"Cobra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood; and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... books only by accident, and for one written there are a thousand, infinitely more powerful, spoken. They are deeds: the man who brings word of a lost battle can work no comparable effect with the muscles of his arm; Iago's breath is as truly laden with poison and murder as the fangs of the cobra and the drugs of the assassin. Hence the sternest education in the use of words is least of all to be gained in the schools, which cultivate verbiage in a highly artificial state of seclusion. A soldier cares little for ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... his side and dragged him back. A yellow-and-brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still—a big cobra with fixed, lidless eyes. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... upon this subject, is told in one of a series of interesting articles in "Household Words," called "Wanderings in India." The author is talking with an old soldier about a cobra-capello, which has been known to the latter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... a direct blow, I suppose," said the white-faced Jack, who had good reason to be terrified over the occurrence, for the rattlesnake, although ranking below the cobra in the virulence of its venom, is the most deadly serpent in America, and the veteran hunter fears it more than the most savage ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... face to face an accident might have occurred. On only one occasion did I ever see him disturbed, and that was when he took up a position at a beat for big game. Presently he heard a hiss, and on looking round found a reared-up cobra about to strike at his naked thigh. He saved himself by a jump on one side, but he showed by his eye when he mentioned the circumstance that ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... dangers abroad. Once whilst going in search of game he came upon a tiger, which seemed as if it were preparing to spring upon him. With the greatest caution he retired slowly from the place, and was just congratulating himself that he was out of danger when he trod on a cobra. The reptile twisted itself about Moffat's leg, and was about to bite him when he managed to level his gun at it and kill it. The poison of this snake is so deadly that had he been bitten his death would have ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... at that moment a gust of wind, fiercer than any which had gone before, leapt down the mountain gorges, howling with all the voices of the storm. It caught the frail hut and shook it. A cobra hidden in the thick thatch awoke from its lethargy and fell with a soft thud to the floor not a foot from the face of the dying man—then erected itself and hissed aloud with flickering tongue and head swollen ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... who was named Indudu, perhaps because he or his father had longed to the Dudu regiment, crawled into the hut, whence presently emerged sounds not unlike those which once I heard when a ringhals cobra followed a hare that I had wounded into a hole, a muffled sound of struggling and terror. These ended in the sudden and violent appearance of Kaatje's fat and dishevelled form, followed by that of the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... to the yellow of a Celestial by the feathery mustard; and still others blue as a sapphire's heart from the dye of millions of bluets. A dozen small rivers—or perhaps it was only one—coiled and twisted like a cobra in sinuous action, in and out among the pasture and ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... marked serpent. Its colors are scarlet, black and yellow. This snake is found in the southeastern and central United States. It is a near relative to the deadly Cobra-de-Capello and is ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... time when a soldier could get "jungling leave"; when he could go off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or three months; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so many for a cobra—a scale of rewards for bringing back the ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... his cuff and showed Mr. Gubb his arm. It was beautifully tattooed in red and blue, like the scales of a cobra. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... could teach more than that hateful book; if it is read aright, it will supply men or women with an armoury of warnings, and enable them to start away from the semblance of self-deception as they would from a rearing cobra when the hood is up, and the murderous head flattened ready to strike. Thackeray worked on the same theme in his story of little Stubbs. Lyndon is the Lucifer of rascals; Stubbs—well, Stubbs beggars the English vocabulary; he is too low, too mean for adjectives to describe ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Iban, tells us that he has been helped by a python ever since he was a youth, when a man came to him in a dream and said, "Sometimes I become a python and sometimes a cobra, and I will always help you." It has certainly helped him very much, but he does not know whether it has helped his children; nevertheless he has forbidden them to kill it. He does not like to speak of it, but he does so at our request. Payang concluded by saying that he had no doubt that we ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Queen Hatasu's throne, made of wood foreign to Egypt, the legs most elegantly carved in imitation of the legs of an animal, covered with gold down to the hoof, finishing with a silver band. Each leg has carved in relief two Uroei, the sacred cobra serpent of Egypt, symbolic of a goddess. These are plated with gold. Each arm is ornamented with a serpent curving gracefully along from head to tail, the scales admirably imitated by hundreds of inlaid silver rings. The only remaining rail is plated with silver. The gold and silver ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... in preparing the cobra-tel poison (note) The green calotes Chameleon Ceratophora Geckoes,—their power of reproducing limbs 185, Crocodiles Their power of burying themselves in the mud Tortoises—Curious parasite Land tortoises Edible turtle Huge Indian tortoises (note) Hawk's-bill turtle, barbarous ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... by whirling with astonishing rapidity in a kind of frenzied dance around the wicker basket that contained the serpents, which were covered by a goatskin. Suddenly he stopped, plunged his naked arm into the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the buska. The charmer ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... rushing forward to seize her in my arms. She raised her right hand above her head and, as I had almost reached her, threw something full in my face! Instinctively I struck at it with my walking-stick, and it fell in the grass at my feet,—it was a young Indian cobra—Naja tripudians—a serpent of the deadliest sort. I did not pause to reason how this sweet angel had been so quickly changed into a venomous fiend, although the thought that somehow she had been led to think me false to her, and that this act was the swift vengeance of her ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... on in perfect silence for the best part of an hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat straight across the harbor, as though toward the mouth of the Rio Cobra River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could after a while see, by the low point of land with a great long row of coconut palms upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well), which by and by began to loom up out of the milky dimness of the moonlight. As they approached ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... and took him to the corner of the house, and showed him a little box in which was coiled a tiny snake, like the hair spring of a watch. She passed her hands over it, and it grew in size, till at last it became a huge cobra, with hood erected. The husband, terrified, begged his wife to lay the spirit. She passed her hands down its body, and it gradually shrank ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... despite the Khamsn, the Great Gaster became querulous; hunger was now the chief complaint, and even the bon ordinaire had lost much of its attraction. A harmless snake was killed and bottled; its silver robe was beautifully banded with a line, pink as the circles of the "cobra coral," which ran along the whole length of the back. It proved to be a new species; and Dr. Gunther named ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... forest and gratified Agni, vanquishing on a single car and slaying huge Nagas and Rakshasas, and who married the sister of Vasuki himself, the king of the Nagas? Even as the sun is the foremost of all heat-giving bodies, as the Brahmana is the best of all bipeds, as the cobra is the foremost of all serpents, as Fire is the first of all things possessed of energy, as the thunderbolt is the foremost of all weapons, as the humped bull is the foremost of all animals of the bovine ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in a deep, hissing breath, and when he spoke his voice was as calm and quiet as a coiled cobra. "The both of you come up with the goddamnedest answers to things. Things I never knew about or even cared about before. Things I wish I'd never heard of. Things that don't have any explanation. And—" He stopped, ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... yes. They seek yet, where I learned the art of healing, an antidote for the cobra's bite. I know of no ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... What puzzles me is the need for new steps, to be learned from expensive teachers, when it's so easy to slide down hill in this part of New York. But here endeth the sermon, for I recognize the amiable Pinkie at that other table, where she is studying your face with the malevolence of a cobra." ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... tiene El alcalde mayor de salario trecientos pesos librados en las penas de camara y si no alcancare en la Real caxa cobra por comission del goueror y de los oficiales Reales los tributos qe pertenecen a su magd en aquella ysla. qe seran poco mas de dos mil hombres, en el Rio de haraut y Rio de ajuy y Rio de panay y los quintos del oro que se labra ques casi nada esta esta ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... males. The rattle of certain snakes is supposed to act as a love-call. Snakes of different sexes appear to feel some affection for each other when confined together in cages. Romanes relates the interesting fact that when a cobra is killed, its mate is often found on the spot a day or two afterwards. Darwin cites an instance of the pairing in spring of a Chinese species of lizard, where the couples appear to have considerable fondness for one another. If one is captured, the other drops from the tree ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... vulture, sat upon and addled by the Department. But I knew the house and walked boldly in. A lion walked out of one door as I came in at another. We did this two or three times—and found it amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as I passed, and respectfully ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... shoulders up, as if at the sight of a cobra in her path. "Why is Eddie coming to lunch? I did ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... pursuer. From its size and the fact that it was attacking the elephant it could only be that most dreadful and almost legendary denizen of the forest, the hamadryad, or king-cobra. All other big snakes in India are pythons, which are not venomous. But this, the deadliest, most terrible of all Asiatic serpents, is very poisonous and will wantonly attack man as well as animals. Badshah had probably disturbed it by accident—it might have been a female ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... to penetrate through the jungle. Our only mode of escaping the thorns was to crawl on our hands and knees, trailing our rifles after us; and to do this without the certainty of their going off, we had to secure the locks in cases. Then we had the possibility of meeting unexpectedly with a cobra di capello, or boa constrictor, or a wild boar, or more dangerous still, a bear, besides running a risk of having our eyes scratched out, and other little inconveniences of that sort. Our chief object was ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... specimen of our irrepressible, indomitable native Yankee, who has been everywhere, seen everything and knows everything. He has explored the arid jungles of Africa, drawn forth the spotted cobra by his prehensile tail, snowballed the Russian bear on the snowy slopes of Alpine forests, and sold wooden nutmegs to the unsuspecting innocents of Patagonia. He has peddled patent medicines in the Desert of Sahara, and hung his hat and carved ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... of that animal. I heard one at a spot where no kid could possibly have been. It is supposed by the natives to lure travelers to itself by this bleating. Several varieties, when alarmed, emit a peculiar odor, by which the people become aware of their presence in a house. We have also the cobra ('Naia haje', Smith) of several colors or varieties. When annoyed, they raise their heads up about a foot from the ground, and flatten the neck in a threatening manner, darting out the tongue and retracting ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... 'English will be the universal language.' But far the most important kind of modality, and the only one we need consider, is that which is signified by some qualification of the predicate as to the degree of certainty with which it is affirmed or denied. Thus, 'The bite of the cobra is probably mortal,' is called a Contingent or Problematic Modal: 'Water is certainly composed of oxygen and hydrogen' is an Assertory or Certain Modal: 'Two straight lines cannot enclose a space' is a Necessary or Apodeictic Modal (the opposite being inconceivable). Propositions ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... pit-like depression between the nose and eyes, and hence are called pit-vipers. In the southern portion of our country there are two species of a colubrine genus closely related to the dreaded cobra of the East, one of them being called the coral-snake or harlequin snake, and the other, which occurs in the southwest, is known as ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a small dark place with a much-worn tile floor and a charcoal range of two pockets faced and covered with blue and white tiles; an immense hood above yawning like the flat open jaws of a gigantic cobra, which might not only consume all the smoke and smells but gobble up the little tile-covered range ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... set in ruddy soft gold, worked and graven with exquisite art in the semblance of a two-headed cobra; inside the band was an inscription so worn and faint that Amber experienced some difficulty in deciphering the word RAO (king) in Devanagari, flanked by swastikas. Aside from the stone entirely, he speculated, the value ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... of a cone. A glass dome formed its roof, and there was no window besides. The lights were cunningly concealed behind a weirdly coloured fresco of Oriental figures. But one lamp alone on a small table burned with a still red glow. This lamp was supported on the stuffed skin of a hooded cobra. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... drawing. I must say, however, the resemblance to a snake is not very striking, unless to a cobra not found in America. It is also evident that it is not Mr. Bates's caterpillar, as that threw the head backwards so as to show the feet above, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... experiments are very cruel. If a person scratches me with a poisoned dagger so gently that I do not feel the scratch, he has achieved a painless vivisection; but if I presently die in torment I am not likely to consider that his humility is amply vindicated by his gentleness. A cobra's bite hurts so little that the creature is almost, legally speaking, a vivisector who inflicts no pain. By giving his victims chloroform before biting them he could ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... turrets of Morro Castle, Havana, as the devilish Weyler sailed away from the beautiful "Queen of the Antilles," and wondered that the cruel, infernal, tyrannical wretch was not ignominiously slaughtered by some of the victims of his starvation reign. A rattlesnake-cobra-tarantula human deformity! ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... timber,—for teak is one of the products of the forests,—and also for travel and as bearers of burdens. Wild elephants are hunted and trapped in Siam; and tigers, bears, deer, monkeys, and wild pigs abound in the jungles. Crocodiles live at the mouths of the rivers; and the cobra, python, and other reptiles ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Phil, as he coolly stalked out, and left Acton curled up on his chair, like a cobra balancing ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... would come out and play with me on sunny days. These snakes I found very interesting, only they got under their blankets and wouldn't come out, and I wasn't allowed to poke them; so I missed seeing several of the most curious. An ugly cobra laid and blinked at me through the glass, looking quite as dangerous as he was. There were big and little snakes,—black, brown, and speckled, lively and lazy, pretty and plain ones,—but I liked ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... scales being margined with black. Another snake of the same length is a handsome green whip-snake, graceful in its movements, but ferocious and aggressive in its habits, although quite harmless. The ordinary cobra is not uncommon. The giant cobra is also found in the lower valleys, and grows to a length of 12 or 13 feet. Four species of pit vipers are found. The krait occurs, but is not common. Altogether there are nine ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, which is extremely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... italicizing her coquetries. Her eyes seemed to drawl languorous words that her lips dared not voice; and she committed the heinous offense of plucking at Eddie's coat-sleeve and clinging to his hand. Then she walked on like an erect cobra. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... get used to almost anything, Grand Master," I said. "I found a cobra under my pillow when I rolled out of the sack this morning. A coral snake fell out of the folds of my towel when I went to take a shower. Somebody stashed a bushmaster here in my locker to meet me when I dressed for surgery. I'm getting almost ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... paste composed of the bruised leaves, the juice of the leaves and lemon juice. The fresh root also may be employed. The Hindoo physicians state that the root decoction in milk is aphrodisiac; the root is also regarded as an antidote for the bite of the "cobra da cabelho," but its virtue is purely imaginary. Of late years the plant has been used in Europe under the name of "tong-pang-chong," to treat ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... for survival would a skunk have without odor; a cobra without venom; a turtle without carapace; or a porcupine shorn of its barbs, in an environment of powerful and hostile carnivora? And yet in such an hostile environment many unprotected animals survive by their muscular power of flight alone. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... crushing power of snakes, but not to an aversion inspired by its form and movement. It was the Greek symbol of Hippocrates and of healing. There is nothing of the kind in Hebrew literature, where the snake is figured as an attractive tempter. In Hindu fables the cobra is the ingenious and intelligent animal, corresponding to the fox in ours. Serpent worship was very widely spread. I therefore doubt whether the antipathy to the snake is very common among mankind, notwithstanding ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... with the rifle, landing with both feet on Furneaux's back, and thus completing the little man's discomfiture. By that time the two policemen were nearly upon him, but he was lithe and fierce as a cobra, and had seized the rifle again before they could close with him. Jabbing the nearer adversary with the muzzle, he smashed a lamp and sent its owner sprawling backward. Then, swinging the weapon, he aimed a murderous blow ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Like the cobra, dark and hissing, Karna's gleaming lightning dart, Struck the helpless archer Arjun on his broad ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess Jahuran, p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, Sonahri Rani, p. 54, Jahur Rani, p. 93, Prince Dima-ahmad and Princess Atasa, Notes, p. 253. Also, Hira Bai, the cobra's daughter in Old Deccan Days, p. 35. So many princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them, Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs rings if it falls to ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... to escape and go on buzzing for hours on a window, one half of which has been left open. Even a pike continued during three months to dash and bruise itself against the glass sides of an aquarium, in the vain attempt to seize minnows on the opposite side. {34} A cobra-snake was seen by Mr. Layard {35} to act much more wisely than either the pike or the Sphex; it had swallowed a toad lying within a hole, and could not withdraw its head; the toad was disgorged, and began to crawl away; it was ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its victim by methods ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... poison in the system as asserted, Wallie had a notion that his bite would have been as fatal as a cobra's. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... not ten feet away from our eyes. He covered the jar with a little tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake. At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible that the ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... is good and fair in nature, in all its smiling and beneficent moods—but what of nature's uglinesses and cruelties? Is God expressing Himself in the ferocity of the tiger, the poisonous malice of the cobra, the greed of every unclean carrion-bird? If He is such as religion represents Him, how can He be present in these? We may quote with rapture the familiar lines in which the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ghastly ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... he could see the other's expression. There was to be no throwing in of the towel for Joe Mauser. At the first sign of such a move, the other would dart in, cobra-quick, and deal the finishing blow. The death blow. Rakoczi was fully capable of such speed. The man was a phenomenon, ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... to agree. Thus in one case, where I consulted those versed in this matter, they respectively informed me that a certain dog would be mangled [28] by a wild boar, swallowed by an alligator,[29] and devoured by a cobra, and advised me not to purchase it. Good hunting dogs are often valued as highly as a human life (30 pesos) and sometimes more so. I have seen dogs that seldom returned without having run down a deer ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the tail of a large cobra disappearing among the improprieties. Jim ran to a rude cupboard where pistols and ammunition were kept, and began to load ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... head, and a little, low, plaintive whistle, is the only reply, but they speak in thunder of boa-constrictors, anacondas, and cobra de capellos. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... world-wise, and fluent man had now become to Hogarth like manna, or rather a vice, like opium: for in those grey eyes of the cleric was hinted anon the baleful glint of the cobra's. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... to be done with this? All along the coast there are such notions about its value that to replace it in the tomb would be simple madness.' I made no reply. 'Indeed,' she continued, looking at the amulet as she might have looked at a cobra uprearing its head to spring at her, 'it must really be priceless. And to think that all this was to be buried in the coffin of—! It is your charge, however, and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... snakes of Australia have an unpleasant habit of coming around the houses, and this is particularly the case with the tiger snake, which in this respect seems to possess the same characteristics as his relative the 'cobra,' of India. Our host told us a story which he said he knew to be a true one, the incident having occurred in a family with which he was acquainted. There was an invalid daughter in the family, and one afternoon, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... The cobra, since defiled. He watched, when the beasts had gone Our kissing and singing wild. Beautiful friend he was, Sage, not a tempter grim. Many a year should pass Ere Satan should ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... would almost as soon believe that the cat curls the end of its tail when preparing to spring, in order to warn the doomed mouse. It is a much more probable view that the rattlesnake uses its rattle, the cobra expands its frill and the puff-adder swells while hissing so loudly and harshly, in order to alarm the many birds and beasts which are known to attack even the most venomous species. Snakes act on the same ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... made out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched the lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing the cobra's hate-song that is prelude to ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... of the Grand Hotel; the timid pensionnaire of numberless summers starts and grows pale; SHIRTSOFF looks with peremptory encouragement towards the Teuton; "Ach, graesglich!" rattles out DONNERWITZ, and strikes again; the cobra-like gutturality of that "Ach" is heart-rending; still no ADOLF; at a gold-fraught glance from my companions, he has ordered another detachment to the front; a fresh current of air invades the room. DONNERWITZ's knife ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... saves them from being crushed by the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and, thinking that ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of three cabins, the cruiser's side gaped open to a clear sky and a line of splashing waves. Overhead on deck the twelve-pounders were barking out a series of ear-splitting reports—much as a terrier might yap defiance at a cobra over the stricken ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... finger of the left hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. I give the full list in the hope ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... wandered down to the post-office. To the city-bred Applebys there would have been cheer and excitement in this mild activity, after their farm-house weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure of the Crimson Cobra'—six reels—that sounds snappy." But his exuberance died in a sigh. A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign, light-encircled, tea-pot shaped, hung out from a great elm. Without ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... to refuse. The press cannot sink the public welfare to favor individuals; once the freedom of the press is lost the nation relapses into sodden corruption. I told Mrs. Smith so. And besides, I have the whole article in type, too. I like Mrs. Smith, and I like Miss Sally, but the hissing cobra of corruption must be crunched beneath the heel of a free and independent press. The TIMES must do its duty, let the ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... the Jains but there is no proof that the multiplication of temples and images was a feature of this style. But in some points it is clear that the Jains have followed the artistic conventions of the Buddhists. Thus Parsvanatha is sheltered by a cobra's hood, like Gotama, and though the Bo-tree plays no part in the legend of the Tirthankaras, they are represented as sitting under such trees and a living tree ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... his sister very closely, saw that she started at the sight of the wretch, and seemed immediately to shrink still further within herself, whilst her eyes, suddenly luminous and dilated, rested on him like those of a captive bird upon an approaching cobra. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... watery gloom. Again, Scotty called his attention to a deadly scorpion fish. This small, rather weird-looking little creature had a dangerous defense mechanism in the spines of his back. His poison bore a strong resemblance to cobra venom. The boys gave him ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... leopard, returning to his lair after a blank night's hunt, saw the tail of the female genet, who was leading, disappear into a hollow tree. The male had not time to get in as the leopard sprang, so he shot up another tree close by, disturbing a mamba cobra, whose color was green, and whose bite was death, as it lay asleep among the twined vines. The legless terror fell to the ground and streaked for its hole, and the following leopard only just managed to bound out of its ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... darted at the fourth with the speed of a striking cobra; his wiry hands closed around the yellow throat: and two seconds later that coolie was no longer connected with the proceedings, a whacking head-thump being his passport into insensibility. Again Friday's exultant war-whoop bellowed out over ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... deadly peril in which I found myself was in itself sufficient to cause the cheek of the bravest man to pale, for from that box there slowly issued forth a large, hideous cobra, which, coiling with sinuous slowness in front of my face held its hooded head ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... are very mixed, some being those of eponymous Brahman gotras, as Sandilya, Kaushik and Bharadwaj; others those of Rajput septs, as Karchhul; while others are the names of animals and plants, as Barah (pig), Baram (the pipal tree), Nag (cobra), Kachhapa (tortoise), and a number of other local terms the meaning of which has been forgotten. Each of these sections, however, uses a different mark for branding cows, which it is the religious ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Bombay, which Lt.-Col. Glen Liston controls with so much zeal and resourcefulness, I was shown the process by which the antidotes to snake poisoning are prepared, for dispersion through the country. A cobra or black snake is released from his cage and fixed by the attendant with a stick pressed on his neck a little below the head. The snake is then firmly and safely held just above this point between the finger and thumb, and a tumbler, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... another example of the annual killing of a sacred animal and the preservation of its skin. The negroes of Issapoo, in the island of Fernando Po, regard the cobra-capella as their guardian deity, who can do them good or ill, bestow riches or inflict disease and death. The skin of one of these reptiles is hung tail downwards from a branch of the highest tree ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... hawadiga[3], or whatever else they call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... enlargement, possibly, of prehistoric man's reminiscence of now extinct monsters, the dragon is, in its artistic development, a mythical embodiment of all the powers of moisture to bless and to harm. We shall see how, when Buddhism entered China, the cobra-de-capello, so often figured in the Buddhistic representations of India, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... continued his crooning noise, and the great cobra swayed its inflated neck to and fro as though to some mysterious rhythm, the native with naked hand and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... said, "I'm rather glad you're not a common thief. You've lots of pluck—plenty. You're as clever as a cobra. It isn't every poisonous snake that is clever," he ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W'zy.t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see BUSIRIS). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebesheh. The former city is placed by Petrie at Tell Ferain, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
