"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was sent for again, and found Julia sitting on the couch by the side of her mother, and he at once acknowledged to himself that he had seldom seen a fairer woman. She was tall, and her figure was full and well proportioned. Her glossy hair was wound in a coil at the back of her head, her neck and arms were bare, and she wore a garment of light green silk, and embroidered with gold stripes along the bottom, reaching down to her knees, while beneath it a petticoat of Tyrian purple reached nearly to ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... shall next make the further complaint that, even when making every effort to do the civil, the result is apt to kill with kindness; and—as King CHARLES THE FIRST, when they were shuffling off his mortal coil, politely apologised for the unconscionable long time that his head took to decapitate—so I, too, must draw attention to the fact that the duration of formal ceremonious visits, is far too protracted and ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Winchester, cartridges, canteen, matches, knife. He inserted a hand into one of his saddle-bags expecting to find some strips of meat. The bag was empty. He felt in the other one, and under the grain he found what he sought. The canteen lay in the coil of his lasso tied to the saddle, and its heavy canvas covering was damp to his touch. With that he thrust the long Winchester into its saddle-sheath, and swung his leg over ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... started as though to tear the paper up, and then hid it under a coil of rope at his feet. But he was very particular to hide ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... close to the water was Chris flat on his back, his mouth open, fast asleep. A half dozen fine bass lay on the grass beside him, the end of his fishing line was tied to one ebony leg, and a coil of slack line ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his watch—an immense affair that would have made a load for a small child. He pried open its gigantic case and showed the dazzling array of brass wheels and the glittering coil of steel. It could not but be attractive to a savage mind, and the Indian's eyes sparkled ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... to bubble and boil; The old man cast in essence and oil, He stirred all up with a triple coil Of gold and silver and iron wire, Dredged in a pinch of virgin soil, And ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... is caused to shine upon a photo-electric current-generating cell, and the current thus produced flows through a galvano-metric coil in circuit, whose index indicates upon its scale the intensity of the light. The scale may be calibrated by means of standard candles, and the deflections of the index will then give absolute readings showing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... the next minute they had swung themselves up on to the branch, and from that to the next. It was done in an instant, but when they cast a breathless look down, they saw the unwinking eyes looking up at them from the very spot they had just left. The snake had a double coil round the branch that had supported them, while the huge body bridged the distance to the branches from which the blow had been delivered just a moment too late. As they looked, the hinder part of the body fell with a thud ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... dropping fast astern. We therefore made the signal to return, and immediately began to veer away the cable, and sent out a buoy astern, in order to assist him in getting on board again. Our poverty, in the article of cordage, was here very conspicuous; for we had not a single coil of rope in the store-room to fix the buoy, but were obliged to set about unreeving the studding-sail geer, the topsail-halliards and tackle-falls for that purpose; and the boat was at this time driving to the southward so ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... who didst waken from his summer-dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... he left the city again, this time by motor. He stopped at the end of the lane which ran past the distillery, dismissed the vehicle, and passed down the lane. He was carrying a light, folding ladder, a spade, a field telephone, a coil of insulated wire, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... of mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death like a little white cloud." [165] It is kept up, too, in Lancashire, where a well-known witch died a few years since; "but before she could 'shuffle off this mortal coil' she must needs TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT to some trusty successor. An intimate acquaintance from a neighbouring township was consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was immediately ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... thread as it comes from the measuring reel, a coil of thread. Burns, 584. See Skeat. Cu. hankle, to entangle, is ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... snake seemed to sense the man—its feeble sight would not permit it to see him. It swerved out of its course and came towards him. When but a few feet away it suddenly checked and, swiftly writhing its body into a coil from which its head and about five feet of its length rose straight up and waved menacingly in the air, it gathered impetus ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... taffy-making was taken up again. Cary was fed with choice titbits until he was fairly satisfied and had to beg for quarter. Then, taking up a large roll of the tire, Zulma twisted it into a series of elegant and intricate plaits. The long coil flashed like a beautiful brazen serpent, as she held it up to the light, and set it beside ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... going down only a little way under the water, as it takes great skill and long practice to be able to go safely into deep water. A diver has about him a coil of line connected with the ladder, which he unwinds as he moves away; but by winding it about him again, he can find his way back ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... briefly stated. The space, around a wire carrying an electric current, or in the neighborhood of a magnet, has a directive effect upon a magnetic needle, and is hence called a magnetic field. Now if a conductor, or coil of wire, be placed in the field across the direction of a magnetic needle, and the field be varied either by varying the current or moving the magnet, a current will be developed in the conductor. It is impossible at this distance to appreciate the ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... a little creek of the uninhabited island, driving her right up on the beach for safety's sake, there being no anchor. Then—Neil carrying a small basket the while and Duncan a coil of rope—they passed through a wood of young larches and spruce, the air smelling strongly of bracken and meadow-sweet after the rain; and finally they reached the rocky eminence on which stood the ruins. There was no way up, for tourists did not come that way, and the owner of the island, who ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... It had its foot close by a stacked heap of hand grenades; a shawl was wrapped round it and the thin hands held the ends together. What child? Whose? How did it get here, when not a house stood erect for miles and miles—when not a coil of smoke touched the horizon! Yes, something oozed from the ground! Smoke, blue smoke! Was life stirring like a bulb under this whiter ruin, this ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... ne'er in any wood, So wild a denizen, by night or day, As she whom thus I blame in shade and sun: Me night's first sleep o'ercomes not, nor the dawn, For though in mortal coil I tread the earth, My firm and fond desire ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... two of the Spaniards had dismounted, and detaching a coil of rope which hung from their saddle-peak, were proceeding to tie the prisoners wrist to wrist; the others, with their carbines to the shoulder, covered us man by man, the chief of the party having singled out ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... a sudden movement, he withdrew His daughter; while compressed within his clasp, Twixt her and Juan interposed the crew; In vain she struggled in her father's grasp— His arms were like a serpent's coil: then flew Upon their prey, as darts an angry asp, The file of pirates—save the foremost, who Had fallen, with his right ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... talk the matter over seriously—father and I—it was found to be too late in the season to procure me the Mount Washington appointment for the winter; besides, the effect of my attempt to "shuffle off this mortal coil" was to literally overrun our store with customers. People came from the country for fifteen miles around, in ox teams, on horse-back, in sleighs and cutters, and bob-sleds, and crockery-crates, to buy something, in hopes of getting a glimpse of the bashful young man who swallowed the pizen. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... instrument, which is called a thermo-electric pile, or more briefly a thermo-pile, consists of thin bars of bismuth and antimony, soldered alternately together at their ends, but separated from each other elsewhere. From the ends of this 'thermo-pile' wires pass to a galvanometer, which consists of a coil of covered wire, within and above which are suspended two magnetic needles, joined to a rigid system, and carefully defended from currents ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... and sparkled a glittering dew of diamonds, lightly fastened on delicate silver wires. Next came a bunch of flowers, round whose stems a supple golden snake was twined, covered with rubies and diamonds and destined to coil itself round a woman's arm. The third was a necklace of extremely costly Persian pearls, which had once belonged—so the merchant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... up the coil from the after deck, fearing lest my father should not have been in time, while the hawk fluttered and gripped my arm in such wise that at any other time I should have cried out with the pain of the sharp piercing of its talons. Yet it would ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... sort of rope harness to the truck, giving Tom the handles to steer by, while Old Dibs, Sarah, and me did tandem in front. The boatswain's chair and the coil of Manila rope were lashed down on the load, as well as the basket of provisions, Sarah carrying the demijohn in her hand, Old Dibs the gin and "Under Two Flags," while I led the way with ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... among the rocks, defending my legs with a pair of strong boots; and if I could prevent their slipping off into their holes, and irritate them so as to make them attempt to strike me, my work was done. For a serpent thus situated, will coil himself up, and instantaneously darting forward his head, strike and bite whatever comes in his way. I then presented my hat, which the animal violently seized with his fangs; when, instantly snatching it away, I seldom failed to extract them by the sudden ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... down upon a coil of rope, his guard about him, an object of curious inspection to the rude seamen. They thronged the forecastle and the hatchways to stare at this formidable corsair who once had been a Cornish gentleman and who had become a renegade Muslim ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... cabin. The room which he entered opened into the restaurant and was the Chinaman's den. Its only furniture was a bunk with a coil of dirty blankets, a chair and table, on which stood an adding machine, the balls running on wires. Near it was the ink well and bamboo pen and small squares of paper covered with Chinese characters. One door led into the restaurant and another into the kitchen. In ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... were transferred from one "ground wire" to the other, while the solenoids seemed to resist every influence but that directed upon them by the operators. Another interesting test was made. The electric current for a Hauckhousen lamp was passed through a long coil of solenoid wire. Separated from this coil by a single newspaper, lay a coil of wire attached to telephones, yet not a sound could be heard in the telephones but the voices of the persons using them. The current of electricity created by a dynamo-electric machine is of necessity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... there in her soft gray dress with its collar and cuffs of black velvet, a knot of scarlet ribbon at her throat, the brilliant flowers in her hands, and a fleecy white shawl wrapped about her shoulders. Her shining hair was gathered into a satiny brown coil at the back of her head and pinned with a silver arrow, while a few naturally curling locks lay lightly on her forehead. The dark, moss-grown rock was behind her; the softly waving plumy boughs of the pine tree above her, a carpet of tender green ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... were all foreign. I sailed as freighter and trader principally to China, Australia, and Japan, and among the Spice Islands. Mine was not the sort of life to make one long to coil up one's ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally almost forgotten. And so when times for freighters got bad, as at last they did, and I tried to quit the sea, what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied the sea as perhaps ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... a shovel, broom, axe, crowbar, kerosene lantern, short rubber hose for siphoning, coil of half-inch rope at least 25 feet long, coil of wire, hammer, pliers, screwdriver, wrench, nails ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense
... tree, still. But age has crept Through every coil, while Walt each night has kept The tryst alone. Hark! with what windy might The boughs chant o'er her grave their burial-rite! And the moon ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... overcome. Her attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it something masculine: the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the clasped hands hanging between them, her body leaning forward, with drooping head. I stared at the heavy black coil of twisted hair. It was enormous, crowning the bowed head with a crushing and disdained glory. The escaped wisps hung straight down. And suddenly I perceived that the girl was trembling from head to foot, as though that glass of iced water ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... looked up, the slant of the shaft had cut off the sky. Brydges didn't bother clambering out of the bucket. He was silent and kept hold of the dependent cable. Suddenly, there was a rumble as of the hoist flying backward, then the whip lash of a taut rope snapping, and the cable whirled down in a coil ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... do not think it remiss of me that I have not written to you since my return, but you will understand that I plunged into a coil of work, and will forgive me. But I do not mean to let you slip away without sending you all our good wishes for its successor—which I hope will not vanish without seeing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... and some of them thrown into the water, though they made every exertion to arrest the motion of the capstan-bars. In this dilemma Mr. Rolfe, who had charge of the capstan, with great presence of mind, called the visitors on shore to his assistance; and handing out the spare coil of the 12-inch line into the field at the back of the capstan, it was carried with great rapidity up the field, and a crowd of people, men, women, and children, holding on to this huge cable, arresting the progress of the tube, which was ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... wit in a woman, and said, "Are you quite deficient in the craft of your sex, child? You can, and you will, guard yourself ten times better when your aim is simply to subject him." But this was not reason to a spirit writhing in the serpent-coil of fiery blushes. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she has learned to carry herself with ease, if not grace. The curly crop has lengthened into a thick coil, more becoming to the small head atop of the tall figure. There is a fresh color in her brown cheeks, a soft shine in her eyes, and only gentle words fall from her ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... pardon, Mr. Burnham," said Fuller suddenly. "I didn't notice that rope was in your way." And he learned over and tossed the rope away. As he did so some hard object fell with a clatter from the coil. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream! I turn from you, and listen to the wind, Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream Of agony by torture lengthened out That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without, Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, Or pine-grove whither woodman never ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... glands) connected with the hair, and the anal and perineal glands. The secretions of excretory glands are removed from the body; chief among them are the sweat glands and kidneys. The sweat glands are microscopic tubular glands, terminating internally in a small coil (Figure VIII. s.g.) and are scattered thickly over the body, the water of their secretion being constantly removed by evaporation, and the small percentage of salt and urea remaining to accumulate as dirt, and the chief reasonable excuse for washing. The kidney structure is ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... many ways. Usually an electromagnetic stylus is employed, in which a scribing point suddenly moves when the electric circuit is broken by a projectile. Another method is to arrange the terminals of the secondary circuit of an induction coil, so that when the primary circuit is opened a small spark punctures or marks a moving surface (Helmholtz, Phil. Mag., 1853, p. 6). A photographic plate or film, moving in a dark chamber, is also used to receive markings produced by a beam of light interrupted by ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... she wound the coil of russet hair round her shapely head. "He will think whatever you do charming, and whatever you say brilliant," she said; "that is the advantage in being an ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Disturbed by Lina's approach, he was that instant coiling itself up for a spring. His head was erect, his tongue quivered like a thread of flame, and two horrible fangs, crooked and venomous, shot out on each side his open jaws. In the centre of the coil, and just behind the head which vibrated to and fro with horrible eagerness, the rattles kept in languid play, as if ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... resembles Hawkins in appearance. He is an Elizabethan transferred bodily into the 19th and 20th centuries, his ruff lost in transit. Yet he not infrequently has a ruff even—a live one, for it is no uncommon event to see his favourite Angora leap on to his shoulders and coil himself half round his master's neck, looking not unlike a lady's boa—and its name, Parthenopaeus, is long enough even for that. For years Mr. Payne followed the law, and with success, but his heart was with the Muses and the odorous East. From a boy he had loved and studied the old English, Scotch ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... deeper, until the rope stretched into two diagonals between its fastenings on either shore. Then the trolley descended with a run towards the river, and Geoffrey ran forward, shouting, "The weight's too much for Gillow. Bring along the coil of line from the tool locker, Tom. Hurry, I don't want ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the three boys were on the rocky shore. Jerry carried a lantern and Ned had a coil of rope, as he thought if the man had fallen over a cliff, and was unable to help himself, they might need a ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... made him realise as he never had yet that he was in love with her; so very much in love with her that the thought of Leila was become nauseating. And yet the instincts of a gentleman seemed to forbid him to betray that secret to either of them. It was an accursed coil! He hailed a cab, for he was late; and all the way back to the War Office he continued to see the girl's figure and her face with its short hair. And a fearful temptation rose within him. Was it not she who was now the real object ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... track rail, then through the rear pair of driving wheels and axles to the opposite rail, and then flows up through the forward uninsulated wheel, from the axle of which it returns by way of a contact brush to the opposite terminal of the secondary coil of the transformer. Thus the current is made to flow seriatim through all four of the driving wheels, completing its circuit through that portion of the rails lying between the two axles, and generating a sufficient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream, Where the sea beasts, ranged all around, Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground; Where the sea snakes coil and twine, Dry their mail and bask in the brine; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... with tiny cuttings just lifting little tender sprays above the warm, moist soil. Men are at work here and there with hammers and nails, repairing any slight damage that may have been done in previous months. Hose-pipes coil over the floors, and one must walk by them daintily. In other houses one would exclaim with pleasure at finding one's self in a wilderness of roses, pink, yellow, and white, only to be told, rather contemptuously, "That is nothing. There are no roses here now. You must wait till winter if you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... up the coil of line from the sill, listened for a moment, and then tied the rope ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... color, popularly dominated "navy-blue," and the linen collar and cuffs were scarcely whiter than the round throat and wrists they encircled. The burnished auburn hair clinging in soft waves to her brow, was twisted into a heavy coil, which the long walk had shaken down till it rested almost on her neck; and though her heart beat furiously, the pale calm face might have been marble, save for the scarlet lines of her beautiful mouth, and the steady ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Mr. Gladstone for several years threw himself with the whole weight of his untiring tenacity and force. He plunged into masses of accounts, mastered the coil of interests and parties, studied legal intricacies, did daily battle with human unreason, and year after year carried ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... it. Now, since the fetus is free to move it enters and withdraws from these loops, many times, in the course of pregnancy. Finally, when it takes up a position head downward, as it nearly always does, the head is the part of the fetus which passes through the coil, should one happen to lie in its path. After the head is delivered the physician always feels about the neck to discover whether a loop of cord is there. If it is, he can release it easily. This condition, since it occurs so frequently and since it so rarely produces harmful consequences, ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... thousand-wintered tree, By countless morns impearled; Her broad roots coil beneath the sea, Her branches sweep the world; Her seeds, by careless winds conveyed, Clothe the remotest strand With forests from her scatterings made, New nations fostered in her shade, And linking land ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... endeavour to make off if one meets them, but during the intense heats of the latter part of July and August they never think of escaping, but at any sight or sound which they may consider inimical, they instantly coil themselves for a spring. The most intolerable proceeding on their part, however, that he described, was their getting up into the trees, and either coiling themselves in or depending from the branches. There ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... a little; only a little, but enough to give her the appearance of her full thirteen years. Then her hair no longer straggled in neglect, but was brushed very smoothly back from her forehead, and behind was plaited in a coil of perfect neatness; one could see now that it was soft, fine, mouse-coloured hair, such as would tempt the fingers to the lightest caress. No longer were her limbs huddled over with a few shapeless rags; she wore a full-length dress of quiet ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... happen next, spied the servants' black legs moving about, watched a rough wooden bench placed on the blue and crimson rugs of Djebel Amour, and presently saw other black legs under a white burnous coil ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Learning the only guide for such as me. I may say that I married her for the furtherance of my fortunes, and have come to love her for her own sake. Many and many the 'tween-watch have I passed in a coil of rope in the tops, a volume of the classics in my hand. And 'my happiest days, when not at sea, have been spent in my brother William's little library. He hath a modest estate near Fredericksburg, in Virginia, and none holds higher than he the worth of an education. Ah, Richard," ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as was Deerfoot's descent, he had seen something terrifying while it was going on. The rattlesnake so rudely disturbed as it lay in coil (though it sometimes strikes when not in that position), darted its gaping mouth at the hand which flashed out of its reach. Strange as it may seem, it was lying on the very edge of the gorge, so close indeed that the blow which struck vacancy carried it over, ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... knowledge of where I was going, so I resolved to enter it and rest myself for a while. I called out, telling you not to let out more rope until I bade you, but you cannot have heard me. I then gathered in the rope you were sending me, and making a coil or pile of it I seated myself upon it, ruminating and considering what I was to do to lower myself to the bottom, having no one to hold me up; and as I was thus deep in thought and perplexity, suddenly and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... me that she had gone away in search of some plant, or plants, with which to compound the medicine she was making for me. She returned early in the forenoon, carrying a small basket in which I saw a coil of the long creeping vine called 'At 'At by the natives, and which grows only on the sandiest ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... over her, "do you know what that was? That was the Naga Snake Dance. It gave you an almost irresistible longing to rise, and hold the snake in your own hands, and coil his great folds around you. I could see how you felt. But you were strong enough to resist. That was very well done. You resisted even the force of my music, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... reason do the least; for surveying themselves from the highest point of view, amidst the infinite variety of the universe, their own share in it seems trifling, and scarce worth a thought, and they prefer the contemplation of all that is, or has been, or can be, to the making a coil about doing what, when done, is no better than vanity. It is hard to concentrate all our attention and efforts on one pursuit, except from ignorance of others; and without this concentration of our faculties, no great progress can be made in any one thing. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... their pitchers in the fountain, and the in- gushing waters made a sound, than the glittering serpent raised his head out of the cave and uttered a fearful hiss. The vessels fell from their hands, the blood left their cheeks, they trembled in every limb. The serpent, twisting his scaly body in a huge coil, raised his head so as to overtop the tallest trees, and while the Tyrians from terror could neither fight nor fly, slew some with his fangs, others in his folds, and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... singing lustily as he dropped with a spring into his boat. He began to coil the loose ropes at once, as if the disappointments in life were only a necessary interruption, to be accepted philosophically, to this, the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... complexness &c adj.; complexus^; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication^; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c (convolution) 248; sleave^, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl^; webwork^. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c 704. V. complexify^, complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled^. complex, complexed; intricate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... arm about the sorrowing priest. Don Jorge's muscles knotted, and a muttered imprecation rose from his tight lips. Strangely had the shift and coil of the human mind thrown together these three men, so different in character, yet standing now in united protest against the misery which men heap upon their fellow-men in the name of Christ. Jose, the apostate agent of Holy Church, his hands bound, and his heart bursting with yearning ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... clergyman in England participate in the union of a woman to her ex-grandfather? Nay, believe me, sir, 'tis less the selfishness than the folly of your clinging to this vale of tears which I deplore. And I protest that this rope"—he fished up a coil from the corner—"appears to have been deposited here by a benign and all-seeing Providence to Suggest the manifold advantages of hanging yourself as compared with the untidy operation ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... one who struggled with the raging water; but, in that roar of the winds, it was easy to be deceived. He shouted encouragement to his dog, however, and gathering a small rope rapidly, he made a heaving coil of one of its ends. This he cast far from him, with a peculiar swing and dexterity, hauling-in, and repeating the experiments, steadily and with unwearied industry. The rope was necessarily thrown at hazard, for the misty light prevented more than it aided ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... battle began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their lariats at the horse's head and feet, but time after time he dodged, and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out of the coil ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... now the soothing softness of a mother's lullaby to a tired child, and as the liquid notes quavered delicately on the otherwise deep stillness, the formidable reptile began to coil itself ascendingly round and round the ebony rod, . . higher and higher,—one glistening ring after another,—higher still, till its eyes were on a level with the "Eye of Raphon" that flamed on Lysia's breast, . . there it paused in apparent reflectiveness, and seemed to listen to the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... lad's trick. But I love him the better for it.... True, he's past loving.... And now we must tell our Queen. What a coil at the day's end! She'll grieve for him. Not as I shall; Ferdinand, but as youth for youth. They were much of the same age. Playmate for playmate. See, he wears her colours. That is the knot she gave him last—last.... Oh ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... they swelled, and while wet the seeds were introduced into long glass cylinders, open at both ends. Copper disks were pressed against the seeds, the disks were connected with the poles of an induction coil, the current was kept on for one or two minutes and immediately afterward the seeds were sown. The temperature was kept from 45 deg. to 50 deg. Fahrenheit, and the experiments repeated four times. The following table ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... Doctor, "there's something in the way you sit there, whittling and whistling that brings little old Provincetown right up before my eyes. I can see old Captain Ames sitting there on the wharf on a coil of rope, whittling just as you are doing, and joking with Sam and the crew as they pile into the boat to go out to the weirs. I can see the nets spread out to dry alongshore, and smell tar and codfish as plain as if it were here right under my nose. And down in Fishburn Court there's ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... picking it up, or paying it out; whether it is lying inert, coil upon coil, in the tanks like some great gorged anaconda, or gliding along the propelling machinery into some other tank, or off into the sea at our bow or stern; whether the dynamometer shows its tension to be great or small; whether we are grappling for it, or underrunning it; whether ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... notion be?" inquired Bluenose, sitting down on a coil of rope, and gazing earnestly at ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... for you to be alone," she said, and lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. "No," she went on, "she did not know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... it was a very solemn truth she had spoken. The coil of steel with which the North had belted in the South was beginning to press tighter and tighter during that memorable winter. At every Southern port the Northern fleets were on guard, and the blockade runners ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... countenance to the festivities, 't would not have done to displeasure him, and since I was to be debtor to Lord Clowes, another fifty pounds was not worth balking at. More still I'll have to ask from him, I fear, ere we are safe out of this wretched coil." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... too, he would sit on a coil of rope, As the stars came out in their twinkling crowds to play with wonder and hope, While he watched the side of her clear-cut face as she sat on the jetty and fished, And even to help her coil her line was more than he ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... nets of entomologists abound. Slaters of an immense kind, and spotted, and small mahogany-coloured Blattidae, are found under stones, which also conceal hordes of predatory beetles and scorpions, which bristle up at you as you expose them; and nests of tiny snakes, that coil and cuddle together, from the size of crowquills to the thickness of the little finger. During June and July, the monotonous Cicadae spring their rattles in the trees around, and one comes at last even to like their note, in spite of its sameness. A little later, flies and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... A pipe coil should be placed in every furnace and connected to the hot water tank in order to insure an economical supply of hot water during the period when the furnace is in use. This makes it possible to use the gas range in the kitchen and ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... and to find oneself practically backed for a thousand pounds in a race against men is a trifle disquieting. Still, having once put my hand to the plough, I felt I was bound to pull it through somehow. I dressed my hair neatly, in a very tight coil. I ate a light breakfast, eschewing the fried sausages which the Blighted Fraus pressed upon my notice, and satisfying myself with a gently-boiled egg and some toast and coffee. I always found I rowed best at Cambridge on the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... cantie Coil may count the day, As annual it returns, The third of Libra's equal sway, That gave another B[urns], With future rhymes, an' other times, To emulate his sire; To sing auld Coil in nobler style, With ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... ship-timber: jumbled together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of the river's bank. A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it: and here and there an oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first, to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without much difficulty, to the conjecture ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... across the lawn in a diverse direction from that taken by Claude, and on arriving on the road, swung into a lofty saddle. A huge arm from some one seated behind received her, passing around her waist, and feeling like the coil of a boa-constrictor; and, amidst the sound of several persons mounting in haste, spurs were struck into the sides of the large animal, that reared with a vast bound which nearly dismounted its riders; and at once, as it seemed, a troop were flying with her at the top of their speed ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... to know what this strange proceeding meant, Black Paul ordered that a line be thrown, and, in a moment, a tall fellow seized a coil of light rope and hurled it through the air in the direction of the brig; but the rope fell short, and the outer end of it disappeared beneath the water. Now the spirit of Black Paul was up. If the fellow ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... good, and with very little medical treatment the external wound healed. The animal improved rapidly in flesh during the whole time. He left the infirmary in perfect health, and remained so, with one inconvenience only, a very bad cough, and his being obliged to lie at length, being unable to coil himself up in ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... taken the rope with him; and Silas had been preserved from sharing his fate only by a lucky accident. The knot at his hips loosened itself as he clutched the ledge, and let the coil fly off ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... night watchman's quarters followed. Mr. Sawyer could discover nothing until he came to a small cupboard which was locked. Locks, however, do not keep detectives, or criminals either, from making further investigations. In the cupboard, he found a coil of rope. There was a certain peculiarity about that rope of ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow Pearse—"As free as a man!" No rule, no law, not even the mysterious shackles that bind men to their own self-respects! "As free as a man!" No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no coil he can't slide out of! But the fellow has the tenacity of one of the old Devon mastiffs, too. He wouldn't take "No" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... it in a moment," he cried, as a long coil of soft, dark hair appeared, so closely resembling Cecil's own as fully to justify his conviction ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... to say, it but gives me a keener relish for the opposite; and that it does not unfit me for encountering the hardships of the field is proved by the reputation for endurance which I have among the natives. If I sleep between well-aired sheets one night, I can coil myself up among my dogs on the ice-fields the next, and sleep there as well,—I care not if it's as cold as the frigid circle of Lucifer. If I have a penchant for Burgundy, and like to drink it out of French glass, I can drink ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... a smart rap in order to settle the grounds. You in the meanwhile smoke. That also takes time, particularly if you "drink" a narguileh, as the Turks say. This is familiar enough in the West to require no great description. It is a big carafe with a metal top for holding tobacco and a long coil of leather tube for inhaling the water-cooled fumes thereof. The effect is wonderfully soothing and innocent at first, though wonderfully deadly in the end to the novice. The tobacco used is not the ordinary weed, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... magnet can be produced by coiling a wire round a bar of soft iron, and attaching its extremities to the poles of a galvanic battery, when it will be found that its strength will be proportioned to the strength of the current and the turns of the coil. This is especially the case when the bar is bent into the form of a horse-shoe, and the wires are insulated and coiled round its limbs. The force communicated to a magnet of this kind, which is often immense, is the product ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... much the most eager of the three, and led the way at a great pace to Peterson's house. Peterson was more easily convinced, and in a few minutes the four joined Downy at Mrs. Hardy's. The detective had borrowed a coil of rope, the necessary tools were provided, and the party set off. The five no sooner appeared on the flat with their burdens than they were sighted by many of the people of Waddy, now eagerly on the lookout for adventure, and before they reached the bush ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... north of the date-palms was a sand-hill with what appeared like a few bushes on it. Sax was looking at this hill when he saw a coil of smoke rising up out of one of the bushes. He was so surprised that he called his friend's attention ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... for the eminent scientist was none other than Mr. Mallow—Mallow, a bit pallid and pasty, as if from confinement, and with eyes hidden behind dark goggles. With a show of some embarrassment, the inventor displayed his tester, a sufficiently impressive device with rubber handles and a resistance coil attached to a dry battery, which he carried ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... seemed, till the dawn came! All was cold and rainy and dark, and we waited in a kind of torpid misery for daylight. The entire day, I passed sitting in a coil of rope under the stern of the cabin, and even the beauties of the glorious city scarce affected me. We lay opposite the Doria palace, and the constellation of villas and towers still glittered along the hills; but who, with his teeth chattering and limbs numb and damp, could feel pleasure ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... a rattlesnake has to coil before it can spring. No one has ever written up life from a rattler's point of view, although it has been unfeelingly stated that fear of snakes is an inheritance from our ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... entire innocence. Sam was aware of no feelings toward her save gratitude and friendliness. Nevertheless, it would not have been the first time it happened, if these safe and simple feelings had suddenly landed him in an inextricable coil. Men ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the broad surcingle, which fastens together the complicated gear of the recado, or saddle used in the Pampas; the other is terminated by a small ring of iron or brass, by which a noose can be formed. The Gaucho, when he is going to use the lazo, keeps a small coil in his bridle-hand, and in the other holds the running noose which is made very large, generally having a diameter of about eight feet. This he whirls round his head, and by the dexterous movement of his wrist keeps the noose open; then, throwing it, he causes it to fall on any particular ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to feel pretty empty an' mean, an' if I'd wanted any of the prog we got out the day afore, I couldn't have found much, fur the men had eat it up nearly all in the night. An' so I just made up my mind without any more foolin', an' me an' Andy Boyle an' the bat'ry man, with some ca'tridges an' a coil of wire, got into the little shore boat, an' pulled over to the Mary Auguster. There we lowered a small ca'tridge down the main hatchway, an' let it rest down among the cargo. Then we rowed back to the steamer, uncoilin' the wire as we went. The bat'ry man clumb up ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... a coil of rope, used for staking the horses, and ran to Mack who snatched it, twirled it round his head and as the boat rushed by him, the noosed end shot across the gunwale. The man caught it over his wrist and it was the work of but a few moments to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... some hair over each ear, piled up the rest in a moppy coil and crowned it with a ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... those who stood near handed the Baron a leathern pouch, the Baron opened it and drew out a ball of fine thread, another of twine, a coil of stout rope, and a great bundle that looked, until it was unrolled, like a coarse fish-net. It was a rope ladder. While these were being made ready, Hans Schmidt, a thick-set, low-browed, broad-shouldered ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... in Jimmy Holden's brain by the machine itself were the full details of how to recreate it. Indelibly he knew each wire and link, lever and coil, section by section and piece by piece. It was incomprehensible information, about in the same way that the printing press "knows" the context of its metal plate. Step by step he could rebuild it once he had the means of procuring the parts, and it ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... begin to learn their future business; and even at that early age they are occasionally intrusted to bring home a sledge and dogs from a distance of several miles over the ice. At the age of eleven we see a boy with his watertight boots and moccasins, a spear in his hand, and a small coil of line at his back, accompanying the men to the fishery, under every circumstance; and from this time his services daily increase in value to the whole tribe. On our first intercourse with them we supposed that they would not unwillingly have parted with their children in consideration of ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... these jaws are different. Each one is long, and has a deep groove on the inner side. These two grooves fit together, and make a slender tube called a proboscis. When flying this long tube is rolled up in a tight coil under the head; alighting, the proboscis is quickly uncoiled and dipped into the throat of the flower, and the sweet nectar sipped from it. See here, Jack, what have ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... roundness of figure suggesting a future of excessive fullness if not judiciously guarded; and she was fair, with a warm whiteness that a passing thought could deepen into color. The waving blonde hair, gathered in an abundant coil on top of her head, grew away with a pretty sweep from the temples, the low forehead and nape of the white neck that showed above a frill of soft lace. Her eyes were blue, as certain gems are; that deep blue that lights, and glows, and tells things of the soul. ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... LEVEL COIL, a rough game...in which one hunted another from his seat. Hence used for any noisy ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... however, notwithstanding every precaution, they do find their way in, but even the most venomous sorts bite only when put in bodily fear themselves, or when trodden upon, or when the sexes come together. I once found a coil of serpents' skins, made by a number of them twisting together in the manner described by the Druids of old. When in the country, one feels nothing of that alarm and loathing which we may experience when sitting in a comfortable ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... I do." Only in a comparatively snakeless country could such fancies be born and such metaphors used—snakeless and highly civilized, where the blades of Sheffield are cheap and abundant. In ruder lands, where ophidians abound, as in India and South America, in the dark one fears the cold living coil and deadly ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... green, dotted here and there with patches of white and pink everlastings. One could hardly believe it was the same country. Instead of the intense heat a bright warm sun dissipated the keen and frosty air of early morning, while the hoar-frost at night made one glad of a good possum rug to coil oneself up in. I did not envy the cyclists, for sometimes, failing to hit off a camp on the road, they had perforce to make the best of a fire as a substitute for a blanket, and to be content with a hungry stomach, in place of having ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... back of the room and brought a long coil of rope. Making a running noose in one end, he released several loops from the big coil and held them loosely ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... coil, O, inserted into the lower port of the tube H H', and forced up or down in the tube by the cog wheel, M, substantially as and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... vikings had been slain when it came to the turn of Olaf Triggvison, and at this moment Earl Erik came upon the scene. Olaf bared his neck, and swept up his long golden hair in a coil over his head. ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... "dry land terrapin," the common toad, and some salamanders burrow into the dry earth, usually going deep enough to escape frost; while snakes seek some crevice in the rocks or hole in the ground where they coil themselves together, oftentimes in vast numbers, and prepare for their winter's sleep. In an open winter this hibernation is often interrupted, the animal emerging from its retreat and seeking its usual summer haunts as though ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... partners working day and night in their enthusiasm. The apparatus was then brought to New York and gentlemen of the city were invited to the University to see it work before it left for Washington. The visitors were requested to write dispatches, and the words were sent round a three-mile coil of wire and read at the other end of the room by one who had no prior ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... to surmount every difficulty, and a faith strengthened by numberless examples of the certainty—however dark things might seem up to the very last moment—of bursting through, with an exquisite sensation of success, the hardest coil of circumstance. But as Scott grew older these obstacles grew stronger; he could not put sense or prudence into the heads of his colleagues, and it was hard to teach himself, the most liberal, the most ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... cable is not wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the Elba, to be coiled along in a big coil ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soldier goes to meet Death, and meets him without a shudder when he comes. The suffering woman patiently awaits him on her bed of sickness, and conscious of her malady dies slowly without a struggle. A not uncommon fortitude enables men and women to leave their mortal coil, and take the dread leap in the dark with apparent readiness and ease. But to wait in full health and strength for the arrival of the fixed hour of certain death—to feel the moments sink from under you ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... quick vision flashed upon him of the loveliness of the head and shoulder, and the coil of fair hair which he should have before him if he rode after her, and the illumination of the smile and the word which would occasionally be thrown back to him from these perfect lips and teeth and eyes. His voice trembled with love and eagerness ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... golden cloud of sand; it seemed to have been stirred up by her startled movement on seeing him. For a moment she was still, resting thus close, and he could see distinctly that around her white shoulders there was a coil of what seemed like glistening rounded scales. He could not decide whether the brightness in her eye was that of laughing ease or of startled excitement. Then she turned and darted away from him, and having put about forty feet between them, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... a longer coil of rope than he had imagined. The boat was twenty yards away at least, and still paying out. By the way, where was the rope? With a cry of horror Tubbs sprang to the anchor and began hauling in. The rope came in gaily, but ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... promising to take wing into the Aether, yet never doing it, ever splashing webfooted in the terrene mud, and only splashing the worse the more he strives! Two new tragedies of his that I read lately are the fatalest stuff I have seen for long: not an ingot; ah no, a distracted coil of wire-drawings salable in no market. Poor Landor has left his Wife (who is said to be a fool) in Italy, with his children, who would not quit her; but it seems he has honestly surrendered all his money to her, except a bare annuity for furnished lodgings; and now lives at Bath, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... candle, and they all retreated to the binnacle, where Mesty took out a coil of the ropes about the mizzen-mast, and cutting it into lengths, gave them to the other men to unlay. In a few minutes they had prepared a great many seizings to tie the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... became visible. His flat head, elevated a few inches above his heavy coil, turned anxiously with the sounds in the grass. He knew what was coming, I think, but did not rattle until the king had reduced the circles about him to a diameter of six or seven feet. Then he became electrified. The rattles sounded viciously, and his head began an ominous ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Thames with winds unapt, Now crosseth here, then there, then his way rapt, And then hath one point reach'd, then alters all, And to another crooked reach doth fall Of half a bird-bolt's shoot, keeping more coil Than if she danc'd upon the ocean's toil; So serious is his trifling company, In all his swelling ship of vacantry, And so short of himself in his high thought Was our Leander in his fortunes brought, And in his fort of love that he thought won; But otherwise he scorns comparison. ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... I was watching that tortoise-shell of yours on the houseboat. She was creeping along the roof, behind the flower-boxes, stalking a young thrush that had perched upon a coil of rope. Murder gleamed from her eye, assassination lurked in every twitching muscle of her body. As she crouched to spring, Fate, for once favouring the weak, directed her attention to myself, and she became, for the first time, aware of my presence. It acted ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... the coil of rope and threw one end over. Meantime the doctor had opened the forward window, so that he might give directions, and ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... stuck a few of them in one of these here coffins one day for safe keeping," and he stepped over to a grim pine coffin keeping company with a pile of gay bandanas, and brought forth another bunch of bills. But his foot caught in a coil of barbed wire as he started over to the auditor with them and it was at that moment that Steve came to the station door to get something and Mr. Follet called out, "Here, Steve, hand these over to the gentleman." The boy started to obey, but when he turned and faced ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... sick to death of this eternal ceremony, this endless coil of laws winding round us and cramping our lives at every turn; and now it has become too oppressive to be borne any longer. Why should we let it ruin our lives? And why, if we determine to break from it, shall we pretend to keep to it? What do you care for Judaism? You eat triphas, you smoke ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... let the left elbow gently rest on the deodorizer. Keep the rubber tube connecting with the automatic fog whistle closely between the teeth and let the right elbow be in touch with the quadruplex while the apex of the left knee is pressed over the spark coil and the ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... discovery that electricity could be generated in a wire by the motion of a magnet. The magnetic key with which the message was sent Produced by its action an electric current which, after traversing the line, passed through a coil and deflected a suspended magnet to the right or left, according to the direction of the current. A mirror attached to the suspension magnified the movement of the needle, and indicated the signals after the manner of the Thomson mirror galvanometer. This telegraph, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... sure sign that somebody lies dead in the parish. In this gloomy place the sexton keeps his dismal apparatus,—the hearse, with its curtains of rusty sable, the bier, the spades and shovels for digging graves; and in a corner lies a coil of soiled ropes, whose rasping sound, as they slipped through the coffin-handles, while the bearers lowered the corpse into the earth, has grated harshly on many a shuddering mourner's ear. The leaves of the hearse-house door are fastened together by a hasp and pin, so that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... beacon mention has already been made, and who, having in early life been a seaman, was also very expert in the management of a boat. A life-buoy was likewise suspended from the bridge, to which a coil of line two hundred fathoms in length was attached, which could be let out to a person falling into the water, or to the people in the boat, should they not be able to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a coil is here! The Avenging Child Hunting the traitor Quadros to his death, And the Moor Calaynos, when he rode To Paris for the ears of Oliver, Were nothing to him! O hot-headed youth! But come; we will not follow. Let us join ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... observed a jutting and highly-polished piece of stalagmite, which promised to help the manoeuvre. One went first, and the other waited, holding the candle. I was in the rear. When my companion had reached the top of the cascade, I threw him the coil of rope—a useless encumbrance, as it happened—and in so doing put out the candle. Before I was sure that I had a dry match upon me, I failed to seize the humour, although I felt the novelty of the situation. ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... subtlest silence of motion through the quiet garden, came a great yellow cat. She rubbed against Miss Camilla's knees with that luxurious purr of love and comfort which is itself a completest slumber song, then made a noiseless leap to a sunny corner of the bench, and settled herself there in a yellow coil of sleep. Presently there came another, and another, and another still—all great cats, and all yellow, marked in splendid tiger stripes, with eyes like topaz—until there were four of them, all asleep on the sunny side of the arbor. Miss Camilla's yellow cats were of a famous breed, well represented ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... it, she tried so hard to restrain it, coiling it tight at the back, and smoothing it sleek as a bird's wing above her brows. Mouse-colored hair it was on the top, and shining gold at the temples and at the roots that curled away under the coil. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the body by means of the X rays is very simple, as is shown in Figure 1. The Crookes tube, actuated from a storage battery or other source of electricity through a Ruhmkorff coil, is placed on one side of the body. If need be, instead of using the entire tube, the rays from the most effective portion of it only are allowed to impinge upon the part of the body to be investigated, through an opening in a disk of lead interposed between the Crookes tube and the body. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... the Chinese, wear the hair long but not braided in a queue. No part of the head is shaved but the hair is wound in a tight coil on the top of the head, secured by a pin which, in the case of the Korean who rode in our coach from Mukden to Antung, was a modern, substantial tenpenny wire nail. The tall, narrow, conical crowns of the open hats, woven from thin bamboo splints, are evidently designed to accommodate ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... so it seemed to her, she looked up and saw him coming. He carried a rope, the long noose of which he was making smaller to fit the coil on his arm. As he reached the shack he threw down the coil and lifted ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart |
