys believed that every bone in him ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... died in childbirth. And then swiftly, unaccountably, all these gentle or genial influences were scattered as if by something hellish, something diabolic. The face of the sweet little woman became fiendish in line. Her lips snarled, her hands clawed like those of a cat, and out of her mouth came a hoarse imprecation. "I'll tear your heart out!" she snarled. "I'll kill you soul and body—I'll rip you limb from limb!" We all recoiled in amazement and wonder. It was as if our friend ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... American eagle in its glorious flight. The eagle has alighted on some mountain top and the poor Negro has been seen climbing up the rugged mountain side, eager to caress the eagle. When he has attempted to do this, the eagle has clawed at his eyes and dug his beak into his heart and has flown away in disdain; and yet, so majestic was its flight that the Negro, with tears in his eyes, and blood dripping from his heart has smiled and shouted: ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... of the United States and the autographs of the famous men named above,—is accompanied by no drawings; but it contains a detailed specification which shows that the invention consisted in an arrangement by which, at each forward movement, a prolongation of the piston rod clawed into an endless chain, which was pulled back by the return stroke. This chain passed around a wheel, to which it consequently imparted ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... themselves into loathsome forms; and poisonous weeds rankle along the ground. Evil vermin are creeping along through them. Beside him Death is riding on a wasted pony; from behind the form of a devil stretches over its clawed arm toward him. Both horse and dog look strangely, as it were infected by the hideous objects that surround them; but the knight rides quietly along his way, and bears upon the tip of his lance a lizard that he has already speared. A castle, with its ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus use their tails, which incline downward, as a support while they run up trees. Parrots, like all other hooked-clawed birds, walk awkwardly, and make use of their bill as a third foot, climbing and descending with ridiculous caution. All the gallinoe parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly, but fly with difficulty, with ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... listened for a moment and then rapidly began to gather large rocks and pile them within the entrance. He had almost closed the aperture when the lion appeared upon the inside—a very ferocious and angry lion that pawed and clawed at the rocks and uttered mighty roars that caused the earth to tremble; but roars did not frighten Tarzan of the Apes. At Kala's shaggy breast he had closed his infant eyes in sleep upon countless nights in years gone by to the savage chorus of similar roars. Scarcely a day or ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... though," he added, casting an embracing glance over the primordial landscape and listening for a moment to the woman's mournful notes. "Her man was clawed by a bear, and she's ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and he clawed at it furiously with bleeding hands while twice the bowsprit raked a sea and dipped him waist-deep in. At length the other man flung him the end of the gasket, and they worked back carefully, leaving the sail lashed ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... struggle, bit and clawed at the snow and bushes about it, and actually came almost to the feet of the shrinking girls; but they were safe from harm, for the shot had come ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... Indeed, there were the same extravagant gestures and contortions as attend wounds and deaths in war; the very same uncanny cessations of speech—for the trombone was cut off at midslide, even as a man drops with a syllable on his tongue. They clawed, they slapped, they fled, leaving behind them a trophy of banners and brasses crudely arranged round the big drum. Then that end of the street also shut its windows, and the village, stripped of life, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... shoes; Euterpe abandoning her flute for jazz. She sat at the piano, a red-haired young lady whose familiarity with the piano had bred contempt. Nothing else could have accounted for her treatment of it. Her fingers, tipped with sharp-pointed and glistening nails, clawed the keys with a dreadful mechanical motion. There were stacks of music sheets on counters and shelves and dangling from overhead wires. The girl at the piano never ceased playing. She played mostly ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... The American clawed at the edge of the massive frame, but all to no avail. Then he raised his sword and slashed the canvas, hoping to find a way into the place beyond, but mighty oaken panels barred his further progress. With a whispered oath he ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Perhaps seeing Mason had brought it to a head. The fifth of bourbon in the bottom desk drawer was partly gone from the party last month. He took a swallow neat, and the fire of the liquid burned and clawed its way down his throat and spread with blossoming warmth ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... verse [75] is a further persiflage of the old song. Its reading, too, is changed. It is said there that age, with his stealing steps, as clawed the lover in his clutch [76] and shipped him into the land as if he ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... "here have you been missing all this time, and by your own showing you've been nearly bitten by snakes and clawed by a leopard, suffocated, swallowed up, stuck on a bit of a bridge across a hole that goes down to the middle of the earth, and last of all nearly scorched like a leaf in a fireplace by that puff which came at us. And now, as soon as you have had a bite and sup, you look as ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... wrenching those claws from his lacerated throat, and forced his way up on to one knee. He felt no hatred toward this crazed man striving to kill him; he understood what had loosed such a raging devil. But this was no time to exhibit mercy; Murphy bit and clawed, and Hampton could only dash in upon him in the effort to force him back. He worked his way, inch by inch, to his feet, his slender figure rigid as steel, and closed in upon the other; but Murphy writhed out of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... burying itself for half its length; and Norah, taken altogether by surprise, executed a graceful header over the bow of the boat. The mud received her softly, and clung to her with affection; and for a moment, face downward among the reeds, Norah clawed for support, like a crab suddenly beached. Then, somehow, she scrambled to a sitting position, up to her waist in mud and water—and rocked with laughter. A little way off, the boat swayed gently on the ruffled ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... disadvantage. He launched himself sidewise; he didn't even have time to howl. He fell over his own splay feet as he ran, butted into chairs and tables, twisted, turned, whirled, dodged, but always presented just the right spot to be clawed. He couldn't dash to the door and escape: the cats were too swift for him. They kept their bewildered victim circling around ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... surprised Jimmie, as he wriggled to get free. Without a word, the woman who had been suffering from his brutality, now sprang upon the rescuing policeman with the fury of a lioness robbed of her cub. She clawed at the bluecoat's face and cursed him ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... us spoke, and the car stormed on, sobbing. For a moment she clawed in vain at something, and then stumbled, as if on her knees, up the farther bank. Dripping water and puffing steam she climbed to the high-road again, and, with a bound, started on through spouting mud, as if nothing had ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... rocking of a deserted swing. This sensation was quite perceptible to the girl who leaned over the bow-rail, her handkerchief pressed to her nose, and gazed interestedly at the steep bank, up and down which the sweating coolies swarmed like Gargantuan rats. They clawed and scrambled up and slid and shuffled down; and always the bank threatened to slip and carry them all into the swirling murk below. A dozen torches were stuck into the ground above the crumbling ledge; she saw the flames as one sees a burning match cupped in a smoker's hands, shedding light ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... muffled up to our noses under the lee of a square of canvas seized to the mizzen shrouds. Presently he roared into my ear, "Sort of a night for a pannikin of coffee, eh, Mr. Russell?" "Ay, ay, sir," I replied, and with that, liberating myself from the rope, I clawed my way along the line of the hencoops—the decks sometimes sloping almost up and down to the heavy weather scends of the huge black billows,—and descended into the midshipmen's berth. It was not the first ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... like long-clawed scavengers To touch the covered corpse of him that fled The uplands for the fens, and rioted Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers? Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse To tell the story of the life he led. Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead, And let ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were about me in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamouring, yelling, shivering in their nakedness and hunger. The piece of money I had put into the claw of the child I had over-turned was clawed out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish gripe, and again out of that, and soon I had no notion in what part of the obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and arms and dirt, the money might be. In raising the child, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... on the steel door. The scratches were deep in the paint, and seemed to radiate toward the shiny nickel dial of the combination. "Scratches!" repeated Mr. Merkel, coming over to look. "No, I never noticed them before. Why, she is clawed up some," he admitted. "But I can't say that they haven't been there since I got the safe, which was just before the round-up. Yes, she sure is clawed up some," and he spoke as if some mountain lion had done the ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... He clawed wildly at the choking coils, but they failed to loosen even a fraction of an inch. Desperately Blake sent his fists smashing into the gray face. The scale armor of Zehru's skull, fast weakening in the liquefying influence of the oxygen, gave way beneath that battering ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... and sounded the expected note of sympathy; but Madame de Chantelle's alarm had dispelled her habitual imprecision, and, though she had not many reasons to advance, her argument clung to its point like a frightened sharp-clawed animal. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... patrician. Omar Ben eyed him in a sort of wondering awe. The stranger was a long-barreled, rumple-furred, devil-clawed street arab, of a caste—or no-caste—that battles for existence with the world—and beats it. On his tail were rings of missing fur, suggesting former attachments, not of lady friends, but of tin cans and strings. For further assets, he possessed one eye ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... did so with some assistance from Harriet, who clawed at the roots of the tree and pushed with her hands until she finally got to the top once more. Reaching there she got up and surveyed the work ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... ropes knotted till my hands and feet swelled, till the cords cut into my flesh. I was abused, my clothing torn till I was half naked. I was whacked and clawed till I was bleeding in a dozen places; I was reviled, jeered at and threatened. Trussed like a fowl to be roasted, I was half hustled half dragged, almost carried, down into the courtyard. From there, after no long wait, I was haled ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of a large dog for a voluble pack of small ones. He was a massive, weather-beaten man, who looked very like Ann in some ways and would have looked more like her but for the misfortune of having had some of his face clawed away by an irritable jaguar with whom he had had a difference some years back in the ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... created in a Bronte brain. The two children were twenty-four and twenty-two when the financial avalanche of '93 thundered across the continent sweeping Herman Handle, a mere speck, into the debris. Stocks and bonds and real estate became paper, with paper value. He clawed about with frantic, clutching fingers but his voice was lost in the shrieks of thousands more hopelessly hurt. You saw him sitting for hours together with a black tin box in front of him, pawing over papers, scribbling ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... eight inches, for it extends four inches below the four-inch parapet above, and this lower portion is worked into a foliage enwreathing the sides. The whole height of the table from the feet of its four-clawed pedestal, is three feet two inches. This pedestal, or rather branching stem of polished oak—being of the sturdy contour of its original growth, with its superb ramifications supporting the precious slab above—shows an elaborate design ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... only laughed, pushing the women on one side, and saying, "Be quiet, Poll;"—"Don't be foolish, Molly;"—"Out of the way, Sukey; we a'n't come to take away your fancy man;" with expressions of that sort, although the blood trickled down many of their faces, from the way in which they had been clawed. Thus we attempted to force our way through them, but I had a very narrow escape even in this instance. A woman seized me by the arm, and pulled me towards her; had it not been for one of the quarter-masters I should have been separated from ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... high enough to be extending a hand for a hold on a crotch, Alice grasped his leg near the foot and pulled him down, despite his clinging and struggling, until his hands clawed in the soft earth at the tree's root, while she held his captive leg ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... daylight hath broken. Hold up thy face to the sky, man, and say 'I WILL win through this, so help me God!' and having said it, stick to it, even as Nero would have stuck to yon lion's throat until he was clawed away in shreds. Come, try ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... takin' her fling afore wedlock. I heard Sarah Ann Nanjulian, just now, sayin' she ought to be clawed." ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... came unawares upon a grizzly bear, which, having just eaten a buffalo bull, had lain down to sleep off the meal. The bear rose on his hind legs, and gave the intruder such a blow with his paw that he laid his forehead entirely bare, clawed off the front of his scalp, and narrowly missed one of his eyes. Fortunately he was not in a very pugnacious mood, being surfeited with his late meal. The man's companions, who were close behind, raised a shout and the bear walked away, crushing down ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... attempt was made the bear suddenly clawed at it and tore it from the boy's hand before he could jerk it beyond his reach. So he was ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... and daws swagger in their walk; wood- peckers fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus use their tails, which incline downward, as a support while they run up trees. Parrots, like all other hook-clawed birds, walk awkwardly, and make use of their bill as a third foot, climbing and ascending with ridiculous caution. All the gallinae parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly; but fly with difficulty, with an impetuous whirring, and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Tasper clawed his hand over his head and the crest of his pompadour bristled more horrently. "He could at least try to undo some of the trouble he has caused by his tongue. He could be at City Hall, where he belongs. The fact that he isn't there—that he ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... struck out at the two men who were striving to bind him. They were husky chaps, and one of them packed the wallop of a real fighter. Neither man said a word to him, and when his own hands clawed at them—how would he dare strike out with his fists?—the men made queer animal sounds in their throats. Bentley could well remember how helpless, hopeless and lost he had felt when his brain had been in the skull-pan ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... wanted to stop then but she badgered him into continuing. Now he was the hero, Gregg Mason, battling the unspeakable fiend and she shivered uncontrollably as she watched them struggle to the death. In a last, desperate, superhuman effort, Gregg's hands clawed into the monster's body and ripped out the foul, quivering heart of it. The creature twisted to the ground and perished in its own slime. Gregg, torn and bleeding and with shock-frozen eyes, turned and staggered into the ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... their interest at once. They will talk about you with a certain personal pride to all their acquaintances. 'Man I know intimately, fellow called Blenkinthrope, lives down my way, had two of his fingers clawed clean off by a lobster he was carrying home to supper. Doctor says entire hand may have to come off.' Now that is conversation of a very high order. But imagine walking into a tennis club with the remark: 'I know a man who ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... only met the peculiarities that lay on the surface, the eccentricities which each of us displays to his neighbors in social life. This woman, who, if closely studied, would have shown the most savage traits of the peasant class, was still the girl who had clawed her cousin's nose, and who, if she had not been trained to reason, would perhaps have killed her in ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... buildings connected by the rolling slidewalks, to the gleaming crystal Tower, the symbol of man's conquest of space. And beyond the Tower building, Tom saw a spaceship blasting off from the spaceport, her rockets bucking hard against thin air as she clawed her way spaceward. When it disappeared from sight, he followed it with his mind's eye and it became the Polaris, his ship! He and Roger and Astro were blasting through the cold black ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... the wind came up, and Amory started as the wet branches moved and clawed with their finger-nails at the window-pane. Tom was deep in his work, and inside the room only the occasional scratch of a match or the rustle of leather as they shifted in their chairs broke the stillness. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... shaft, but rushed straight on it, spitting himself through and through, while his axe fell; but I had wrenched myself and the shaft at once to one side, and he fell over, burying the axe head in the ground but an inch from the collier's foot. Yet had he not done with me, for, leaving the axe, he clawed the ashen shaft and dragged himself up along it, howling, not with the pain, but with madness, and I must needs smite him with my sword, for his dagger was ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... a deep wicker chair, over which was thrown his first tiger-skin, and his weight on the cushion flapped the clawed paws over his shoulders. He laid hold of them mechanically as he spoke, drawing the painted hide, cloak-fashion, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... For, not to speak of other difficulties, there was one which it would have puzzled an older man than Perseus to get over. Not only must he fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... grasp of the winged creatures' long, clawed hands Chet was helpless. He was struggling vainly when they released their hold and he felt himself falling into a pit that, as far as he knew, was a bottomless abyss. He was still struggling to right himself in mid-air ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... Meyers' hands were peculiar hands for a fat man. They were tapering, slender, delicate, blue-veined, temperamental hands. At this moment, despite his purpling face, and his staring eyes, they were the most noticeable thing about him. His fingers clawed the empty air, quivering, vibrant, as though poised to clutch ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... deadens the senses, like the brief numbness that follows the sudden cutting off of a limb, the pain not manifesting itself until some time afterward. But with me, the fact of Jim's death clawed and tore at the very foundation of my brain. It stamped itself into my sensibilities with such crushing force that I writhed under the burden of its bitter actuality. I felt as though I, myself, had died and my spirit, snatched from the ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... and mist, only a band of threatening smoke-red remaining behind the towers and cupolas of the city on its mountain-top, and the sound of church bells floated across the precipice from Urbania, I almost expected, at every turning of the road, that a troop of horsemen, with beaked helmets and clawed shoes, would emerge, with armor glittering and pennons waving in the sunset. And then, not two hours ago, entering the town at dusk, passing along the deserted streets, with only a smoky light here and ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... noosing the cat's neck. That sadly molested animal jumped, rolled over, and clawed at the rope, and left hurriedly with the bit of ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the muskrat differs but little from the beaver. It is a thick, rounded, and flat-looking animal, with blunt nose, short ears almost buried in the fur, stiff whiskers like a cat, short legs and neck, small dark eyes, and sharply-clawed feet. The hinder ones are longest, and are half-webbed. Those of the beaver ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... and another, it was almost a quarter past five before daylight began to glimmer in the parlour. It found him on his knees—not in prayer, nor in thanksgiving, but eagerly feeling over the grey pile of rubbish and digging into it with clawed fingers. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... that it might trip his antagonist. Then he set his lips as he met the shock. Charnock struck him with his shoulder and forced him backwards by the weight of the bag. The mud slipped under his feet; he staggered and clawed at the bank, but his fingers found no hold. They plowed through the miry gravel, and falling face downwards, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... think so," Bob said. He stooped, with a quick movement, and picked her up, holding her across his shoulder, while she beat and clawed unavailingly at his back. So holding her, he thrust back the bolt of Cecilia's ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... looking as though he wanted to drop the push-pole on the spur of the moment; "get your gun, Lil Artha, why don't you? Mean to let a feller be jumped on, and clawed something awful, do you? I give you my word that if I see a wildcat comin' for me, I'll jump overboard, and let him tackle the rest of you in the boat, that's what. Get your gun, Lil Artha; they're vicious you must know, specially ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... Miss Van Brock's temper was little less than angelic, exhibiting itself under provocation only in guarded pin-pricks of sarcasm, or in small sharp-clawed kitten-buffetings of repartee. But she was at no pains to conceal her scornful disappointment when David Kent made known his doubts concerning his moral right to use the weapon ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... frightened household on the distant farm; pictured children standing at a window, waiting for him. He suddenly had in her eyes the heroism of a wireless operator on a ship in a collision; of an explorer, fever-clawed, deserted by his bearers, but ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... you understand. It was you—you yourself. I saw the same soul in your frightened eyes. You looked white and bonny and wonderful in the firelight. I had just one thought in my head—to get you awa' with me; to keep you all to mysel' in my own home somewhere beyond the hills. You clawed at my face with your nails. I heaved you over my shoulder, and I tried to find a way oot of the light of the burning hoose and back into ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he might have clawed 'em a bit," admitted the man with the gun. "And perhaps it's jest as well I come along when I did. You folks live around here? Don't seem ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... the anxiety I felt through all that day. I could not eat, nor drink, nor write. I could not smoke, and when I tried to go to sleep that cat—an apoplexy on her!—climbed up on my shoulder and clawed my hair, Mariuccia sat moaning in the kitchen and could not cook at all, so that I ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... his forehead thumped the ground. Lame Foot's woman threw him a bone, hitting him fairly on the shoulder. The blow went unheeded, and he gave no thought to the pickings. The dogs, returning, fought over him. He only clawed the earth in an effort to lie flat. The bone yielded to the strongest and fiercest, the other curs leaped about him, licking at his hair. Now he ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... that cat alone," the old horse Ebenezer advised him. "Don't you remember how she clawed you when you cornered her ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... to death! Froggy 'who would a-wooing go,' return quickly to your mother, without making any impertinent remarks about 'gammon and spinach' on the way, or something much more savage than the 'lily-while duck' will surely gobble you up! Stay in doors patiently, until sunrise sends the rough-clawed prowler ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... ears. But as it was, they would have done a wiser and more benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife, without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done would have been slight, compared to that of letting him have his will ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... puppy-scream of indignation. He slashed ankle and foot as he received the second kick in mid-air; and, although he slid clear down the slope of deck into the scuppers, he left on the black skin the red tracery of his puppy-needle teeth. Still screaming his indignation, he clawed his way back up the steep ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... to patting them, or you'll get your hands clawed up. Tigers do purr like fun when they are happy, but these fellers never are, and you'll only see 'em spit and snarl," said Ben, leading the way to the humpy carrels, who were peacefully chewing their cud and longing for the desert, with a dreamy, far-away ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... longer period was spent in the cackling consultation, which at length came to an end, not as before in their passing on to another place, but by the whole flock setting to, and with their great clawed feet scratching up the sand, which they scattered in clouds and ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... on the heavy jowled man. Like lightning he lifted his heavy lance, and drove it with a powerful arm squarely into the breast of the advancing brute. It sank a full foot into the blubbery flesh, and, while the stricken bear clawed vainly at the wound and sought to push himself along toward the man, Abud held the spear firmly as in a vise, so that the animal literally impaled itself. With a gush of blood, it sank motionless to ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... opulent shelves Littered with porcelain beyond price: Imari pots arrayed themselves Beside Ming dishes; grain-of-rice Vied with the Royal Satsuma, Proud of its sallow ivory beam; And Kaga's Thousand Hermits lay Tranced in some punch-bowl's golden gleam. Over bronze censers, black with age, The five-clawed dragons strife engage; A curled and insolent Dog of Foo Sniffs at ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... snow, but the fore end rested on something and I leaned down and seized my blanket. There was a bag of food beneath it that I tried to reach, but perhaps I shook the sledge, which began to slip down, and I saw the dogs roll among the traces as they were dragged towards the hole. The leader clawed desperately at the snow, howling as if he begged my help, and I felt that I must save him. You have heard a dog howl in ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... have caught it, but the moment he set off he lamed himself, against a stump which lay concealed in the long grass. We afterwards saw the dung of an animal which fed upon grass, and which we judged could not be less than a deer; and the footsteps of another, which was clawed like a dog, and seemed to be about as big as a wolf; we also tracked a small animal, whose foot resembled that of a polecat or weasel. The trees over our head abounded with birds of various kinds, among which were many of exquisite beauty, particularly loriquets and cockatoos, which flew in flocks ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the name of Allah,' said he, 'let all present stand around me, and mark what I do.' He dug into the ground with his dagger, clawed the soil away with his hands, and discovered a place in which were the remains of an earthen vessel, and the marks near it of there ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... shrill screech, Smarlinghue sprang from his chair, and clawed like a demented man at the other's hands for ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret, (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?) No poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding does you but ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... abroad. But these vessels were not entirely defenseless. Their iron-driven ultra-generators threw out screens of the Nevians' own formulae, screens of prodigious power to which the energies of the amphibians clung and at which they clawed and tore in baffled, wildly coruscant displays of power unthinkable. For minutes the furious conflict raged, while the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those straining screens hurled itself in terribly destructive bolts of lightning ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... day—I have signs—a mortal storm Is coming from the far north. Everywhere is the smell of corpses. The great killing begins. The lump of sky grows dark, Storm-death lifts its clawed paws; All the lumps fall down, Mimes burst. Girls explode. Horses' stables crash to the ground. Not a fly can escape. Handsome homosexuals roll Out of their beds. The walls of houses develop fissures. Fish ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... drunk together Maria produced the gold "tape." Zerkow's eyes glittered on the instant. The sight of gold invariably sent a qualm all through him; try as he would, he could not repress it. His fingers trembled and clawed at his mouth; his ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... unearthly shriek Berry clawed at his temples.... For a moment he rocked to and fro agonisedly. Then he ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... showing the serpent in situ. He also quotes the case of a woman who conceived by a mariner, and who, after nine months, was delivered by a midwife of a shapeless mass, followed by an animal with a long neck, blazing eyes, and clawed feet. Ballantyne says that in the writings of Hippocrates there is in the work on "Diseases", which is not usually regarded as genuine, a some what curious statement with regard to worms in the fetus. It is affirmed that flat worms develop in the unborn infant, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... intellectooal children, I rise and git up, ontramelled by any politikle alliances, to say: that when you fellers git on a mussy fit, like the old woman who undertook to pick her chickens by runnin' them through a patent hash cutter, you make the feathers fly, and leave your victims in a hily clawed up stait. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... instead of the neck—and found no fleshy hold, and while they twisted and writhed with weird incoherencies of sound going up in the smother of dust, Bas Rowlett felt the closing of iron fingers on his throat. While he clawed and gripped and kicked to break the strangle, his eyes seemed to swell and burn and start from their sockets, and the patch of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... his hind-feet and dragged violently down and across to the deep "hover" near his home. The salmon had at last outwitted the vole. The current was strong, and beneath its weight Brighteye's body was bent backwards till his fore-paws rested on the salmon's head. Mad with rage and fright, he clawed and bit at the neck of his captor. Gradually his strength was giving way, and for want of air he was losing consciousness, when, like a living bolt, Lutra, the otter, to save unwittingly a life that she had erstwhile threatened, shot from the darkness of the river-bed, and ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... Thing was fighting, he could not identify it with Ortiz himself. One of the hands unclosed from about the revolver and clawed at his throat. It seemed to abandon that effort and attacked Ortiz's face in a frenzy of rage, struggling to claw his eyes open. The other held the weapon ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... subjects invented them, to give variety of amusement to his mind. From the court they passed into private families. And here the same avaricious spirit fastened upon them, and, with its cruel talons, clawed them, as it were, to its own purposes, not caring how much these little instruments of cheerfulness in human disease were converted into instruments for the extension ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... billow of her hair, as the dark of the trees feels her fear? And over the cradle what whisper is breathing, is breathing. As over the bed of the bride or the catafalqued bier, Or over the flung and clawed earth where a soldier is dying? ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... to scoop up a little snow when I woke up from the stupors. The bread was the other side of the fire; I couldn't reach round. Beauty eat it up one day; I saw her. Then the wood was used up. I clawed out chips with my nails from the old rotten logs the shanty was made of, and kept up a little blaze. By and by I couldn't pull any more. Then there were only some coals,—then a little spark. I blew at that spark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... moment we were absolutely still. He made a clumsy gesture towards the great futility below and choked. I discovered that his face was wet with tears, that his wet glasses blinded him. He put up his little fat hand and clawed them off clumsily, felt inefficiently for his pocket-handkerchief, and then, to my horror, as he clung to me, he began to weep aloud, this little, old worldworn swindler. It wasn't just sobbing or shedding tears, it was crying as a child cries. It ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... his hold on Joel broke. He staggered. His arms went up with a tragic, terrible gesture. He fell. Joel stood over him, shaking and livid, but he showed only the vaguest realization of the deed. His actions were instinctive. He was the animal that had clawed himself free. Further proof of his aberration stood out in the action of sheathing his gun; he made the motion to do so, but he only dropped it ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... curious of the Boulevard Italien, the benches of the circus would hardly recognise me as the gladiator struggling with an iron-clawed ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... details the outline of a big bare boulder, stood the thing that had screamed; in this light its great body was weirdly magnified, so that the entire length of seven or eight feet appeared to Gloria's frightened eyes twice that. Long-bodied and lithe, small-headed and merciless, steel-muscled and chisel-clawed, the big cat in silhouette twitched its restless tail back and forth nervously, and from snarling jaws sent forth its almost human call to cut across vast, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... from under him. He crouched low and tried to cling to the slippery hide as it bounced forward. Each leap of the bronco upset him. Within three seconds he had ridden on his head, his back, and his stomach. Wildly he clawed at the rope ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... moment the dance hall seemed to have gone mad. Men were rushing about and shouting; panic-stricken women clawed at one another and fought their way toward a freedom they could not gain. Windows crashed as forms hurtled against them; screams sounded. Hurriedly, as the crowd massed thicker, Fairchild raised the small form of Anita in his arms and carried her to a chair, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... as big, that had been watching the buck from above, dropped down from the boughs of the ceiba tree full on to the shoulders of the prince Guatemoc, felling him to the ground, where he lay face downwards while the fierce brute clawed and bit at his back. Indeed had it not been for his golden cuirass and helm Guatemoc would never have lived to be emperor of Anahuac, and perhaps it might have ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... of Manon's late wept, and now being fast forgotten, lover, and the bodies of those who had so nearly taken our travellers' lives. A hand was nailed to the beam. And hard by on a huge wheel was clawed the dead landlord, with every bone in his body ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... with a choke in his throat. The white head rocked from side to side and the hands clawed the air. Then William Williams hunched forward and lurched from ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... it, listening to young Cheschapah's talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness. Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed fist to their eyes against the red heat of the coals, while young Cheschapah harangued ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... pressing the beautiful silk coat in against her figure with little kicks at the skirt. "No; I didn't go; Joseph came round and told me. He didn't think the wound was very dangerous—necessarily. One of his hands was terribly clawed." ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... please, Tom, so that it does please you. Oh! He's a famous fellow! HE never scraped and clawed into his pouch all your poor grandmother's hard savings—she was a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... later the upward struggle began. Smoke, after drying his hands on the insides of his arm-sleeves, clawed into the climb—bellied, and clung, and stuck, and plastered—sustained and helped by the pull of the rope. Alone, he could not have advanced. Despite his muscles, because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could not cling ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... bellowed Lund. "You sailed inside of twenty-four hours, Honest Simms. The natives told me so later, when I could understand talk ag'in. D'ye know what saved me? The bear! I stumbled over the carcass when I was nigh spent. I ripped it up and clawed some of the warm guts, an' climbed inside the bloody body an' stayed there till it got cold an' clamped down over me. Waitin' for you to come ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly. Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... of concern made itself felt finally. Mallow, who was the first to show signs of recovery, struggled to his feet and clawed blindly toward the automobile. He clung to it, sick and shaking; profanely he ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... for telling the truth; so, when the Ape turned to him and said, "And what, sir, is your opinion?" he replied, "I think you are a very fine Ape, and all your subjects are fine Apes too." The King of the Apes was so enraged at his reply that he ordered him to be taken away and clawed to death. ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... and sunburnt our noses, and rain-soaked our dress suits for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cushiony cactus and tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless pit. Humph! That's what you call Santa Fe! 'The city of the Holy Faith!' Well, I need a darned lot of 'holy ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... boy, have we not got the house, and the furniture, and a hundred a year still; and have you not great talents, which will make all our fortunes?" says Mrs. Stubbs, getting up off her knees, and making believe to smile as she clawed hold of my hand and ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... markets; the fineness and luster of its pelt guaranteed that it would go for at least 2,000 francs. I was full of wonderment at this unusual mammal, with its circular head adorned by short ears, its round eyes, its white whiskers like those on a cat, its webbed and clawed feet, its bushy tail. Hunted and trapped by fishermen, this valuable carnivore has become extremely rare, and it takes refuge chiefly in the northernmost parts of the Pacific, where in all likelihood its species will soon ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... was he'd have to hasten to keep an appointment which he had made with Mrs. Forest in the National Gallery. 'She really will have to make some alterations in her second act,' he said, going to the glass. Kate had clawed him with a vengeance, and he'd have to tell Laura how he came by his torn face; and after some consideration it seemed to him that it would be well to admit that he had received these wounds in a conflict with ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... enjoyed it hugely, for the fresh wind made the pennons cut strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkey crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting, the Siamese ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... describing the black cave of a palace at Arezzo into which the white Pompilia is borne, the cave and its denizens—the "gaunt gray nightmare" of a mother, mopping and mowing in the dusk, the brothers, "two obscure goblin creatures, fox-faced this, cat-clawed the other," with Guido himself as the main monster. Yet the Count, short of stature, "hook-nosed and yellow in a bush of beard" is not a monster but a man; possessed of intellectual ability and a certain grace of bearing when occasion requires; although wrenched and enfeebled by the torture ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... A foot has two offices, to bear up, and to hold firm. As far as it has to bear up, it is uncloven, with slight projection,—look at an elephant's (the Doric base of animality);[36] but as far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and clawed, with wide ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin |
