"Eel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then in the constricted passageway that seemed to Ken to raise College Hall from its foundation. It terrified him. Like an eel he slipped through reaching arms and darted forward. Ken was heavy and fast on his feet, and with fear lending him wings he made a run through College Hall that would have been a delight to the football coach. For Ken was not dodging ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the eggs of Geotrupes and the larvae of the cockchafer or the rose-beetle endure such vicissitudes of temperature with impunity; contracted and stiffened into little masses of ice, but not destroyed, they revive in spring no less than the eel fry, the rotifers, or the tardigrades. One can scarcely believe that life still persists in a state of suspense only in these little frozen creatures, whose ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... sinister—haunter of those muddied depths of pollution, who took a more than passing interest in the smell of blood, and must, to judge by the swirl, have been too big to be safe. And that was probably a giant female eel, as dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size—though he ate eels—might care to face. Then there was the marsh-harrier—and the same might have been a kind of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk—who flapped up like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... so shall it lie," said Wayne's voice out of the darkness, and it had the same sweet and yet horrible air that it had had throughout, of coming from a great distance, from before or after the event. Even when he was struggling like an eel or battering like a madman, he spoke like a spectator. "As the tree falleth, so shall it lie," he said. "Men have called that a gloomy text. It is the essence of all exultation. I am doing now what I have done all my life, what is the only happiness, what ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... his shoe and fling itself to the other side of the room; the other was crawling after it (!) but a maid espying that, with her hand drew it out, and it clasp'd and curl'd about her hand like a living eel or serpent. A barrel of salt of considerable quantity hath been observed to march from room to room without any human assistance,' ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... in Athens who are like the eel-catchers, that choose to have the waters troubled," observed the peasant. "When the lake is still, they lose their labour; but when the mud is well stirred, they take eels in plenty. My son says he gets twelve oboli for a conger-eel, in the Athenian markets; ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... and then I knew what the Scripture meant by 'The Spirit of God passed before his face.' I had won. I slipped through the crowd of men who had gathered about the players with the quickness of an eel escaping through a broken mesh in a net. My nerves thrilled with joy instead of anguish. I felt like some criminal on the way to torture released by a chance meeting with the king. It happened that a man with a decoration found himself short ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... buttons, as they described their everlasting circles; at long intervals there was a faint ripple just perceptible round the floats, when a fish was 'playing' with the worm. Very few fish were taken; during a whole hour we drew up only two loaches and an eel. I could not say why the brigadier aroused my curiosity; his rank could not have any influence on me; ruined noblemen were not even at that time looked upon as a rarity, and his appearance presented nothing remarkable. Under the warm cap, which covered the whole upper ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... visitor. But, until she comes, no man is known. Wilfrid was not absolutely engaged to Lady Charlotte (she had taken care of that), and being free, and feeling his heart beat in more lively fashion, he turned almost delightedly to the girl he could not escape from. As when the wriggling eel that has been prodded by the countryman's fork, finds that no amount of wriggling will release it, to it twists in a knot around the imprisoning prong. This simile says more than I mean it to say, but those who understand ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast, To continue and be employ'd there all my life, The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water, The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher; I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear, Is the tide out? I Join the group of clam-diggers on the flats, I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man; In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Quest declared. "So they've got him, eh? All the same, that fellow's as slippery as an eel. Lenora, how should you like a trip across ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the black-fish militated against his chances for, while it took him more than his own length to turn in the water, the thresher darted, here, there and everywhere, like an eel—just getting out of his reach when the other thought he had got him and had opened his ponderous jaws to crush him. It was at this moment that his agile tormentor, seizing his opportunity, would leap out of the water ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... repeats, Russia was not ready for big adventures—was, in fact, still suffering from lassitude after the war of 1878, 'like an electric eel which, having in one great shock given off all its electricity, burrows in the mud to refill its battery, desiring nothing less than to come again too soon into contact with ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... furniture but the bench on which he was sitting. But Tim was the son of a mason, and it was not for nothing that he had lived with gipsies for so long. He was a perfect cat at climbing, and as slippery as an eel in the way he could squeeze himself through places which you would have thought scarcely wide enough for his arm. His sobs ceased, his face lighted up again; he drew out of his pocket his one dearest treasure, from which ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... whose rooms were just below mine, suffered a good deal from practical jokers. One day I was chatting with Reggie Wragge when we heard loud cries for help just below us. We rushed down and found Jimmy in the bath, struggling with a large conger-eel which had been introduced by some of his friends. I held on to the monster's tail, while Wragge severed its head with a carving-knife. Poor Jimmy, who was always nervous and not very 'strong in his intellects,' was much upset, and was shortly afterwards ploughed for the seventh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... Eel.—The eel (Anguilla vulgaris) is regarded by the angler more as a nuisance than a sporting fish, but when of considerable size (and it often reaches a weight of 8 lb or more) it is a splendid fighter and stronger than almost any ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... live parasitic lives. The nearest approach to a true parasite among the vertebrates is the lamprey-eel (Fig. 1) which attaches itself to the body of a fish and sucks the blood or eats the flesh. Among the Crustaceans, the group that includes the lobsters and crabs, we find many examples of parasites, the most extraordinary of which is the curious crab known as Sacculina ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... missus!" quoth he to an imaginary landlady inside, and twisting under Amyas's hand like an eel, vanished into the house, while Frank got the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... threatened attack on his Chicago City Street Railway preserves, "I see our friend Mr. Cowperwood has managed to get his own way with the council. I am morally certain he uses money to get what he is after as freely as a fireman uses water. He's as slippery as an eel. I should be glad if we could establish that there is a community of interest between him and these politicians around City Hall, or between him and Mr. McKenty. I believe he has set out to dominate this city politically as well as financially, and he'll need constant watching. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... down to the beach, thinking to wade the narrow run at Eel Pond, and so save a mile or two of road. It was light as day, and I went along well enough, though I felt sad-like, an' as if somethin' were ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... small Eels, which are to be found in divers sorts of Vinegar, I have little to add besides their Picture, which you may find drawn in the third Figure of the 25. Scheme: That is, they were shaped much like an Eel, save only that their nose A, (which was a little more opacous then the rest of their body) was a little sharper, and longer, in proportion to their body, and the wrigling motion of their body seem'd to be onely upwards and downwards, whereas that ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... It is necessary, the Doctor says, that he be kept in the dark. I saw only a big beard, partly burned away by the fire; and a great bandage which covered his eyes!' Pearl's hold relaxed, she slipped like an eel to the floor and ran over to her mother. Her new friend was all very well, but no one would do as well as mother ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... who've let me in for cocking the house," said Tempest, with a laugh. "Anyhow, you've a right to talk to me like a father. All the same, I fancy you've a little downer on old Wales. He's a good sort of chap, and there's nothing of the eel about him." ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... trembling in his hand: With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed, And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed. 140 Our plenteous streams a various race supply, The bright-eyed perch with fins of Tyrian dye, The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd, The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold, Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains, And pikes, the tyrants ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... H.—"What has become of your famous General Eel?" said the Count d'Erleon to Mr. Campbell. "Eel," said a bystander, "that is a military fish I never heard of;" but another at once enlightened his mind by saying to the count, "General Lord Hill is now Commander-in-Chief of ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... find you with a message from your father. He denied at first having a letter, but I searched him until I found it. As you see, it is addressed to you. Nevertheless I struck matches, opened it, and with some difficulty managed to read it. All the time this creature was doubling about like an eel trying to get ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... these sacred occasions was for each man to strictly limit himself to half-a-pint of liquor. This scrupulosity was so well understood by the landlord that the whole company was served in cups of that measure. They were all exactly alike—straight-sided, with two leafless lime-trees done in eel-brown on the sides—one towards the drinker's lips, the other confronting his comrade. To wonder how many of these cups the landlord possessed altogether was a favourite exercise of children in the marvellous. Forty at least might have ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Therefore all I can do is to keep him in sight. And I can only do that by throwing him as far as possible off the scent. If he takes me for a card-sharper, all the better. For he's as slippery as an eel, and I have ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... for becoming acquainted with the life of the Upper Thames, than the London river did of learning what the tidal stream really is and may become. Fish, fowl and foxes, rare Thames flowers and shy Thames chub, butterflies, eel-traps, fountains and springs, river shells and water insects, are all parts of the "natural commodities" of the district. There is no better and more representative part of the river than this. Close by is Nuneham, one of the finest ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Fairman's house at Shackamaxon—otherwise Eel-Hole—and in this pleasant springtime, April 4, 1683, he met King Tammany under the forest elm, with the savage people in half-moon circles, looking at the healthy-fed and business-like Quaker. There Tammany and his Indian allies surrendered all the land ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... alicampane—but in truth I'm confounded And bothered, my dear, 'twixt that troublesome boy's (BOB'S) cookery language, and Madame LE ROI'S: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... tell where: Voices I call 'em: 'twas a kind o' sough Like pine-trees thet the wind's ageth'rin' through; An', fact, I thought it was the wind a spell, Then some misdoubted, couldn't fairly tell, Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel, I knowed, an' didn't,—fin'lly seemed to feel 60 'Twas Concord Bridge a talkin' off to kill With the Stone Spike thet's druv thru Bunker's Hill; Whether 'twas so, or ef I on'y dreamed, I couldn't say; I tell it ez ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Unlike the frogs and toads, the Salamander keeps its tail throughout life, and in some kinds of Salamanders which spend all of their time in the water, the gills are used throughout life. Salamanders have various common names, some being called newts, others water-dogs or mud-puppies. The mud-eel and the Congo "snake" of the Southern States, and the "hell-bender" of the Ohio valley and south are all Salamanders. The belief that any of the Salamanders is poisonous is a myth and has no basis ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... An unwary winged eel served as their breakfast, and soon they were on their way to those beckoning hills. It had started to rain again, but the worst part of their journey was over. If they could reach the top of one of the mountains there was a good chance that they would be seen and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... him red-headed, stubby Peter sat always on the edge of his chair, always with a bit of a smile on his face, never talking much, always agreeing good-naturedly. Beside Peter and at The Chief's left was Jack, who wriggled constantly like a young eel. ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... go about their business, and do their jobs, and keep their skins as full as other people, without putting nort inside of them." She knew one of that kind before, and he was shot by the Coast-guard, and when they postmartyred him, an eel twenty foot long was found inside him, doubled up for all the world like a love-knot. Squire Carne was of too high a family for that; but she would give a week's rent to know what ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... knife, and as a great eel about three feet long was drawn over the side they did not trouble to extract the hook which was swallowed right down; but Josh cut the string of the snooding close to the living creature's jaws, ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the rock. I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there was anything to see but darkness. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... respected father,' said Lightwood, bringing him to a subject they had expressly appointed to discuss: always the most slippery eel of eels of subjects ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... win money so much as to study the characters of those present. Bill he knew already fairly well as a tough nut to crack, game to the core, and staunch to his friends. Blackwell was a bad lot, treacherous, vindictive, slippery as an eel. Even his confederates did not trust him greatly. But it was Soapy Stone and young Cullison that interested Flandrau most. The former played like a master. He chatted carelessly, but he overlooked no points. Sam had the qualities that go to make a brilliant erratic player, but he lacked the ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... correctly: the fly went over the fish's nose; he rose; I hooked him, and he was a great silly brute of a grayling. The grayling is the deadest-hearted and the foolishest-headed fish that swims. I would as lief catch a perch or an eel as a grayling. This is the worst of it—this ambition of the duffer's, this desire for perfection, as if the golfing imbecile should match himself against Mr. Horace Hutchinson, or as the sow of the Greek proverb ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... an awful row about it—grew as attenuated and brown as an eel—and garnished his conversation with several significant hints about suicide. He was, however, saved from that ghastly alternative by being drafted into a Rowing Club, who plied their gondolas daily on the Union Canal. Hard exercise, beer, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... surprise, Ahmed really came. Those who could swim were had out of their stifling quarters and allowed to do so. Nicholas could swim like an eel, and all were amazed when, after swimming farther out than any of the others, he flung up his arms, uttered a loud cry, and vanished. They watched and searched, but nothing more was seen of him, and there was ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... curious fact, which, having the sanction of his inflexible veracity, may be received as a striking instance of human insensibility and inconsideration. As he was passing by a fishmonger who was skinning an eel alive, he heard him 'curse it, because ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... she was particularly amiable. She called the inspector to her to show him a huge eel which had been the wonder of the market when exhibited at the auction. She opened the grating, which she had previously closed over the basin in whose depths the eel seemed to be ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... because bottles become empty? There are many casks in the vaults, and many vaults in the hills. Make me a good fish-hook gilded with sweet words, with a drop of honey for bait, and quick! catch for me in the stream of oblivion a pretty consoler, as fresh and slippery as an eel; you will still have the hook when the fish shall have glided from your hands. Youth must pass away, and if I were you I would carry off the queen of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the black did not lie quiet like the camel Sam had settled himself to ride. For he began to act at once as if made of a combination of steel springs. He swung himself sidewise as he felt Sam upon his back, disorganised the butler's holding, and behaved in a thoroughly eel-like fashion as he struggled hard ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... eel skins, brat?" asked Brewer, sitting down. "My grandma wore a eel skin for rheumatiz for twenty-five years, an' Holy Moses, the sufferin' that woman had durin' 'em times my tongue ain't able ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... sorts, ducks, teals, cranes, herons, bitterns, two sorts of partridges, four sorts of heath fowls, grouse or pheasants. The river fish is like that of Europe, viz., carp, sturgeon, salmon, pike, perch, roach, eel, etc. In the salt waters are found codfish, haddock, herring and so forth, also abundance ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... island, went over to look at it, and soon after married Lady Olo. They united their names, and called it Olosenga. The god Fuailangi in after years was in repute, and dreaded. He was incarnate in the sea eel, had an altar which the people carried about with them, and any persons cooking or eating the sea eel had their eyes burned and their scalps clubbed as a punishment. Another story is that some parrots flew ashore from a Fiji canoe. Olo means fort and Senga ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... but like an eel he squirmed to the top before the other had time to get set. The champion's patrician head was thumped down into the mud and a knobby little fist played a painful tattoo on his ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... at the first stroke; in that moment I made a sweeping blow with my left arm and knocked the revolver out of his hand; it fell with a crash on the floor. Then I seized him by the throat and tried to hold him. He was, however, like an eel; he wriggled himself free and struck me a heavy blow on the chest which sent me backwards, then he turned and darted towards the window, but as he did so I heard something fall on the floor. For one second his hand went down on the floor groping for it, then, with ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... Radley's class-room opened, gathered our elated form, awaiting the arrival of Herr Reinhardt. He was late. He always was: and it was a mistake to be so, for it gave us the opportunity, when he drew near, of asking one another the time in French: "Kell er eight eel? Onze ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... and I had become great friends for he had liked the way I had conducted myself on this expedition. He was always ar-guying with me to cut off my eel-skin que which I wore after the fashion of the Dutch folks, saying that the Canada indians would parade me for a Dutchman after that token was gone with my scalp. He ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... and threw away his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for a spell against ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... unstable, evasive fellow you are, Plutus! there is no getting a firm hold of you; you wriggle through one's fingers somehow, like an eel or a snake. Poverty is so different—sticky, clinging, all over hooks; any one who comes near her is caught directly, and finds it no simple matter to get clear. But all this gossip has put business out of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose— What ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... Presently a person, in the habit and appearance of a substantial and well-bred English gentleman, appeared at his door and addressed me. 'Sir, I perceive that your attention is fixed on my fish. That is a conger eel—a species that abounds in these seas; we see them repeatedly, at the depth of twelve feet water, lying exactly in that position. That stone, as it now appears, was dug up from the bowels of this mountain, at the depth of twenty feet below the surface, in the midst of the rocks. Now, sir,' ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... How constantly the thought of death as the revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell. Death is ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... he, but he seemed amazingly strong and active. He wriggled like an eel, all the time making frantic efforts to get his right hand free, and use ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... breathe, seeing that you'll be out of it soon. You're having nothing but a valuable experience and a hardening. You're going through the mill. We've got to live in it. What's the good of our stirring everything up again? Dam-silly of a skinned eel to grow another skin, to be skinned again.... No, 'my co-mates and brothers in exile,' what I say is—you can get just as drunk on 'four-'arf' as on champagne, and a lot cheaper. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the gudgeon, bristling with swimming angularities, the notary, red and white, with black bands similar to the flourishes on signatures, the modest esmarrido, the little sand fish, the superb turbot almost round with fan tail and a swimming fringe spotted with circles, and the gloomy conger-eel whose skin is as bluish black ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fellers wot hav brown-stone manshuns up town, and French cooks wot dish em up everything good, from frogs' lim—er—leg to the posterier xten-shun of a eel's spinal collum, frickerseed, with mushrum catchup sauce. B'sides that, they've got lots of munney in the bank, and wuldn't think no more of givin sum Anglo Saxton perfesshunal beggar a thousand-dollar keepsake than they wuld of let-tin ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... "How excellent is the saying of one of old: 'He that adventureth upon matrimony is like unto one who thrusteth his hand into a sack containing many thousands of serpents and one eel. Yet, if Fate so decree, he may draw forth the eel.' And thou art comely, and of an age when it is natural to desire the love of a maiden. Therefore be of good heart and a cheerful eye, and it may be that, when I am more at leisure, I ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... a mad snatch for the prize. The ten avid fingers missed the bag; and came together with clawing force. But, before they met, the finger tips of the left hand telegraphed to the man's brain that they had had momentary light experience with something hairy and warm,—something that had slipped, eel-like, past them into the night;—something that most assuredly was no ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... once more, had put on a blue coat and trousers, a white waistcoat, a black stock, and gloves. When the Baroness had taken her seat in the vehicle, Atala slipped in like an eel. ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... up, and saw, "Here eggs, ham, eel-pies, and white wine may be had!" At this sight, Gorenflot's ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... It was a sturdy, broad-headed, thick-furred form, a little more than a foot in length, with a naked, flattened tail almost as long as the body. It held its small, handlike forepaws tucked up under its chin, and swam with quick strokes of its strong hind legs and eel-like wrigglings of the muscular tail. It would have seemed like no more than a darker, swiftly-moving shadow in the dark water, save for a curious burden of air-bubbles which went with it. Its close ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... green and white grocer, In business as brisk as an eel, sir; None than John to the shop could stick closer, Which Madam Fig ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown
... its slender neck proudly arched, and bearing up the small graceful head with its coronal or top-knot raised in defiance, as if to protest to the last against the cruel shot which had just been fired. I was but a spectator, having merely wandered that far to look at my eel-lines, yet I felt as guilty as though my hand had pulled the trigger. Just as the noble bird drifted to our feet,—for I could not help going down to the river's edge, where Pepper (our head shepherd) stood, looking very contrite,—it reared itself half out of the water, with a hissing noise ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... spirit of conquest, the controlling influence of his after life, grew upon him. Something accomplished, something done, was the daily rule. To scale an impossible cliff with the wings of circling sea-fowl beating in his face, to land a big conger eel without receiving a shock, to rescue a partridge from a falcon, to shoot a rabbit at fifty paces, to break a wild pony, or even to scan a complicated line in his syntax—these were achievements, small perhaps, but typical of his desire. His young ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... a great snake," cried Rodd excitedly. "I mean, a very large eel, swimming on the top, and he keeps throwing his head about as if he were feeding in the middle of a ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... reg'lar right-down set scheme from beginnin' to end, and that's why I should ha' liked to ha' give 'em a payin'-out that they wouldn't ha' forgot in a hurry. I'd ha' scored their reckonin' for 'em, I can tell *'eel" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Al, the eel-like, would descend from his heights to mingle a brief moment in the family talk. Al clerked in the National Cigar Company's store at Clark and Madison. His was the wisdom of the snake, the weasel, and the sphinx. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... twice o'er the dark green tide he saw with a solemn delight, Hooked and splashing after her line, a flash and a streak of white; As hand over hand she hauled it up, a great black conger eel, For Dan Trevennick to kill as it squirmed with its head beneath ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... The practice of dispensing with head-gear is also much resented by local outfitters, but otherwise the situation is well in hand. On Monday last Mr. Silas Pargeter, an old resident, caught a fine conger-eel, weighing fifty-six pounds, which he has presented to the Museum. As Borecambe is a good jumping-off ground for the Lake District there are daily char-a-banc excursions to the land of WORDSWORTH and RUSKIN, each passenger being supplied with a megaphone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... as Hector himself was concerned, the episode of Rob's unexpected appearance put an effectual stop to those tete-a-tetes which he had anticipated. Peggy was as slippery as an eel, and as his ankle kept him confined to one room, he was obliged to put up with her caprices, and resign himself to solitude during those hours when host and hostess were engaged. She would talk to him, read to him, play games with him, amuse him by a dozen quaint representations ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... hardly consist with our office, my merry Leap the ladder," said Petit Andre, "we know you for a slippery eel ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to the heir of Orkney, since the time you sent him to the right about, I never got so much as a conger eel from his hand. ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... up on the rocks they stumbled over the slippery eel-grass and approached the ill-fated craft. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... needed a prompter in such a work—that he should set himself to "cutting out the root of heresy with rigor and rude chastisement;"—such explosions of savage bigotry as these, alternating with exhibitions of revolting gluttony, with surfeits of sardine omelettes, Estramadura sausages, eel pies, pickled partridges, fat capons, quince syrups, iced beer, and flagons of Rhenish, relieved by copious draughts of senna and rhubarb, to which his horror-stricken doctor doomed him as he ate—compose a spectacle less attractive to the imagination than the ancient portrait ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... son of Nectan, is preparing himself for battle. He is called the Swallow, because there is not a man in the world swifter to retreat, or swifter to pursue. He is more at home in the water than on the dry land, for through it he dives like a water-dog, and glides like an eel, and rushes like a salmon when in the spring-time he seeks the upper pools. Greatly I fear that his challenge and defiance will be to do battle with him there, where no man born of woman can meet him ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... for your wife, for she must have had a lot to teach you. But let's stop slanging, we have our own opinions of each other and there's an end. Now we have both the same object, you because you are a pious crank and no more human than a dried eel, and I because I am a man of the world who want to see my daughter where she ought to be, wearing a coronet in the House of Lords. The question is: How is the job to be done? You don't understand ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... is trying her best. Ah! my dear, do you think that you'll get a supper out of a holy Leyden ranter, or a skin off an eel for the asking?" ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... cracking the shell. [These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly animal of the eel species, which might pass for a serpent: it is of a dusky, black colour, marked with spots of yellow, about eighteen inches, or two feet long. The Italians call it murena; but whether it is the fish which had the same ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of the couple who held Jem Hogg's lines, "Jem seems to be doin' somethin' uncommon queer—he's either got hold of a conger-eel by the tail, or he's amoosin ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... unsociable." "And are there more," replied I, "besides ourselves in the whale?" "A great many," said he, "and those very unhospitable, and of a most horrible appearance: towards the tail, on the western parts of the wood, live the Tarichanes, {104a} a people with eel's eyes, and faces like crabs, bold, warlike, and that live upon raw flesh. On the other side, at the right hand wall, are the Tritonomendetes, {104b} in their upper parts men, and in the lower resembling weasels. On the left ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... mentioning the novelty of a Cuban country-dish, a sort of stew, composed of ham, beef, mutton, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yuca, and yams. This is called Ayacco, and is a characteristic dish, like eel-soup in Hamburg, or salt codfish in Boston;—as is usual in such cases, it is more relished by the inhabitants than by their visitors. On the present occasion, however, it was only one among many good things, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the forks of the Wabash, thirty miles from fort Wayne; and at Mississineway, thirty miles lower down. A band of them, under the name of Weas, have resided on the Wabash, sixty miles above Vincennes; and another under the Turtle, on Eel river, a branch of the Wabash, twenty miles north west of Fort Wayne. By an artifice of the Little Turtle, these three bands were passed on General Wayne as distinct tribes, and an annuity was granted to each. The Eel ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... soon found it was only asleep. With difficulty I got it safe out of the mud upon the grass, and then carried it home. My little one was very fond of it, and it richly supplied all her wants that day. But at night I was informed the eel was all gone, so the next day afforded me the same distress and trouble as the preceding day ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... child slipped away like an eel, and disappeared behind a muck-heap which was piled at the top of a mound between the path and the house; for, like many Breton farmers who have a system of agriculture that is all their own, Galope-Chopine put his manure in an elevated spot, so that by the time it was wanted for ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... not so well supplied with fish as those of many other countries. The largest, except an eel, is one called the black-fish, which, in some of the rivers which discharge themselves into the sea on the north coast, attains a weight of six to eight pounds. This fish, it is said, does not exist in the river Derwent, or in any of its numerous tributaries. The mullet (or fresh ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... seemed to have all the royal instincts: cold to suitors, with that delicacy and reserve one finds ideal in a princess. She does all things well, handles a sword nearly as well as I do. Her mind is as keen and limpid as a diamond. She swims like an eel...." ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... resolved to begin with him; lest I should lose the opportunity, seeing my eel so very slippery. And placing myself on a seat, asked him to sit down. He declined, and would wait upon me presently, he said, and seemed to be going. So I began—"It is easy for me, Mr. H., to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... eleventh bridge of the Paddington Canal, was alarmed by the cry of 'One in jeopardy!' He rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on buttermilk in an adjoining paddock), procured three rakes, one eel spear, and a landing-net, and at last (horresco referens) pulled out—his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on enquiry, to have been Mr. S——'s last work. Its 'alacrity of sinking' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Edict ordono. Edifice konstruajxo. Edify edifi. Edit eldoni, redakti. Edition eldono. Editor eldonisto. Educate eduki. Educated klera. Education (given) edukado. Education (received) edukiteco. Educator edukisto. Eel angilo. Efface surstreki. Effect (result) efiko. Effect (impression) efekto. Effect efektivigi. Effective efektiva. Effectively efektive. Effectual efektiva. Effervesce sxauxmadi. Efficacious efika. Efficacy efikeco. Effigy figuro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... the province and found so great misery from famine, taught them to get their food by fishing; for their sea and rivers abounded in fish, but the people had no skill to take them except eels alone. The bishop's men having gathered eel-nets everywhere, cast them into the sea, and by the blessing of God took three hundred fishes of several sorts, which, being divided into three parts, they gave a hundred to the poor, a hundred to those of whom they had the nets, and kept a hundred for ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... aversion to solitary feeding, had established a breakfast-club, in which, thanks to Drysdale's genius, real scientific gastronomy was cultivated. Every morning the boy from the Weirs arrived with freshly caught gudgeon, and now and then an eel or trout, which the scouts on the staircase had learnt to fry delicately in oil. Fresh watercresses came in the same basket, and the college kitchen furnished a spitchedcocked chicken, or grilled turkey's leg. In the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of eel which has a habit of sticking to stones by its mouth," said Medenham. Then he added, after a pause: "Henry the First was sixty-seven years of age when he died, so the dish of lampreys was perhaps ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... as carp, perch, pike, and loach (Cyprinus, Perca, Esox, and Cobitis), as also Lebias, being peculiar to fresh- water. Other genera contain some fresh-water and some marine species, as Cottus, Mugil, and Anguilla, or eel. The rest are either common to rivers and the sea, as the salmon; or are exclusively characteristic of salt-water. The above observations respecting fossil fishes are applicable only to the more modern or tertiary deposits; for in the more ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... old Duke [Wellington] will at last give salt eel to that cowardly, bawling vagabond O'Connell." Borrow detested O'Connell as a "Dublin bully . . . a humbug, without courage or one particle of manly feeling." Again (17th June) he had written: "Horrible news from Ireland. I wish sincerely ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Why, she is as slippery as a young eel, and if you take your hand off her for a moment she would be off like a hare. No, no, we must make her safe. Beside," he whispered in Ralph's ear, "she would scream to a certainty if she saw any one else coming, ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... contented, without a care on her horizon. It was foolish of her to have expected such a state of things to last, for what is life but a series of sharp corners, round each of which Fate lies in wait for us with a stuffed eel-skin? Something in the butler's manner, a sort of gloating gloom which he radiated, told her that she had arrived at one of these ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... on the beach; but what if a frog or an eel should touch your foot, or a sharp straw stick in it—are you enough of a boy ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... the complete indifference with which even two little girls waded in the water in the face of the great monsters. Fortunately the latter appeared to be satisfied with their ample rations of fish. Four kinds of fish are said to be found in the lake, amongst them an eel; but we ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... have had a large brown snake, but neither the boy nor I felt inclined to experimentalise upon so uninviting an article of food; after all it was probably mere prejudice, and the animal might have been as good eating as an eel. We arrived at the water about noon, and the remainder of the day afforded a grateful rest both to ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... impels the sound towards its entrance—the weak, shrill voice of some young member practising tomorrow's speech. All the livelong day, there is a grinding of organs and clashing and clanging of little boxes of music; for Manchester Buildings is an eel-pot, which has no outlet but its awkward mouth—a case-bottle which has no thoroughfare, and a short and narrow neck—and in this respect it may be typical of the fate of some few among its more adventurous residents, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... I'd rather keep out o' their way. They're no pleasure to me; and if they think they're an honour, it's an opinion I don't share. Gertrude Masters ain't no better than a balloon; full of gas; she hain't weight enough to keep her on her feet; and Mrs.—what's her name?—Genevy—she's as smooth as an eel. And Evan is ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... to tell him how the next day he and the young monks had drawn the fish-ponds and secreted much pike, carp, tench, and eel for their own use: and how, in the dead of night, he had been taken shoeless by crooked ways into the chapel, a ghost-like place, being dark, and then down some steps into a crypt below the chapel floor, where suddenly ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... enough,—so said Mistress Prue and many other damsels,—with a Military Education, an approved reputation for Valour, and very little else besides. A gentleman at large, with a purse well-nigh as slender as an ell-wand, and as wobegone as a dried eel-skin. But I was never one that wanted many Superfluities; and having no Friends in the world, was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala |
