"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... getting at right angles to her, ordered his engineer to stuff the fires with oiled waste and keep the throttle open. "All hands, lie down!" shouted Roe, as the throbbing engines drove his vessel to the charge. Then came an earthquake shock: the Sassacus crashed her bronze beak into the Albemarle's side. Both vessels were disabled; a shell from the Albemarle burst the boilers of the Sassacus, scalding the engineers. But the rest fought off the attempt made by the Albemarles to board. Presently the furious opponents drifted apart; and the Albemarle, unable ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... east drives Hrym, Bears his shield before him. Jormungand welters In giant rage And smites the waves. The eagle screams, And with pale beak tears ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... of a leguminous plant, Physostigma venenosum, a native of tropical Africa. It derives its scientific name from a curious beak-like appendage at the end of the stigma, in the centre of the flower; this appendage though solid was supposed to be hollow (hence the name from [Greek: phusa], a bladder, and stigma). The plant has a climbing habit like the scarlet runner, and attains a height of about 50 ft. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows Chac in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... up. Just at that moment there was a cry of "cock forward." I thought it meant a cock pheasant, and was astonished when I saw a beautiful brown bird with a long beak flitting towards me through the tops of ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... smiter Ilmarinen The eternal artist-forgeman, In the furnace forged an eagle From the fire of ancient wisdom, For this giant bird of magic Forged he talons out of iron, And his beak of steel and copper; Seats himself upon the eagle, On his back between the wing-bones Thus addresses he his creature, Gives the bird of fire this order. Mighty eagle, bird of beauty, Fly thou whither I direct thee, To Tuoni's coal-black river, To the blue-depths of the Death-stream, Seize the mighty ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... grabbed him around the neck and clutched him like a vise, shutting off his last, startled squawk. Then Cap'n Kidd darted forward that knobby head with its ugly beak, and tore off Peter's ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... spite all its skill as a digger, to set at naught its superb visual alertness, the sand crab has a special enemy in the bird policeman which patrols the beach. Vigilant and obnoxiously interfering, the policeman has a long and curiously curved beak, designed for probing into the affairs of crabs, and unless the "hatter" has hastily stopped the mouth of its shaft with a bundle of loose sand—which to the prying bird signifies "Out! Please return after lunch!"—will be disposed of with ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... stopt as he hunted the bee, The snake slipt under a spray; The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, And stared, with his foot on the prey; And the nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs, But never a one so gay; For he sings of what the world will be When the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... we are struck with more than one peculiar mode of taking fish. We see a number of cormorants perched on the sides of a boat. Now and then a bird dives into the water and comes up with a fish in its beak. If the fish be a small one, the bird swallows it as a reward for its services; but a fish of considerable size is hindered in its descent by a ring around the bird's neck and becomes the booty of the fisherman. The birds ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... ducks, when freshly killed, have supple feet. If young, the windpipe and beak can be easily broken by pressure of the thumb and forefinger. Young birds also have soft, white fat, tender skin, yellow feet, and ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. She half sat, half lay on her left side; whilst before her, quite close, strutted up and down on the grass, a bird, with blue plumage, coral-red beak, and ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... another," said Mrs. Driscoll, handing the latest arrival to the little girl. Alma smiled gratefully at her teacher as she opened the envelope and took out a dove in full flight, carrying a leaf in its beak. On the leaf was printed in gold letters ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak a mask ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and I started off after him, pleased as anything at earning a bob so easily; but I had not gone far when a bobby comes up and says, 'Here's the man,' and he arrested me, what for I don't know. All I do know was, that I was brought before a beak and charged with stealing. I told him the whole story, but all he said was, 'ten years' penal servitude.' That's how I come out here, so help ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... along its back, as if forced into position from within. Where the bow of the tramp had been there were colossal treads now visible. There was a sort of conning-tower, armored and grim. There was a ghastly steel beak. The thing was a war-machine of monstrous size. It emitted a sudden roaring sound, as of internal-combustion engines operating at full power, and lurched heavily. The steel plates of the tramp still visible above ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... at one of the skin-changers, and the beak of Ellidi smote the other on the back, and the backs of both were broken; but the whale took the deep, and gat him gone, and they never ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous
... strange birds, the scissor-bills, with snow-white breast, jet-black coat, and red beak, sitting by day on the sand-banks, the very picture of comfort and repose. Their nests are only little hollows made on these same sand-banks, without any attempt of concealment; they watch them closely, and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... her when some danger lies O'er her young brood, and, with wild eyes, Straight at the sudden foe she flies, Her full soul spurred To battle with the gnashing beak— A roaring tiger is more meek; And somehow one is bound to speak Well of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... but all to no purpose. I looked towards my windows, and could see nothing but the clouds and the sky. I heard a noise just over my head, like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woeful condition I was in; that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock: for the sagacity and smell of this bird enabled him to discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than I could be within ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... table a big heap of gold pieces, which Kiki thought to be money. One of these would buy him supper and a bed, he reflected, so he transformed himself into a magpie and, flying through the open window, caught up one of the gold pieces in his beak and flew out again before the old man could interfere. Indeed, the old man who was robbed was quite helpless, for he dared not leave his pile of gold to chase the magpie, and before he could place the gold in a sack in his pocket ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... glasses, and with two mighty handles on the sides; they are round below, so that they can only stand on their mouths. Further, all those splendid vessels of burnt earthenware, as, for instance, funeral, wine, or water urns, five feet high; likewise, all of those vessels with a beak-shaped mouth, bent back, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of Egypt we read: "Every year, upon a certain day, all the herons (Boukir, Ardea bubulcus of Cuvier) assemble at this mountain. One after another, each puts his beak into a cleft of the hill until the cleft closes upon one of them. And then forthwith all the others fly away But the bird which has been caught struggles until he dies, and there his body remains until it has fallen into dust." The same tale is told by other Arab writers, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... by Atkinson till he dozes. Atkinson is a fine, big fellow, and when he squats down his head is in a convenient position for observation. Presently he gapes; then his eyes shut, and his beak droops—just a very little. Then the beak droops a little more, and signs of insecurity appear about the neck. Very soon a distinct departure from the vertical is visible in that neck; it melts down ruinously till almost past recovery, and then suddenly springs erect, carrying ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dog was there, neither goat nor pig nor any other creature such as in the meanest savage villages of other times might have been found upon the surface of the earth. But, undisturbed and bold, numbers of a most extraordinary fowl—a long-legged, red-necked fowl, wattled and huge of beak—gravely waddled here and there or perched singly and in solemn rows ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... succeeded in overcoming their stubborn will. Every morning, by times, the knight of the shire, albeit exhausted from the endurance of the over-night's debate, rose up from his neglected breakfast, and posted down to his daily cell in the Cloisters. Prometheus under the beak of the vulture could not have shown more patience than most of those unhappy gentlemen under the infliction of the lawyer's tongue; and their stoicism was the more praiseworthy, because in many instances there seemed no prospect, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... crowd; but another form has appeared in the blue sky, and rapidly descends. A pair of long, ungainly legs, hanging down beneath the enormous wings, now touch the ground, and Abou Seen (father of the teeth or beak, the Arab name for the Marabou) has arrived, and he stalks proudly towards the crowds, pecking his way with his long bill through the struggling vultures, and swallowing the lion's share of the repast. Abou Seen, last but not least, had arrived ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... spirits, is of wondrous form and mystic nature. The rare advent of this bird upon the earth is, like that of the kirin or unicorn, a presage of the advent of virtuous rulers and good government. It has the head of a pheasant, the beak of a swallow, the neck of a tortoise, and the features of the dragon and fish. Its colors and streaming feathers are gorgeous with iridian sheen, combining the splendors of the pheasant and the peacock. Its five colors symbolize the cardinal virtues ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... tower without transepts. A small S. chantry projects from the nave. Features to be noted are: (1) the Norm, doorway mentioned above, a little to the right of main entrance. The capitals are richly carved, and support an arch ornamented with deeply cut chevron and grotesque bird's beak mouldings. The tympanum bears in relief the curious device of some winged creatures devouring a tree. Above is a roundheaded niche containing the figure of our Lord, with hand uplifted in blessing. (2) Tub-shaped Norm. font, bearing inscription, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Neat-footed, weak-fingered, in his face,— Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race, Bold-lipped, rich tinted, mutable as the sea, The brown eyes radiant with vivacity,— There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... of all you have done; Only think of all you can do; A false note is really fun From such a bird as you! Lift up your proud little crest, Open your musical beak; Other birds have to do their best, You need ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to Katrina. And now the two of them came near taking to their heels; for, sure enough, propped against the stone and almost covered with rim frost sat a giant troll, with a bristly beard and a beak-like nose! ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... the chance," said Dason, and knelt and offered his neck to the axe. So Tob cut off his head, sticking it on the galley's beak as an advertisement of what had been done. The body he threw over the side, and one of the great man-eating birds that hovered near, picked it up and flew away with it to its nest amongst the crags. And so we were free to get a meal of the fruits and the fresh meats which the galley offered, whilst ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... will not be lost, even as regards their other studies at the University, for I will prepare the practical exercises in a double series, one illustrative of history, the other of natural science. And whether you are drawing a piece of Greek armour, or a hawk's beak, or a lion's paw, you will find that the mere necessity of using the hand compels attention to circumstances which would otherwise have escaped notice, and fastens them in the memory without farther effort. But were it even otherwise, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... scientific name of the genus of the bird peculiar to Australia, called the Cake Barren Goose. See Goose. The word is from Grk. kaeros, wax, and 'opsis, face, and was given from the peculiarities of the bird's beak. The genus is confined to Australia, and Cereopsis novae-hollandiae is the only species known. The bird was noticed by the early voyagers to Australia, and was extraordinarily ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... now, and the master he's took up the runnin', and—my eye and Betty Martin—ain't he talkin'! Not cussin'—no, not one swear word has he let go. Young gentlemen, upon my Alfred David, if the master ain't preachin' for all the world as if he was a blessed beak on the Bench and old Pompous was a 'habit and repute.' It's as good as a circus; you just go and 'ear 'im," and in exactly one and a quarter seconds the boys were an unseen audience when Mr. Peter McGuffie senior gave his ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... not see the boy, but I knew that he had done as I told him. So I promptly slammed the door shut and stood there facing the gray-lipped man with the riding-quirt in his hand. He took two slow steps toward me. His chin was thrust out in a way that made me think of a fighting-cock's beak. He had not shaved that morning, and his squared jaw looked stubbled and ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... the close for James Batter, who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club, had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane. James, as he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a thump on his thigh, "Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!" and so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it—a callant that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... talkative and agreeable; he converses very much like the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table,—wittily, and in a literary way, but perhaps with too great an infusion of physiological and medical metaphor. He is a little deaf, and has a mouth like the beak of a bird; indeed, he is, with his small body and quick movements, very like a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... bears a child and it has the ears of a lion, a strong king is in the country." "When a woman bears a child and it has a bird's beak, that country is oppressed." "When a woman bears a child and its right hand is wanting, that country goes to destruction." "When a woman bears a child and its feet are wanting, the roads of the country are cut; that house is destroyed." "When a woman bears a child and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... these victims? Among the heaviest charges which were urged against him was the killing and eating of that wretched Scharfenebbe— Sharp-beak—the crow's wife. It is well that there are two sides to every story. A poor weary fox, it seemed, was not to be allowed to enjoy a quiet sleep in the sunshine but what an unclean carrion bird must come down and take ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Beak: any notable prolongation of the front of the head: the snout in Rhynchophora: specifically, the jointed structure covering the lancets in ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... thing[gy] Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, To whom the boundless air alone were home: Then came his fit again, which to o'ercome, As eagerly the barred-up bird will beat His breast and beak against his wiry dome Till the blood tinge his plumage—so the heat Of his impeded Soul would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... old woman's small, pale eyes twinkled with a tiger's bloodthirsty greed. Her broad, flat nose, with nostrils expanded into oval cavities, breathed the fires of hell, and resembled the beak of some evil bird of prey. The spirit of intrigue lurked behind her low, cruel brow. Long hairs had grown from her wrinkled chin, betraying the masculine character of her schemes. Any one seeing that woman's face would have said that artists had ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... red nose with another loud report, like that of a blunderbuss going off. This was accompanied by the flourish of a brightly coloured pocket-handkerchief, whose vivid hue approximated closely to the general tint of his cheeks and eagle-like beak, and which he held loosely, ready for action, in his disengaged left hand; for, his right was ever at work oscillating between the magazine of snuff in his deep waistcoat pocket and the nasal promontory that consumed it with almost rhythmical regularity, sniff and snort and resonant ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and that I can. 'Twas a quist a-cooing in the tree one time—and then—she did recollect herself and did sharpen up her tongue and 'twas another sort of bird what could drive its beak into the flesh of ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... ingaged all his Friends and Interests to oppose it; so when it was passed, he said with much passionate zeal, That single vote ruined both Church and Kingdom; such fatal events did he presage from his bloody Beak: For no sooner did that Harpey appear in the University, but he made good what was predicted of him, and he amongst others, that were outed for their Loyalty, was turned out of his Fellowship at St. Johns; out of which Loyal Colledge was then ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... seemed somewhat undecided as to what to do. Like the rest of her class she was fitted at the bow with a powerful beak or ram, just level with the surface of the water, the office of which was to pierce an enemy's ship about the water-line and so cause such a serious leak as to effectually distract the attention of the defenders. ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... Lachlan's tuneful mavis, I sing on the branches early, And such my love of song, I sleep but half the night-tide rarely; No raven I, of greedy maw, no kite of bloody beak, No bird of devastating claw, but a woodland songster meek. I love the apple's infant bloom; my ancestry have fared For ages on the nourishment the orchard hath prepared: Their hey-day was the summer, their joy the summer's dawn, And their dancing-floor it was the green ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... began to retreat. Instantly Ba-ree's indecision had flown to the four winds. With one sharp excited yelp he flew at the defiant bird. For a few moments there was a thrilling race, and Ba-ree's sharp little teeth buried themselves in the jay's feathers. Swift as a flash the bird's beak began to strike. The jay was the king of the smaller birds. In nesting season it killed the brush sparrows, the mild-eyed moose-birds, and the tree-sappers. Again and again it struck Ba-ree with its ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... man's nostrils, stirs and thrills him because it is the scent of life's self. The bird upon the sapling was a robin, the tiny round body perched upon his delicate legs, plump and bright plumaged for mating. He touched his warm red breast with his beak, fluffed out and shook his feathers, and, swelling his throat, poured forth his small, entranced song. It was a gay, brief, jaunty thing, but pure, joyous, gallant, liquid melody. There was dainty bravado in it, saucy demand and allurement. It was addressed to some invisible hearer ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is quiet below. A woodpecker on a fir tree raps lightly and flies farther on and vanishes; it has hidden, but does not cease to tap with its beak, like a child when it has hidden and wishes to be sought for. Nearer sits a squirrel, holding a nut in its paws and gnawing it; its tail hangs over its eyes like the plume over a cuirassier's helmet: even though thus protected, it keeps glancing about; ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... was a man of middle age, very tall and well made, broad-shouldered, with lofty bearing, a forehead stern and haughty, a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, a head carried high and slightly backwards, large, wide open gray eyes which shot glances at once piercing and restless, an expressive face regularly cut, in which Gilbert found little to criticise except that the eyebrows were a little too ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Harding also plied the ferry; and then men would speak of him as the Red Boatman. But he could not be depended on, for he was often absent. His boat was of a curious shape, not like any other boat seen on the Arun. Its prow was curved like a bird's beak. And when folk wished to go across to the Amberley flats that lie under the splendid shell which was once a castle, Harding would carry them, if he was there and neither too busy nor too surly. And when they asked the fee he always said, "When ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... many lands, until one day, in a far eastern country, he found her sitting in a tent, by the side of an old, white-haired hermit. Cherry was wild with delight. He flew to her shoulder, caressed her hair with his beak, and cooed ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... securely bound to the rock, that modern Prometheus, Captain Lysander Sprowl, like his mythical prototype, felt the vulture's beak in his vitals. Chagrin devoured his liver. An overflow of southern bile was the result, and he turned yellow to the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... looking from side to side, with black, bright eyes, at the motionless figure. Hitherto it had been accustomed to a welcome. Why this strange silence? The robin hopped round on the rail, polished his beak meditatively, fluffed out his feathers, and then, raising his head, sang a ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... it hugely, for the fresh wind made the pennons cut strange capers. The winged lion of Venice looked as if trying to fly away home; the Chinese dragon appeared to brandish his forked tail as he clawed at the Burmese peacock; the double-headed eagle of Russia pecked at the Turkish crescent with one beak, while the other seemed to be screaming to the English royal beast, "Come on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and stripes waving proudly over him. A green flag with a yellow harp and sprig ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... feature," said Adrian, in English, with a chuckle. "The Signore's Excellency is betrayed by the Signore's Excellency's beak." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... described in colors too deep and strong. Prometheus bound to the rock, with the beak of the vulture in his bleeding breast, suffering daily renewing pangs, his wounds healed only to be torn open afresh, is an emblem of the victim of that vulture passion, which the word of God declares to be cruel and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... toes, and you will see that two of them are turned forward and two backward, so as to enable them to take a firm hold upon branch or twig. They have such hard bills because they live upon nuts and seeds. You have seen how Polly holds a nut, and shells it with the sharp point of her beak, keeping her eye on ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... bushes not far from his shanty, he found a small Hawk lying dead. He clutched it as a wonderful prize, spent an hour in looking at its toes, its beak, its wings, its every feather; then he set to work to make a drawing of it. A very bad drawing it proved, although it was the labour of days, and the bird was crawling with maggots before he had finished. But every feather and every spot was faithfully ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ravens. The story is told of that unfortunate hare who had hollowed out in the snow a burrow with two entrances. Two of these birds having recognised his presence, one entered one hole in order to dislodge the hare, the other awaited him at the other opening to batter his head with blows from his beak and kill him before he had time ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... The Count of Nideck does not disdain Sperver, the old hawk, the true man of the woods. One evening, meeting me by moonlight, he frankly said to me, 'Old comrade, you hunt only by night. Come and hunt by day with me. You have a sharp beak and strong claws. Well, hunt away, if such is your nature; but hunt by my licence, for I am the eagle upon these mountains, and my ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... accursed parrot. I could hear it tearing with its beak at the bars of its cage, as if struggling to pull off the cloth which ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... of young Desire, and purple light of Love;" "The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye;" "Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves;" "Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air;" "Beneath the good how far, but far above the great" "High-born Hoel's harp, and soft ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the tomb of the saint, and bore it to the sacristy, where I opened it with the aid of small iron pincers. I found placed in the stomach of a dove of gold and gilded silver, covered with white enamel, having the beak and claws in red, the wings spread, a little phial of glass of reddish color about an inch and a half high corked with a piece of crimson damask. I examined this phial attentively in the light, and I perceived a great number of marks of a needle on the sides; then I took from a crimson ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... her; that he would curse, as formerly, all day long, and bite her, and swear at her, in order to attract the neighbors and make them laugh. Then she rushed for the cage and seized the bird, which scratched and tore her flesh with its claws and beak. But she held it with all her strength between her hands. She threw it on the ground and rolled over it with the frenzy of one possessed. She crushed it and finally made of it nothing but a little green, flabby lump which no longer moved or ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... in the nose, and a wavy star on each cheek, and in the middle of the forehead; while over the balustrade on which she was leaning there peeped a monster with grotesque eyes, a pair of twisted horns, a parrot's beak, vulture's claws, and a scaly tail stretching away in complicated spires far into the distance. No one could for a moment doubt that this was Gerald's work, and Marian felt sure that he had been thereto incited by Lionel. Extreme was her consternation at the thought of the displeasure ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the ways of Hel (the goddess of death), until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hyrm steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jotun-rage. The worm beats the water and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears carcasses; (the ship) Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the south comes with flickering flame; shines from his sword the Valgod's sun. The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... unenthralled. But Cato was never pleased; he laughed but once, and all Rome turned out to see him; he belonged to an earlier day, to an austerer, perhaps to a better one, and it may be that in "that woman," as he called Caesar, his clearer vision discerned beneath the plumage of the peacock, the beak and talons of the bird of prey. For they were there, and needed only a vote of the senate to batten on nations of which the senate had never heard. Loan him an army, and "that woman" was to give geography such a twist that today whoso ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... qualities, he had been allowed to march about for many years, unreproved, in Aunt Katharine's stable-yard. Maisie had been very much afraid of him in the days when she wore socks, for he had a way of digging at her little bare legs with his cruel beak whenever he could get near her. She was not frightened of him now that she was older, especially when Dennis was with her, but still she did not trust him, and took care this morning not to cross his path on her way to ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... no!" the cockatoo replied, "My beak will do as well; I'd rather eat my victuals thus Than ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... feet warm at least. On the crook, or hooked iron-chain suspended within the chimney, hung a three-footed pot, in which potatoes were boiling away merrily for supper. By the side of the wide chimney, or more properly lum, hung an iron lamp, of an old classical form common to the country, from the beak of which projected, almost horizontally, the lighted wick—the pith of a rush. The light perched upon it was small but clear, and by it David had been reading. Margaret sat right under it, upon a creepie, or small three-legged wooden stool. Sitting thus, with the light falling on her from above, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... whids & plant, and whid no more of that [19] Budg a beak the crackmas & tip lowr with thy prat [20] If treyning thou dost feare, thou ner wilt foist a Ian, [21] Then mill, and wap and treine for me, [22] A gere peck ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... am I, bound upon this pillared rock, Prey to the vulture of a vast desire That feeds upon my life. I burst my bands And steal a moment's freedom from the beak, The clinging talons and the shadowing plumes; Then comes the false enchantress, with her song; "Thou wouldst not lay thy forehead in the dust Like the base herd that feeds and breeds and dies! Lo, the fair garlands ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... round her head and shoulders. She was a little stout woman, who in middle age had retained her brightness of eye and complexion. Her features were regular, and her little nose had enough suggestion of the eagle's beak in its form to preserve her ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... through the lines unscathed, the Federals tried to blockade her way; but she deviated not an inch from her path. The vessel that stood before her had to move aside, or take the chances of a blow from her terrible iron beak. She came straight to the centre of the fleet before opening fire; and when her portholes were opened, and the big guns peered out, they found plenty of targets. Her first volley knocked a gunboat to pieces; and in another minute she had crashed into the side of a Union ram, sending that ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... a collection of two or three raven-skins fixed to the girdle behind the back in such a way that the tails stick out horizontally from the body. On his head, too, is a raven-skin split into two parts, and tied so as to let the beak project ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... said poppa in a burst of feeling, "they say the American eagle might keep her beak shut with advantage, more than she does; but I tell you," and the Senator's hand came down hard on Dicky's knee, "a trip around Europe is enough to turn her into a singing ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... spare man with a thin face and high cheekbones, a long pointed nose being also a most prominent feature. He had very scanty whiskers, too, and this seemed to make his face look thinner and his nose longer, so that the latter resembled a bird's beak. ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I went to crack a crib. I'm shot with a bullet. Hide me in that loose hay there; leave me the bottle, and let nobody come nigh me. The beak will be after ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... membranes also at the root of the bill. It is black, or rather blue, and has no resemblance of the other but in name, for the bill is thick, short, and crooked, and has all together an uncommon appearance. A gross-beak, about the size of a thrush, of a brown colour, with a reddish tail, is frequent; as is also a small greenish bird, which is almost the only musical one here, but is sufficient by itself to fill the woods with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... bird has a crooked beak And eyes like live coals set in its head, A gray breast dappled with glowing red— DABBLED—not dappled, I should have said, From a fancy it has of ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... speaker and looked full upon the beak nose, cleft cheek and bristling red moustache of an old friend. "Good Lord, The Beachcomber!" I breathed. He started, peered at me and growled, "Captain Dawnay-Devenish, if it's all the same to you, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... clamorous sea-gulls Toiled with beak and claws together, Made the rifts and openings wider In the mighty ribs of Nahma, And from peril and from prison, From the body of the sturgeon, From the peril of the water, They released ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... in the creek— Flags at her mast, and garlands at her beak; High on the yard-arm hoisted is the sail, Half spread it flutters in the evening gale. The night before he goes, young Harrald stray'd Into the wood where first he saw his maid: Burning impatience fever'd all his blood, He wish'd for wings to ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... thou must be tempted, and must escape too. "With the temptation." As sure as Satan is licensed, so sure he is limited; and when Satan has ended all the temptation, he shall depart from thee (Luke 4:13). "He will with the temptation"—by such a managing of it as shall beak its own neck. God can admit Satan to tempt, and make the Christian wise to manage the temptation ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... great deal is said about the aristocracy of the ears, and the hands, and the feet; but of all the features, or other appliances of the human frame, the mouth and the nose have the greatest influence in producing an impression of gentility. This was peculiarly the case with the stranger, whose beak, like that of an ancient galley, gave the promise of a stately movement, and whose beautiful teeth and winning smile, often relieved the expression of a countenance that was not unfrequently stern. As he ceased speaking, Dutton rose, in a studied manner, raised his hat entirely from ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... through a cloud of floating feathers, a heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird, splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... or Baleniceps Rex, is only met with in the immense swamps of the White Nile. This bird feeds generally upon water shellfish, for which nature has provided a most powerful beak armed with a ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... went downstairs, he rested his beak on the steps, lifted his right foot and then his left one; but his mistress feared that such feats would give him vertigo. He became ill and was unable to eat. There was a small growth under his tongue like those chickens ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter? Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so suspicious ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... unreceived 290 Totter heart-broken from the closing gates Of the full Lazar-house; or, gazing, stand, Sick with despair! O ye to Glory's field Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death, Bleed with new wounds beneath the vulture's beak! 295 O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view Thy husband's mangled corse, and from short doze Start'st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatched cot Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile 300 Children of Wretchedness! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... eyebrow. As for Chichikov, he glanced upwards, and once more caught sight of Kanaris with his fat thighs and interminable moustache, and of Bobelina and the blackbird. For fully five minutes all present preserved a complete silence—the only sound audible being that of the blackbird's beak against the wooden floor of the cage as the creature fished for grains of corn. Meanwhile Chichikov again surveyed the room, and saw that everything in it was massive and clumsy in the highest degree; as also that everything was curiously in keeping ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... carved flowers and fruit in great profusion, emblematical of the seasons, and forming a fine piece of work; it represents the all-important fact that time flies, by an hourglass borne on the wings of a splendidly-carved eagle, and suspending from the bird's beak are the letters, curiously wrought, forming TEMPUS FUGIT. This rests on a globe, representative of the earth, which is half sunk in a shell of water, overflowing the wheel of time, and shedding on fruit and ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... beyond Offa's dyke should lose his right hand. Welshwomen might marry Englishmen, but none of the highborn Cymry might aspire to wed an Englishwoman. Hating the prince under whom they had come to so much disgrace, the Welsh themselves captured poor Gryffyth, and sent his head, his hands, and the beak of his ship, to Edward the Confessor, from whom they accepted the appointment of three of their native princes ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... mystic beasts,—closest to his feet the irredeemable boar; then lion and bear, tiger, unicorn, and fiery dragon closest to his head, the flames of its mouth mingling with his breath as he sings. The audient eagle, alas! has lost the beak, and is only recognizable by his proud holding of himself; the duck, sleepily delighted after muddy dinner, close to his shoulder, is a true conquest. Hoopoe, or indefinite bird of crested race, behind; of the other three no clear ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... up, saw the hawk in full swing, not many hundred yards distant, with the bird in its beak, fluttering and ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... savage temper of the barbarous people that inhabited the island. Nevertheless, afterwards, when Cimon took the island (as is related in his life), and had a great ambition to find the place where Theseus was buried, he, by chance, spied an eagle upon a rising ground pecking with her beak and tearing up the earth with her talons, when on the sudden it came into his mind, as it were by some divine inspiration, to dig there, and search for the bones of Theseus. There were found in that place ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... frozen to death in crowds on the great heights. Instead of gold, nothing was found but wearisome savannahs and swamps, and dismal forests soaked with two months' rain. Instead of useful domestic animals, no creature was seen but the thick-skinned tapir, which, with a long beak-like nose, crops plants and leaves and frequents swampy tracts in the heart of the primeval forest. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... sez he, after a while, 'it appeared so awful to me when I saw it coming out of the white mist with its glaring red eyes and terrible beak. It was a ghost I feels, if it wasn't the sea sarpint; and whether or no it bodes no good to the man wot sees it, I know. I'm ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... to his body, and it was long before one could feel the least motion in them. Finally, to our great joy, we felt a brisk little kick, and then a flutter of wings, and then a determined peck of the beak, which showed that there was some bird left in him yet, and that he meant at any rate to find out ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... omit, sift, select, construct. Given a horse, an eagle, an elephant, and the "creative artist" can make an animal that is neither a horse, an eagle, nor an elephant, yet resembles each. This animal may have eight legs (or forty) with hoofs, claws and toes alternating; a beak, a trunk, a mane; and the whole can be feathered and given the power of rapid flight and also the ability to run like the East Wind. It can neigh, roar or scream by turn, or can do all in concert, with a vibratory force multiplied ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... which produce this beautiful ax. The blade is longer and very much slimmer than the Bontoc blade, but its marked distinguishing feature is the shape of the cutting edge. The blade is ground on two straight lines joined together by a short curved line, giving the edge the striking form of the beak of a rapacious bird. The slender, graceful handle, always fitted with a long iron ferrule, has a process on the under side near the middle. The handle is also usually fitted with a decorated metal ferrule at the tip and frequently is decorated ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... can say. There was just one furious mix-up of whirling, powdered snow, that hung in the air like a mist, out of which a great pinion, a clawing paw, a snapping beak, a flash of fangs, a skinny leg and clutching, talons, a circling bushy tail appeared and vanished in flashes, to the accompaniment of stupendous flappings ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... she said, and the creature looked up intelligently at her as she rapped him on the back with a long knitting-needle.—"And you, Mademoiselle Cleopatre!—attention!" she continued, tapping the ancient fowl on the beak. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... his powers of speed to escape from an enemy so formidable. Plying his almost unequalled strength of wing, he ascended high and higher in the air, by short gyrations, that the hawk might gain no vantage ground for pouncing at him; while his spiked beak, at the extremity of so long a neck as enabled him to strike an object at a yard's distance in every direction, possessed for any less spirited assailant all the terrors of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... forth her hand to caress the intelligent and affable bird, which, instead of responding as expected, "squawked," as our phonetic language has it, and, opening a beak imitated from a tooth-drawing instrument of the good old days, made a shrewd nip at Kitty's forefinger. She drew it back ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bark, strikes harder and harder blows, throws herself back at last, flapping her wings furiously as she brings down her whole strength again upon it; finally it yields, and grub after grub goes down her throat, till she whets her beak after the meal as a wild beast licks its claws, and off on her pressing business ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various |
