"Clutch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visit as mistress, and realising that Fate had not been willing and that she came but as a guest and Countess of Dunstanwolde. Oh, it was a bitter, relentless thing; and why should it have been—for what wise purpose or what cruel one? And with a maddening clutch about his heart he saw again the tragic searching in her eyes when she had said, "Then you have known me long, your Grace," and afterwards, so soft and strangely slow, "Then you might have been one of those who came to my birthnight feast, and ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rose, I sent a bullet to its heart. It lurched sideways, reared straight up and fell backwards with Le Grand Diable under. The fall knocked battle-axe and club from his grasp; and when his horse rolled over in a final spasm, two men were instantly locked in a death clutch. The evil eyes of the Indian glared with a fixed look of uncowed hatred and the hands of the other tightened on the redman's throat. Diable was snatching at a knife in his belt, when the cries of my Indians rang out close at hand. Their coming seemed to renew his strength; ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... suit that I now come hither, and have, I do acknowledge, sought speech of her—not for her own sake only, but for yours also. Destruction hovers over you, ready to close her pinions to stoop, and her talons to clutch—Yes, sir, look contemptuous as you will, such is the case; and it is to protect both you and her ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the seat. Jinnie looked at him with interest—he had been so kind to her—and noted his thick, blond hair, which had been cropped close to a massive head. She admired him, too. Suddenly he looked up, and the girl felt a clutch at her heart. Just why that happened she could not tell. Again came the charming smile, the parted lips showing a set of dazzling ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Minty wriggled out of the excited clutch. "I don't care, they walk jest the way Jim an' Kitty did when they come ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... letters expressing good will and compassion, and on the other plate you put some of the food sent by Americans, and offer the two plates to an Irish mother whose famishing children are tugging at her scanty skirts, and let her take her choice. How her trembling hand would clutch the plate containing the letters of compassion. Eh? She wouldn't take that plate, do you say? She would take the plate with the good, honest, star-spangled food on it, eh? O, you are mistaken. There is so much sustenance ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... began to moan and sob; Breton strode forward, across the heaps of papers and miscellaneous objects tossed aside in that hurried search and clearing up, into the inner room. And Spargo, looking about him, suddenly caught sight of something lying on the floor at which he made a sharp clutch. He had just secured it and hurried it into his ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... courage meek Illuminate thy pallid cheek Beside the dying bed: To the poor suffering mortal's clutch Thy hard hand hath a gentle touch, With tears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... years came and went, and still the West held him in its powerful clutch. Success smiled upon his pathway, and into his life entered the sweet, new joy of a woman's love and devotion, and into his home came the happy music of children's voices. When his eldest boy was eight ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... if she felt the clutch in which her husband had her tightening on her heart. She said that she could only carry her point against him at the cost of disgraceful division before the Hallecks, for which he would not care in ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... maintain. Fetching a gasp, she let fly the dirtiest word one woman can launch at another, and on the instant made a grab at Mrs. Clerihew's brow. . . . It was a matter of notoriety in St. Hospital that Mrs. Clerihew wore a false "front." The thing came away in Mrs. Royle's clutch, and amid shrieks of laughter Mrs. Royle tossed it to Mrs. Ibbetson, who promptly clapped down a hot flat-iron upon it. The spectators rocked with helpless mirth as the poor woman strove to cover her bald brows, while the thing hissed ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... And the stress of your strangled And desperate endeavour: Sudden a hand— Mother, O Mother!— God at His best to you, Out of the roaring, Impossible silences, Falls on and urges you, Mightily, tenderly, Forth, as you clutch at it, Forth to the infinite Peace ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... detected, however, by Bee and Captain Featherstone, who came strolling gracefully around the corner of the house just as Jimmie's convulsed clutch loosened from the trellis and set all the vines to dancing and trembling, as if a wind-storm had passed ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... is that small parcels of land, such as must have been assigned in these distributions, should have been so coveted. [Sidenote: Why small portions of land were so coveted.] The explanation is probably fourfold. Those who clamoured for them were wretched enough to clutch at any change; or did not realise to themselves the dangers and drawbacks of what they desired; or intended at once to sell their land to some richer neighbour; or, lastly, longed to keep a slave or two, just as the primary object ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... throw the clutch into high-gear," promised Walter, laughing. "Look out for the flying ice, girls. I haven't the screen up, for I want to ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... why not? He had once told her that he would go away some time; why not now? But why-why did not Clayton tell her? Perhaps he was going to her. She almost stretched out her hands in a sudden, fierce desire to clutch the round throat and sink her nails into the soft flesh that rose before her mind. She had forgotten that he had ever told her that he must go away, so little had it impressed her at the time. She had never thought of a possible change ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... intensified his fatigue and despondence. About six o'clock, exhausted in mind and body, he had allowed his attention to stray, when the sudden clang of a street organ startled him. His eyes turned in the wonted direction—and instantly he sprang up. To clutch his hat, to rush from the room and from the house, occupied but a moment. There, walking away on the other side, was Eve. Her fawn-coloured mantle, her hat with the yellow flowers, were the same as yesterday. The rain had ceased; in the western ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... her way less willingly than usual to the apartments of the Queen, who was being made ready for her bed. "Here comes our truant," she exclaimed as the maiden entered. "I sent to rescue thee from the western seafarer who had clawed thee in his tarry clutch. Thou didst act the sister's part passing well. I hear my Lord and all his meine have been sitting, open-mouthed, hearkening to his tales ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... guns and started in a hurry after the column. Sergeant Merchant's bicycle—our spare, a Rudge—burnt out its clutch, and we left it in exchange for some pears at a cottage with a delicious garden in Champbreton. Doue was a couple of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... a skeleton—found as we saw it—with its neck in the clutch of the garrote, which was one of Ecelino's more merciful punishments; while in still another cell the ferocity of the tyrant appeared in the penalty inflicted upon the wretch whose skeleton had been hanging for ages—as we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... The huge leathery wings of the dragon overshadowed the shrinking form of the girl, and the talons of its drooping feet caught in her dress. She made one desperate, but futile effort to free herself from its terrible clutch, and, screaming loudly for help, was borne away over the abyss of the valley as easily as a lamb is ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... drop-rope, when he saw that the condemned man had clutched the rope over his head to save his neck from being broken. The Sheriff dismounted from his horse, climbed up the gallows and tied the prisoner's hands more firmly behind his back. The gallows was braced, and Omic contrived to clutch one of the braces with his hands, fastened behind his back as they were, as he fell when the drop-rope was cut. He hung in that position for some time, until his strength gave way and he swung off. When he had hung sufficiently long, the by-standers ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... firmly with both hands, escaping by a hair's- breadth the despairing clutch of the horrified Manlia, Brinnaria half vaulted, half rolled over the parapet, swung sailor-fashion to the rope her robe formed, went down it, hand over hand, raced across the sand and faced the ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... did my mind, Anguish-torn, itself body forth Phantoms so terrible—never more Can I tell; but that I this Horrible shape with eyes behold, This of a surety know I! Yea, with my hands could clutch it even, Did not fear, from the perilous Venture, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... element of character which enables a man to clutch his aim with an iron grip, and keep the needle of his purpose pointing to the star of his hope. Through sunshine and storm, through hurricane and tempest, through sleet and rain, with a leaky ship, with a crew in mutiny, it perseveres; in fact, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... need not be afraid. In your heart you don't want me to desert a friend, and, besides, leave the best part of my artistic life in Reginald's clutch." ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... wool that the giants had threshed, and whirled it round and round until it had twisted it into hard thin thread. Then it would make a clutch with fingers of steel at the thread that it had gathered, and waddle away about five yards and come ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... good opinion was worth so much to me now that I crushed down my fears and sat up in bed (yet keeping a tight clutch upon the blanket), and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... man could not, drew back toward the cliffs. Drennen, led by the noise of breaking underbrush, at last was enabled to make out distinctly the looming form in a little clearing. Stooping swiftly, through a random clutch at the ground, he was lucky enough to seize the end of the ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... astonishment too great for words. His right hand hung poised and moveless just above the butt of his gun; his whole posture was that of one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone. They waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels lurching forward to ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... decision as to the legitimate sovereignty should be given. Neuburg being already disposed of and his claims ceded to the Emperor, what possibility was there in such circumstances of saving one scrap of the territory from the clutch of the League? None certainly if the Republic faltered in its determination, and yielded to the cowardly advice of James. "To comply with the summons," said Barneveld, "and submit to its consequences will be an irreparable injury to the electoral ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... my feet, and to my excited imagination felt like the fingers of death trying to clutch me. But I am not one to give up without a big struggle, and I made up my mind to attempt to swim round and round the opening, like a rat in a pail, if it came to the worst; but although I am a good swimmer, I doubted ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... strange to say, a "Japanese" prince,—hunting far, very far, from home, is pursued, after his last arrow has been sped, by a great serpent. He flees, cries for help, and seeing himself already in the clutch of death, falls in a swoon. At the moment of his greatest danger three veiled ladies appear on the scene and melodiously and harmoniously unite in slaying the monster. They are smitten, in unison, with the beauty of the unconscious youth whom they have saved, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Clan an' th' Sons iv Sweden an' th' Banana Club an' th' Circle Francaize an' th' Pollacky Benivolent Society an' th' Rooshian Sons of Dinnymite an' th' Benny Brith an' th' Coffee Clutch that Schwartzmeister r-runs an' th' Tur-rnd'ye-mind an' th' Holland society an' th' Afro-Americans an' th' other Anglo-Saxons begin f'r to raise their Anglo-Saxon battle-cry, it'll be all day with th' eight or nine people in th' wurruld that has th' misfortune iv ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... flown,—no star can pierce my night: Each tyrant rages 'gainst opposing foe In deadly fight—yet brings to light no friend: In travail sore hope comes not to the birth— Fear hydra-headed terror still begets;— All fancies grim I see, and straight embrace, At hope I clutch, who still eludes my grasp; Her rainbow hues adored are but a frame That serve by contrast to make fear more dark. Severus haunts me—oh, I know his love, Yet hopeless love must mate with jealousy,— While Polyeucte, who has won ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... man close at hand," said Peter. "Will any one pass a rope round my waist? I am sure I could clutch him." ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... half-confused consciousness of the injustice of life has begun to clutch our throats. We begin to curse both church and state, thank God, at last! Statesmen must hear or die. Property must respond or strengthen its bolts and bars and there's no room on the door for another bolt. The church that has no answer to ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... sternly. "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch—but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... succeeded by the St. Vitus' dance. He came down upon us sideways, his legs all in a tangle, and his right arm, bent and twisted, going round and round, as if in vain efforts to get into his pocket, his fingers spread out in impotent desire to clutch something. There was great danger that he would run into us, as he was like a steamer with only one side-wheel and no rudder. He came up puffing and blowing, and offered to show us Shakespeare's tomb. Shade of the past, to be accompanied to thy resting-place by such an object! But he fastened ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... he exclaimed, "the chap has got a big knife in his clutch, and those eyes of his ain't dead men's eyes, but maybe it will be just as well to pitch him overboard; he can't do ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... and peered through the aperture of the doorway. Then he rang the bell. Twice he raised his hand and clenched it in the now familiar clutch. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... safe in the grip of its hold-down clutch, and its stubby wings and gleaming sextuple-bladed helicopter were intact. Harkness ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... for the daughter of Virginius, a brave plebeian centurion, and claimed her on the pretense that she was the daughter of one of his slaves. Standing at his judgment-seat, Virginius, seeing that he could do nothing to save his child from the clutch of the villainous judge, plunged his dagger in her heart. This was the signal for another revolt of the people, which extorted the consent of the upper class to the sacred laws and the restoration of the tribuneship. It is a plausible theory that Appius Claudius favored the plebeian ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... speaks within its walls, its windows turn inward, its music sings to itself. Tossed City sinners go in and out, and pass, and penetrate, but still the music dreams, and still the dim gold blinks above their heads. A muffled God walks the aisles, and you, in the bristling wilderness of chairs, can clutch at His skirts and never see His eyes. Nothing comes forward from that altar to meet you. It is as if He walked talking to Himself, and as if even His speech were lost in those ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... sound of a door banged, and the two men started up in an agony of dread that the spoil for which they had toiled so patiently and long, never getting it within their clutch till now, was ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Easy, but suppose they find all that money, they take boat and go away with it. Now, I hab them in my clutch—stop a little." ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... wrists from my clutch and began to cry in her handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I would rather see her miserable than not see her at all, never any more; for whether I escaped or stayed to die, there was for us no coming together, no future. And that being so, I had no pity ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... footsteps, Perry caught up behind him, and made an impulsive, nerveless clutch at the unfolded paper. "I knew you'd see it; so I wanted to be along with you," he said in a voice like that of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... blind instinct—and nothing more—that kept him on his horse: he clung to his saddle with half-paralysed knees, just as a drowning man will clutch a floating bit of wreckage that helps him to keep his head above the water. The stately trees of Soigne were not far ahead now: through the forest any track that bore to the left would strike the Brussels road; only a little more strength—another ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... spray and the driving rain. The wind kept us breathless, mocking any attempt at speech. We passed the village hall, brilliantly lit; the shadowy forms of a closely packed crowd of people were dimly visible through the uncurtained windows. I fancied that my companion's clutch upon my arm tightened as ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enabled him to clutch the jagged sides of the rock desperately, so that in the wave's return he was not drawn with it into the sea depths. Stunned, strangled, half blinded, and impelled by a sudden horror of death in the ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment. Hence every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipit's eggs found on the Bass Rock, in a nest invisible to the spectator. The collection in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is of course more considerable, and finer, but some of Mr. Booth's cases are certainly superior, and his collection has the special interest of having ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... would be killed if he did not stop the machine, the lad threw off the clutch and applied the brakes. Then, in the center of a large force of Germans, who came rushing in upon them, the lad stood up in the machine, and, raising his uninjured ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... gipsy answered, I caught the word Droa, uttered under the breath two or three times. The woman seemed to be giving some directions; she spoke almost in a whisper, and I saw the long bony hand clutch Zillah's arm, as if to impress what she was saying more forcibly upon the girl's attention. Then I saw Zillah hand the piece of gold I had given her that morning, to the woman, while she asked ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... making the attempt to secure it; but whether he was too sure of his prize, or from some other unexplained reason, certain it is that he gave a practical illustration of the old and well-known adage about the cup and the lip, by failing to clutch the prey. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... leads our sick desire E'en to the grave. So rarely do men find What yet seem'd destined them—so rarely hold What once the hand had fortunately clasp'd; What has been giv'n us, rends itself away, And what we clutch'd, we let it loose again; There is a happiness—we know it not, We know it—and we know not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... wild sheep I mean, or goats, it is hard to say which they are; the courage of the birds is extraordinary, they will attack almost anything, driving the sheep headlong over the precipices. We caught many a fox. The eagle strikes the fox with one talon, reserving the other to clutch the fox's throat when he turns round to bite. Eagles will attack wolves; wolves are hunted in Mongolia with eagles, the fight must be extraordinary. One of these days ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Uzcoques with unwonted courage and energy. Jurissa Caiduch himself, forgetting any cause of dislike he might have to Dansowich, joined heart and hand in the plans formed by the pirates for the deliverance of their leader. Every man in Segna, whether young or old, all who could wield a cimeter or clutch a knife, hastily armed themselves, and crowded into the fleet of long light skiffs in which they were wont to make their predatory excursions. Then breaking furiously through the line of Venetian ships, stationed between Veglia and the mainland, and which were totally unprepared ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... of the fort appeared to be silent and the big galleons lay apparently helpless in the face of the valiant enemy. Raleigh moved on, but, as he was about to clutch his splendid prize, it escaped him, for the Spaniards—finding that they would be captured—made haste to run the Saint Philip, and several of her sister ships, aground ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... organized the rescue party, assigned leaders to the divisions, saw that each man was properly outfitted, and mapped off the territory to be covered by each posse. Outwardly he was cool, efficient, full of hopeful energy. But at his heart Billie felt an icy clutch of despair. What chance was there for Lee, caught unsheltered in the open, when the wiry, old Indian fighter, protected by his wagon, ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... great movements at the beginning have been conscious of their own true tendency; but no great movement has mistaken it like modern Positivism. Seeing just too well to have the true instinct of blindness, and too ill to have the proper guidance from sight, it has tightened its clutch upon the world of thought, only to impart to it its own confusion. What lies before men now is to reduce this confusion to order, by a patient and calm employment of the intellect. Intellect itself ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... that would seem to be desirable, and that ordinary skill might devise, is some sort of snap clutch by which the main spindle could be stopped instantly by touching a trigger with the foot; many drills and accidents would be saved thereby. Of the many special devices I have seen for use on a drilling machine, one used by Mr. Lipe might be made of universal use. It is in the form ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... knew no one, not even her baby when they laid it on her breast. She lay restlessly tossing from side to side, talking incessantly, clasping her rosary in her hands, and constantly mingling snatches of prayers with cries for Alessandro and Felipe; the only token of consciousness she gave was to clutch the rosary wildly, and sometimes hide it in her bosom, if they attempted to ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... wife should conform without a murmur to the ceremonies established for the coronation. Only this concession was made to their susceptibilities: that in the rules the phrase, bear the cloak was substituted for carry the train, "for," as Miot de Mlito says, "Vanity will clutch ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... limb—from shame and indignation, no doubt; my vision became obscure; it seemed as if my soul was leaving my body, and I fell forward fainting, and dragged her down to the bottom of the water in a mortal clutch. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... Poor Ethelinda! The clutch of cold horror about her heart seemed to stop its pulsations for a moment. She saw the still mountains whirl about the horizon as if in some weird bewitchment. Her nerveless hands loosened their clasp upon the sley and it fell to the ground, clattering on the protruding roots of the trees. ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with the second speed clutch on when a grating sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped the deep rolling bass of the thunder rumbled over ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... price On human hecatombs, and sell and buy Their sons and brothers for the shambles. Priests, With white, anointed, supplicating hands, From Sabbath unto Sabbath clasped to Thee, Burn, in their tingling pulses, to fling down Thy censers and Thy cross, to clutch the throats Of kinsmen, by whose cradles they were born, Or grasp the brand of Herod, and go forth Till Rachel hath no children left to slay. The very name of Jesus, writ upon Thy shrines beneath the spotless, outstretched wings, Of Thine Almighty Dove, is wrapt and hid With ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... of his best efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... making no inch of headway, her spirits sank very low indeed. What made the case so wearing on the soul was that she was groping in the dark. She was fighting an invisible enemy, even though it was no more than a misunderstanding—an enemy whom, strive as she would, she could not clutch, with whom she could not grapple. Again and again she prayed for a foe in the open. Had there been a fight, no matter how bitter, her part would have been far, far easier—for in fight there is action and excitement and the lifting hope ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... strange manner. They clapped their hands over their ears to shut out the awful sound, and shut their eyes to prevent the revolting spectacle burning into their brains. The man's face was livid: terror such as it is impossible to describe was in his face; the unrelenting clutch of the rope wearing into his throat caused the veins of his neck to stand out like ropes; while streams of perspiration poured down his face. As he became weaker and weaker and the rope ground deeper and deeper into his throat ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... kind or degree to that which this illustrious advocate exhibited during nearly two years, when he went forth daily, with his life in his hand, in the holy hope to snatch some human victim from the clutch of the destroyer thirsting ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... years, Might gulf into oblivion, if the soul Knew circumscription. Far as eye can reach Around me lies a wild and watery waste, With every billow sentinel to keep Its prisoner fetter'd to his ocean cell— What were it but a plunge—an instant strife— Then liberty snatch'd from the clutch of Death The Tyrant, who with mystic terror grinds Men into slaves—But he who thinks is free, And fineless as the unresting winds of heaven, Now rushing with wild joy around the belt Of whirling Saturn, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... uneasily over his shoulder. These still, stony valleys were peopled by the noiseless, predatory Ishmaels of the macquis. They were, it is true, not numerous at this time, but those who had escaped the clutch of the imperial law were necessarily ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... was about to eagerly clutch this element of strength, but he suddenly jerked his hand away and cast a look ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... inevitable. I was what you call a labor leader. I went into a monastery for two purposes. I can confess to you. It is safe, as we will never meet again, and all ideas of justice will upend in the coming cataclysm. Listen I say," and he gripped my wrist with a vice-like clutch of his bony fingers. "I went into a monastery to escape the suspicion that I had removed one whom we felt would bring much unhappiness upon the earth. I went into a monastery to think. The turmoil of a busy worker's life gave ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... been firmly held by three laughing girls, who pulled not wisely, but too well. He was further incommoded by the presence of a small urchin who lay on the dusty ground beneath his feet, fastening an upward clutch on ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a month away from Lee, and meanwhile Grant had not only kept Lee on the watch on both banks of the James, as well as for Richmond as for Petersburg, but had taken a fast hold on the Weldon railway. Unable to shake off Grant's clutch either on the James or on the Shenandoah, Lee greatly needed Anderson back with him. Accordingly, on the very day when Sheridan went back to Berryville, Anderson, seeking the shortest way to Richmond, ran into Crook in the act of going into camp, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... to fashion Instant occasion for passion, Gripping with clutch of a bandit Weakness ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ferocity if not achieving it, that is the annual pride of the town, was not intrinsically, to my-view, extraordinarily impressive—in spite of its bristling with all due testimony to the passionate Italian clutch of any pretext for costume and attitude and utterance, for mumming and masquerading and raucously representing; the vast cheap vividness rather somehow refines itself, and the swarm and hubbub ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... thereafter was at once brutish, terrible, Homeric; the fellow's reserves of strength seemed immense; sheer animal rage drove him; he ran amuck with lust to kill. He beat, rushed, strove to close. His opponent's lithe body evaded a clutch that might have ended the contest. John Steele fought without sign of anger, like a machine, wonderfully trained; missing no point, regardless of punishment. He knew that if he went down once, all rules of battle would ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... felt so dizzy that he had to clutch hold of the arm of shaggy Hanak, who was standing by his side. Quite early that very morning he had felt a sort of numbing paralysis in all his limbs, a sort of griping cramp convulsing his inner parts, and an unspeakable fear had arisen within his soul, but the feeling had ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... for a moment in the clutch of a great fear; but he felt he was alive and well, and little by little his fear disappeared and left him eager. He went a few steps forward, and saw that the hill sloped downward, and downward he went, by steep slopes of turf and scattered grey stones. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to eat when that became necessary, and the others to aid us in our attempt to escape. Should we climb the cliff, these must be left behind. From the top was less than fifty yards, and our rifles would still cover them from the clutch of our enemies, but to what advantage? Like ourselves, they must in time ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... think of him—of my only son in the clutch of his bitter foe, and I thank you for reminding me of him, little as I have for these long years needed spur to my ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... last clutch at my resolution. "People who do that kind of thing always get into trouble. She might miss her train. She's almost certain ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... others in her life was because it was the last day that they had their mother with them. That night the old pain came again, just for an instant, but long enough to stop the beating of the brave heart which would never feel its clutch again. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... demon lurks To urge the narrow soul to darksome deeds Of violence and greed, of hate and ruth. His God, a God of wrath, a tyrant force To mete to helpless souls eternal doom; A Juggernaut, a hard unsentient power,— But yet less potent than the yellow gold Those crooked talons clutch, and for the which The miser Shylock ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... hand—a gesture so slightly emphasized as to seem accident. He had started to speak, but her motion seemed to stop his tongue. He looked hard at her hand, and something violent in his intentness made her clutch the side of the chair. Instantly she met his look, so fiercely, cruelly challenging, that it took her like a blow. For a moment they looked at each other, her eyes wide with fright, his narrowed to a glare under the terrible ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... no living thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon the rocks. Neither seal nor sea-gull dare come near, lest the ice should clutch them in its claws. The surge broke up in foam, but it fell again in flakes of snow; and it frosted the hair of the three Gray Sisters, and the bones in the ice-cliff above their heads. They passed the eye from one to the other, ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... Sim, almost screaming, "that every man in the land who fought for the Commonwealth eight years ago is like to be shot as a traitor. Didn't you know that, my lad?" And the little man put his hands with a feverish clutch on Ralph's shoulders, and looked into ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... a future with Kut-le. She saw his tenderness, his purposefulness, the bigness of his mind and spirit. Then with a cold clutch at her throat came the thought of race barrier, and in a moment Rhoda was plunged into the oldest, the most hopeless, the least solvable of all love's problems. Minute after minute went by and the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... strange came over Laura Ledwith. She crumpled the letter tight in her hands with a clutch of quick excitement, and began to choke with a little sob, and to ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... night I say deliberately that it was not my enemy but my friend. It procured me at last some surcease from my suspense. I fell fast asleep in my chair before the fire. The lamp was still burning, and the fire red, when I awoke; but I sat very stiff in the iron clutch of a wintry morning. Suddenly I slued round in my chair. And there was Raffles in a chair behind me, with the door open behind him, quietly ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... gave vent to a shrill, bleating bellow—an absurdly inadequate utterance to issue from this mountainous frame—writhed his neck in snaky folds, and lashed out convulsively with the stupendous coils of his tail. But he could not loosen that deep grip, or the clutch of ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds—one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour—obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the lever upright the engine could run free. To start the car it was necessary to turn the motor over by hand with the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... in the drama of life was Care. There was no hint of happiness in his long narrow face, dull sunken eyes, and bloodless compressed lips. His expression was not that of one unable to tear himself away from the last glimpse of a loved wife fallen from his arms into the clutch of Death. It was the gaze of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... adamant rock rising sheer from the sea in a rampart wall. Reefs, serried, rank on rank, like sentinels, guarded approach to the coast in jagged masses, that would rip the bottom from any keel like the teeth of a saw; and over these rolled the roaring breakers with a clutch to the back-wash that bade the gazing sailors beware. Birds, birds in myriads upon myriads, screamed and circled over the eerie heights of the beetling cliffs. This did not look like Kamchatka. These birds were not birds of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... were facing each other now, almost toe to toe. Dulac's face was stormy with passion under scant restraint; Bonbright, though he swayed a bit unsteadily, faced him with level eyes. Ruth saw the decent courage of the boy and her fear for him made her clutch Dulac's sleeve. The ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... turned upwards, jaws hanging loosely and tongues stretching over the lower lips; some with knees curled up and (p. 018) heads bent, frozen stiff in the midst of a grotesque movement, some with hands clasped tightly over their breasts and others with their fingers bent as if trying to clutch at something beyond their reach. A few slumbered with their heads on their rifles, more had their heads on the sawdust-covered floor, and these sent the sawdust fluttering whenever they breathed. The atmosphere of the place was ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... looked in winter, with the ice gleaming in the moonlight, and of snow coming and the keen winds piling it in drifts. It's odd, isn't it? those memories we have that are not memories. The metempsychosis idea must have some substance. We have all been somebody else sometime, and we clutch at the shadows of our old selves, hardly ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags are toppling overhead. I faint, I sink—now, let me clutch that limb— Oh, devil! It breaks to ashes in my grasp! What ghost is that which beckons through the mist? The duke! the duke! and bleeding at the breast! Whose dagger ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... foible! Measure distance! Lunge! Now the thrust ends in the merest harmless touch; But ere the beaten man throws up the sponge, As the boxers say, relaxing his hilt-clutch, There'll be lunges and ripostes of other sort. Firm foot and steady hand must be their friend; The encounter will be struggle, not mere sport, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... lit with the blaze of the burning barge; a hand and arm would rise, and fall ere I could seize it. A hand was thrown up before me, the glinting fingers gripping at empty air. I caught the hand, swimming strongly with the current, for so the man could not clutch at me, and if a drowning man can be held apart, it is no great skill to save him. In this art I was not unlearned, and once had even saved two men from a wrecked barque in the long surf of St. Andrews ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... without relaxing the lines of its inscrutable face, the insensate artist proceeds to show its power. Its security puts all hand playing to shame; it never hesitates, it surmounts the highest difficulties without changing a clutch." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... thrown so much energy into his action that as Phil's ankle glided through his hand, he failed to clutch the ratline beneath, swung round, and unable to get a fresh hold, began to fall from rope to yard, to rope again, and then came heavily on the fore yard, which partially broke his fall, but after a moment or two he came down heavily upon the deck, making his companions there ...
— The Powder Monkey • George Manville Fenn
... all the time I was in the water. Indeed it was with difficulty that Jack got it out of my grasp when I was lying insensible on the shore. I cannot understand why I kept such a firm hold of this telescope. They say that a drowning man will clutch at a straw. Perhaps it may have been some such feeling in me, for I did not know that it was in my hand at the time we were wrecked. However, we felt some pleasure in having it with us now, although we did not see that ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... The liberating shock was as great as had been her terror. She began to tremble violently. Her hands got back a sense of strength to clutch. Heart and blood seemed ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... at his feet as he spoke, and Maurice, turning his gaze in that quarter, instantly saw something that caused him to draw in a quick breath and involuntarily clutch the gun with a ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... Irishman was pulling burdened breaths and haste had flushed his lean cheeks, and they faced each other for an instant in silence before he caught her hands in a hard clutch. "I will be swift," he said, "the way the courage won't be oozing out ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... flattered by your admiration, pardieu," says the Pretender, with a rueful grin down at the shabby clothes which were so tight upon him, and a clutch at the bob-wig's jauntiness. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... by what you call trusting a friend, that is, aiding him to self-destruction—buying him arsenic to clear his complexion—you end by dragging all near you into your own abyss, as a drowning man would clutch at his own brother. Lionel Haughton, the saddest expression I ever saw in your father's face was when—when—but you ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... spectral hounds across the sky, The white clouds scud before the storm; And naked in the howling night The red-eyed lighthouse lifts its form. The waves with slippery fingers clutch The massive tower, and climb and fall, And, muttering, growl with baffled rage Their curses on ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... moments later I saw that Colonel Wragge with a face of death, its whiteness strangely stained, had moved closer to me. Dr. Silence stood beside him, an expression of triumph and success in his eyes. The next minute the soldier tried to clutch me with his hand. Then he reeled, staggered, and, unable to save himself, fell with a great crash upon the ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... fell clutch of Circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud, Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance My head ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... great white crucifix; there in the corner were piled the remains of the Portuguese. A skull with long hair still hanging to it grinned at her, a withered hand was thrust forward as though to clutch her. Oh, no wonder that in such a spot Jacob Meyer had seen ghosts! In front, too, was the yawning grave where they had found the monk; indeed, his bones wrapped in dark robes still lay within, for Jacob had tumbled them back again. Then beyond ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... man, don't be surprised if I confide in you right off. I am so anxious to find someone intelligent among this crowd, that as soon as I get hold of a man like you I clutch at him as eagerly as I would at a glass of water, after walking mile after mile through a parched desert. But frankly, I think you should do the explaining first. I can't understand how a man who was correspondent of a Government newspaper during the Madero regime, ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... than six left out of the first clutch," said Mrs. Joyce. "There was eleven hatched out, but sure the rats got the rest of them." "I'd be glad," said Joyce, "if you'd fatten them six, and you needn't spare the yellow meal. It'll be worth your while to have them as good as ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Hercules!" roared the mighty stranger. "And you will never get out of my clutch until you tell me the nearest way to the garden ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various |
