"Coiled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went to the steel mirror on the wall and looked long at the flushed, triumphant image. At length she started, like one awakening from a happy dream, and hurriedly coiled the thick, soft tresses about her head. Never before had she lingered so over a toilet, patting each lock into place, twisting her head from side to side like a peacock ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... Darling stood spellbound for a full half-minute, gazing down at the flaming, flashing gems coiled in their silken bed. He was aroused from his wonder and wild conjecture by ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... so far right that Rossi was another man. Whatever had been tender and sweet in him was now hard and bitter. The train started for Rome, and the soldiers drew the straws out of their Tuscan cigars and smoked. Rossi coiled himself up in his corner and shut his eyes. Sometimes a sneer curled his lips, sometimes he ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Chinese girl should be dressed brightly with large, square, loose hanging sleeves, a broad sash tied on one side, her hair brushed flat, coiled in the back, with haircomb and pins thrust into the coil. She may have a Japanese parasol ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... one of those delightful women peculiar to England, restful to look at, restful to know. Her thick, glossy brown hair was coiled neatly in plaits, no matter what the fashion; her skin, devoid of powder, did not shine, even on the hottest day; her smile was a benison, and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... called the dogs off. They joined me almost immediately, looking rather scared. It now occurred to me that they might have found a snake, as a few days ago I had heard Merry barking in a similar manner, and upon joining him I had discovered a snake coiled up with head erect in an attitude of defence. I had killed the snake and scolded the dog, as I feared he would come to an untimely end, should he commence snake- hunting in so prolific a field as Cyprus. Since that time all the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... by the side of the shepherds, not from above. His gentle encouragement 'Fear not!' not only soothes their present terror, but has a wider meaning. The dread of the Unseen, which lies coiled like a sleeping snake in all hearts, is utterly taken away by the Incarnation. All messages from that realm are thenceforward 'tidings of great joy,' and love and desire may pass into it, as all men shall one day pass, and both enterings may be peaceful and confident. Nothing harmful can come ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hard buffeting against a biting head-wind, the vessel arrived at the port to which she was bound, and after she was moored and everything made trim, running gear coiled round the belaying pins, every bight being regular and equal, sails stowed in a cloth, and yards laid perfectly square, the sailors then proceeded to arrange themselves in spotless white fustian trousers ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... in hopes that such was its design, and was just beginning to feel safe again, when, all at once, the snake coiled itself upon the narrow neck of land, as if it intended ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... said: 'Either the baron will escape, or this letter will be taken to the Duc de Richelieu.' I voted for the baron's escape, I assure you. The abbe procured all that was necessary; he met me at a rendezvous which I appointed in a quiet spot; he coiled all his rope about my body, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... stumbled over what he had been seeking, a great coil of one-inch hempen cable, from which he measured off roughly what he would require, if his calculations were correct, and something over. This length he re-coiled and slung over his shoulder: an awkward, weighty handicap. Nevertheless he began ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... of the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were two painted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as a calf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face, and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over the head, and passing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail that ended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a banner held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by a demon. But Marquette laughed ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the third day, the captain of the junk, whose name was Hoang, presented himself upon the quarter-deck. He was naked to the waist, and his bare brown torso was gleaming with oil and sweat. His queue was coiled like a snake around his neck, his hatchet ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... had believed that he was quick enough to avoid any snap or slash. But he had yet to learn the remarkable quickness of White Fang, who struck with the certainty and swiftness of a coiled snake. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... in a low tone, as he finished unwinding the silk and coiled it carefully on the stone table, so that it might run free without being entangled. "I have it. We will secure your knife to the end, Harry; it will bear that weight, I should say, and we can haul it up again when ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... confronted them. She was hardly more than a girl, pretty and refined-looking, with large dark eyes, a pathetic drooping mouth, and a wistful expression. She wore a well-made indoor dress of soft satin, without ornaments, and her luxuriant dark hair was simply and becomingly coiled at the back of her head. She held a book in her left hand, with one finger between the leaves, as though the summons to the door had interrupted her reading, and glanced inquiringly at the visitors, waiting for them to intimate ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... ukulele that sang its little twisted soul out under the caress of Penelope's white fingers. I can still see the big black opal in its quaint setting that had replaced her wedding ring and the yellow serpent of pliant gold coiled on her thumb with two bright rubies for its eyes. Penelope Wells! How little we realized what sinister forces were playing about her that pleasant evening as we smoked and jested and sipped our glasses, gazing from time ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... when I found the canvas straining its bonds, and emitting a hollow sound, as of escaping gas. The basket was made fast directly, the telescopes tossed into place; the Professor climbed to the side, holding by the network; and I coiled up in a rope ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... hand behind him, whereupon his companion placed something in it. Emma Dean whispered to Nora that it looked like a blacksnake all coiled up ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... Sergeant, though he has gone to work wrong-end foremost half his time. It is true that one of his hands coiled a rope against the sun, and he called it querling a rope, too, when I asked him what he was about; but I am not certain that anything was meant by it; though, I daresay, the French coil half their running rigging the wrong ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and both balls entered the skull; the light of the eye was extinguished, and the only movement was in the further extremity of the body, which rolled, writhed, coiled, and lashed from side to side. Advancing closer, we fired our pistols directly into its head, a convulsive quiver ran through the mighty frame, and the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Lying huge upon the water, Sparkling, rippling in the water, Lying coiled across the passage, With their blazing crests uplifted, Breathing fiery fogs and vapors, So that none could pass ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... to dinner, Kurt was again visibly impressed by her appearance. She wore another of her recently acquired gowns, a black one of sheer filmy material. Her hair, rippling back from her brows, was coiled low. Her face was pale and yet young and flowerlike. There was a new touch of wistfulness about her—a charm of repose, almost ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... this young man. Since women were, has it not been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure? Away! From the very first it has been so!" And as my companion spoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that coiled round the tree, and hissed a poisoned ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... obstinate, or rusty, and several ineffectual efforts were made, ere he succeeded in moving the spring. The once white velvet cushion, had darkened and turned very yellow, but time had robbed in no degree, the lustre of the magnificent sapphires coiled there; and the blue fires leaped out, as if rejoicing in the privilege of displaying their splendor. "This set of stones was intended as a gift to your mother, when she was graduated at boarding-school. The time fixed for the close of the session was only one month later than ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... announced by the Y.M.C.A. secretary. The big stone building was used to billet the soldiers. Their "bunks" filled almost every available foot of space. In one corner a group were playing cards. In the middle of the room a lank, angular figure was "coiled" about a mandolin, coaxing an old hymn from its strings. Some were sleeping, others were chatting, and a few were reading by the light of tallow candles. The secretary announced the meeting. It was Sunday evening. ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... a serpent coiled i' the house Hast secretly been draining my life-blood,— Little aware that I was cherishing Two curses and subverters of my throne,— Tell us, wilt thou avouch thy share in this Entombment, or forswear all knowledge ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... matter. The most interesting specimen of a spiral nebula is situated in Canes Venatici. It consists of spiral coils emanating from a centre with a nucleus and surrounded by a narrow luminous ring. In appearance it resembles the coiled mainspring of a watch. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... from the lower gate. The horses were just put on, and a reckless boy gave them their first blow after two hours of rest and corn. As the heavy boat started off under the new motion, I saw, and her skipper saw at the same instant, that a long new tow-rope of his, which had lain coiled on deck, was suddenly flying out to its full length. The outer end of it had been carried upon the lock-side by some chance or blunder, and there some idle loafer had thrown the looped bight of it over a hawser-post. The loafers on the lock saw, as I did, that the rope was running out, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... coming into his hand and being coiled on his arm. Woofer all the while was urging on his pony, trying to ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... mere mould Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept, This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold What while we, while we slumbered. O then, weary then why should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered, When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care, Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept Far with fonder a care ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... walked across the floor. Some member of the family heard a strange noise (something rattling) which seemed to come from a chest that stood in the back part of the room on legs about six inches high. Every time mother stepped on the board upon which he was coiled up, his snakeship felt insulted and he would rattle to let them know that he was there and felt indignant at being disturbed. Mother said they all tried to find out what it was; they finally looked under ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... the Hemenway southwestern archeological expedition, found a number of these structures and excavated some of them. From remains thus found he concluded that they were sun-temples, as he termed them, and that they were covered with a roof made of coiled strands of grass, after a manner analogous to that in which pueblo baskets are made. A somewhat similar class of structures was found by the writer on the upper Rio Verde, but these were probably thrashing floors. Possibly the structure under discussion was for a similar ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... made their way silently through the woods. Three men were sent round to the side of the castle opposite that from which Cuthbert was to shoot. The length of light string was carefully coiled on the ground, so as to unwind with the greatest facility, and so offer as little resistance to the flight of the arrow as might be. Then, all being in readiness, Cuthbert attached the end to an arrow, and drawing the bow to its full compass, let fly the arrow. All held ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... of tuning by mechanical screws; an upper metal bridge; equal length of string throughout; metal supports to the action, in which a later help to the repetition was anticipated—the whole instrument being independent of the case. Hawkins tried also a lately revived notion of coiled strings in the bass, doing away with tension. Lastly, he sought for a sostinente, which has been tried for from generation to generation, always to fail, but which, even if it does succeed, will produce another kind of instrument, not a pianoforte, which owes so much ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... weird Druid held his mistletoe; There, for the scorched son of the sand, coiled bright, The torrid snake was hissing sharp and low; And there the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... she had heard, she was not prepossessed in the lady's favor; but, curious to know why she was there at this early hour, she hastened the making of her toilet, and went down to the parlor, where Madam Conway sat, coiled in one corner of the sofa, which she had satisfied herself was covered with real brocatel, as were also the chairs within the room. The tables of rosewood and marble, and the expensive curtains had none of them escaped her notice, and in a mood ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Columbus' weight, she became suddenly and overpoweringly aware of a dwindling of her strength. She said no word, but her face must have betrayed her, for the next thing she knew was Saltash's arm like a coiled spring about her, impelling her towards ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... human society. The fire crouched on its ashes. It was on a little circular eminence of mossed rock; black sticks, and brushwood, and dry fern, and split logs, pitchy to the touch, lay about; in the centre of them the fire coiled sullenly among its ashes, with a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... delicious after fifteen hours of thirst. Repeated draughts of the element, which the late rains had rendered potable, relieved our pain, and hard by we found a place where coarse stubbly grass saved our mules from starvation. Then rain coming on, we coiled ourselves under the saddle cloths, and, reckless alike of Ayyal Ahmed and Ayyal Shirdon, slept ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... backs as though some one had hammered them out. All of them, however, were wonderfully provided with marvelous coloring, some of them with shades that changed from time to time. A brilliant green ray, shaped like an eel, lay coiled about a piece of coral; he opened his mouth with its wicked looking teeth and sucked in the water which he could be seen to expel a moment later ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... fair. Aye, just now will I deck thee in my wedding garments and see thee shine," and Martha took from the chest a golden scarf, a spangled veil and some strings of beads. With the gold and spangled cloth she draped Mary. The jeweled girdle was coiled about her head like a crown and her flowing hair was hung ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... negative shake of the head, more determined. The pale lips murmured, "No—no, thank you." She was not hating him. He existed for her only as a symbol, in this hideous dream called life, that was coiled like a snake about her and was befouling her and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... slowly steams ahead. The cable is not wound round and round the drum as your silk is wound on its reel, but on the contrary never goes round more than six times, going off at one side as it comes on at the other, and going down into the hold of the Elba, to be coiled along in a big ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was generally to be found spinning at her muckle wheel, retiring and advancing to the music of its cheerful hum, the while her spun thread was rapidly coiled up on the spindle. The others, as they busied themselves in their household duties, or brightened up the delf and pewter, and set it out on the shelf to its best advantage, would join in some plaintive Scotch ballad, with such good taste and skill that ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... west, the finger tips of the Potomac interlocked closely with the Monongahela and Youghiogheny, and through this network of mountain and river valley, by the "Shades of Death" and Great Meadows, coiled Nemacolin's Path to the Ohio. Even today this ancient route is in part followed by the Baltimore and Ohio and the Western ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... morning, baiting their trawls; and they asked him to come and help them. It is a long and tedious business, the baiting of trawls; often more than a thousand hooks are to be manipulated, and lines and hooks coiled, clear of tangles, into tubs, all ready for throwing overboard when the fishing-grounds are reached. Louis gave them a half promise that he would help them, but they did not see him again after leaving the wharf. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and then folded once more, and Kay's mighty sweeps were slashing phantom limbs from phantom bodies; and lopping off tentacles that curled and coiled, and put forth caricatures of hands and fingers, and then, uniting with other slashed off tentacles, began to mould themselves into the likeness of dwarf monsters. Kay's struggle was like that of a man fighting a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... dust or sand of the approaching caravan; darkness began to creep over this solitary place and its more solitary occupant. I thought I had better sleep, though I had no bedding, to pass the time away till morning. I coiled myself up under a bush and fell into one of those extraordinary waking dreams which occasionally descend upon imaginative mortals, when we know that we are alive, and yet we think we are dead; when a confused jumble of ideas sets the mind "peering back into the vistas ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... owners commanded the sheriff to come to their club rooms, where his resignation was demanded. When he refused to resign, guns were produced, a coiled rope was dangled before him, and on the outside several shots were fired. He was told that unless he resigned the mob outside the building would be admitted and he would be taken out and hanged. He then signed a written ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... me, for instance?" and Bud stretched himself up as if to shake out the reserve power coiled up in his ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... was there,—just enough to kill the dampness of the river's edge, and over it the old squaw of Akkomi bent, raking the dry sticks, until the flames fluttered upward and outlined the form of the chief, coiled on a pile of skins and blankets ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... a dead rattler coiled up in the middle of the kitchen floor, Tabitha attributed it to Carrie's dog, General, who still spent much of his time at the McKittrick cottage. Nor did she notice that the reptile was coiled in a most impossible manner, with its head propped up by two tiny wires. ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... embarrassments, she had encouraged a worldly hope that if Evelyn should reject his hand it might be offered to her. Under this impression she had trifled, she had coquetted, she had played with the serpent till it had coiled around her; and she could not escape its fascination and its folds. She was sincere,—she could have resigned much for Lord Vargrave; but his picture startled and appalled her. For difficulties in a palace she might be prepared; perhaps even ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the pink of the flamingo. Bands of red, yellow, scarlet, mauve and black were embroidered upon the cloth, and upon the shoulders were scarlet tufts resembling epaulets. Willy stepped overboard, barefooted and nude save for his rolled up shirt, and began to shove. A three-foot water moccasin lay coiled on a mud bank in his path and the Indian's bare foot flung it aside as one might kick away a stick. Presently he paused, deep in liquid mud to his thighs, his feet ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... the Sphinx waited. Year after year the flocking pigeons flitted and wheeled through the sweet skies of spring, built their nests and reared their young; tiny lizards, the new birth of the season, coiled and glittered on the hot sands like wandering jewels; every creature, dying out of conscious life, left its perpetuated self behind it, and repeated its own youth in its young, according to its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... they destroyed their papers, lists of names and other incriminating evidence. The shadow of the approaching catastrophe deepened and spread rapidly around and above them as they watched and waited helplessly under the huge asp of slavery, which enraged and now completely coiled, was about to strike. The stroke fell first on Peter, Rolla, Ned, and Batteau Bennett. The last, although but a boy of eighteen, was one of the most active of the younger leaders of the plot. Vesey was not captured until the fourth day afterward. So secret and profound ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... January, 1776, Esek Hopkins, commander in chief, stepped on board of one of them and took command. As he did so, Lieutenant John Paul Jones hoisted a yellow silk flag on which was the device of a pine tree and a coiled rattlesnake and the motto "Don't tread on me." This was the first flag ever displayed on an American man-of-war. Ice delayed the departure of the squadron; but in February it put to sea, went to the Bahama Islands, captured ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... surgeon in the United States, and he looked like nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow. He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... ferns come out of the ground head foremost, coiled up like a watch-spring, and are designated as "fiddle-heads," or crosiers. (A real crosier is a bishop's staff.) Some of these odd young growths are covered with "fern wool," which birds often use in lining their nests. This wool usually disappears ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... from the isolated elevation he could see if anyone approached. He had been out there during the day, and the Captain, who had noticed his habit had had rigged up a canvas dodger on the rail on the weather side. When he sat down on the coiled hawsers in the tank he was both secluded and sheltered. In this peaceful corner his thoughts ran freely and in sympathy with the turmoil of ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... encountered a strange beast, probably a wolverine, which showed fight; and a little later he was charged by three bulls from a herd of buffalo. Upon waking the next morning, he found a large rattlesnake coiled about the trunk of the tree beneath which he ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... the hour was, she had as yet made no preparations for going to bed, even to the extent of taking off her jewellery. The base of the lamp, as its flames flickered in the draught, cast a waving shadow over the widow's cap perched on her neatly coiled black tresses, and the same shadow danced across her jet-black eyes and left them staring at him, very bright and inquisitive. She wore a dress of stiff black silk with a somewhat coquettish apron; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... that a few days ago she had been his deadliest enemy. He forgot the existence of a man named Black Roger Audemard. Her slimness was as it had pictured itself to him in the hot sands. Her hair was as he had seen it there. It was coiled upon her head like ropes of spun silk, jet-black, glowing softly. But it was her eyes he stared at, and so fixed was his look that the red lips trembled a bit on the verge of a smile. She was not embarrassed. There was no color in the clear whiteness of her skin, except ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... namely by rubbing "the sides of the folds of its body against each other," whilst the head remains in almost the same position. The scales on the sides, and not on other parts of the body, are strongly keeled, with the keels toothed like a saw; and as the coiled-up animal rubs its sides together, these grate against each other.[26] Lastly, we have the well-known case of the Rattle-snake. He who has merely shaken the rattle of a dead snake, can form no just idea of the sound produced ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... bully sleep," said Bandy-legs, as he coiled up under his cover, with his knees close to his chin, a favorite attitude with him; "and I hope nothing wakes me ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... close to him, and before he had time to think he found himself surrounded by the most dreadful-looking creatures. On one side he saw the glittering eye of a cruel tiger, on the other the gleaming teeth of a great she-wolf; here a huge bear growled fiercely, and there a horrible snake coiled itself in the grass at ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... would sit for hours, his fish-legs coiled up under him, singing to the wondering ears of the Indians upon the shore the pleasures he experienced, and the beautiful and strange things he saw, in the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories with these words, shouted at the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... dressing leisurely, enjoying to the fullest the feel of the rich goods. She shook her hair free, dried it as best she could, and took some pains to put it up nicely. It was long and glossy black, but not inclined to curl. It coiled about her head in ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... exhibited slight spontaneous movements; and when the terminal filaments came into contact with a stick, they slowly bent round and firmly seized it. But owing to the subsequent growth of the leaf, this filament became after a time quite slack, though still remaining firmly coiled round the stick. Hence it would appear that the chief use of the coiling, at least whilst the plant is young, is to support the pitcher with its load of ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... shoulders. "How grand you are!" she said. "I am," I answered; then I added, "Miss Croyden, for Heaven's sake don't touch me on the ear. I can't stand it." I turned from her and looked out over the sea. Presently I heard something like a groan behind me. The girl had thrown herself on the sand and was coiled up in a hoop. "Miss Croyden," I said, "for God's sake don't coil ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... was round her head at the temples, and was set with a huge green stone which rested in the middle of her forehead. Long barbaric earrings dangled and shook with every movement of her head, and round her somewhat scrawny neck was coiled an ugly greenish serpent of some flexible metal formation. For the rest, Miss Blaney wore a flowing robe of saffron yellow, a most sickly shade, and the material was frayed and worn as if it had been many ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... pictures flew, shelves hurled their contents. Breaking free, upright for a poised second, the long mirror lunged across the room, then crashed to its fall. On its ruin plaster showered, stretches of ceiling, the chandelier in a shiver of glass and coiled wires. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... a young woman lay on a couch. Horror was depicted upon her countenance, and she was frantically but vainly struggling to free herself from the great boa-constrictor which had coiled his ugly thick body about her. Standing beside her and looking on with a dreadful expression of devilish satisfaction was a representation of Satan, whilst coming in at the open door reeled a young man in ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... hand. He had seen a turtle floating just below the surface. Almost the next instant the weapon darted with tremendous force from his hand. To the harpoon a line had been attached, which had been carefully coiled away in the bows. This quickly ran out until the huge loggerhead turtle which had been struck reached the bottom, when we hauled taut the line and belayed it. We now sat quietly waiting until the turtle should be compelled to rise to the surface to ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... is coiled about the denuded stem; the upper branches reach to heaven, and bear at the top a new-born wailing infant, swathed in linen, whilst (here we quote ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... upon the shaft or handle must be bound firmly to the shaft with thongs or heavy twine. Holes are sometimes bored through the rim and the thongs or twine are passed through them and woven into a loose netting to form a bottom to the coiled end, making a shallow cup-shaped receptacle in which to catch or hold the ball. The rackets are not difficult to make. Each lad should make his own racket and mark the stem with some device by which he can identify it should he drop it during the play. Care should be taken when making the ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... put on hobnailed boots, filled a canteen, and hurried back to the corral. Yaqui awaited him. The Indian carried a coiled lasso and a short stout stick. Without a word he led the way down the lane, turned up the river toward the mountains. None of ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... or a quarter of an hour before the motor-car was at the police station. Malley slipped into the driver's seat, and Green coiled up his long body by his side. With a jerk they started, and in a little were out on the broad Portsmouth road, while a thin, penetrating rain was powdering the windscreen. Presently Malley increased the speed and, though it was well outside the legal ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... All the intelligent men who direct our society and understand the nature of my movements support me warmly. A few, I understand, in Africa, in writing home, have styled my efforts as 'wanderings.' The very word contains a lie coiled like a serpent in its bosom. It means traveling without an object, or uselessly. I am now performing the duty of writing you. If this were termed 'dawdling,' it would be as true as the other.... I have actually seen letters to the Directors in which I am gravely charged with holding ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... beautiful to him before. Her face was as pure as a pearl; her glossy hair, falling loosely away from her white forehead, was simply coiled at the back of her small head, thus revealing its symmetrical proportions to the best advantages. Her great brown eyes glowed and scintillated, her nostrils dilated, her lips quivered ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... full of shells, and bits of coral; and what are these wonderful things coiled and tangled together, like the snakes in Medusa's hair in ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... them to him, turning her pouting to laughing. One of them Martin coiled and held before his ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... sick, despondent and sulky, went gloomily forward, coiled himself up under the forecastle deck, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... head a steel and gold helmet with dragon crest, and slung on his back a shield of bronze wrought all over with cunning hammer-work of serpentine lines that swelled and sank upon the surface, and coiled in mazy knots, or flowed in long sweeping curves like waves of the sea when they gather might and volume for their leap upon the sounding shore. In the glimmering dawn, through the empty streets of the fair city, they rode forth alone and took their way through fields of corn and by apple ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. I was so much surprised at his account, that I took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens, and the excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I ever beheld. Three species of Cercopithecus were the most alarmed; they dashed about ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... problems of weight and the aerial. So far as present knowledge goes, the most satisfactory form of aerial yet exploited is that known as the trailing wire. From 300 to 700 feet of wire are coiled upon a reel, and when aloft this wire is paid out so that it hangs below the aeroplane. As a matter of fact, when the machine is travelling at high speed it trails horizontally astern, but this is immaterial. One investigator, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and without wind, and as but few birds were flying, La Salle coiled himself down in the sunny corner of his stand, and drawing from his pocket the letter of which we have spoken in the last chapter, gave it a careful and deliberate perusal. As he closed, a smile, strangely expressing contempt, pity, and admiration, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... convinced that the flea was a mad flea, and that she shall die of hydrophobia. (As it happens, the flea is not a flea at all, but a grain of snuff.) However, the Black Doctor is sent for, and finds the King as affable as usual, but Mlle. de Coulanges coiled up on a sofa—like something between a cat and a naughty child afraid of being scolded—and hiding her face. On being coaxed with the proper medical manner, she at last bursts out laughing, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... and included large ornaments for the ears and pendants for the neck, made of thin sheets of gold; turtles and human skulls cast in a single piece; and most curious of all, odd pieces of filigree where the gold-wire was coiled into strange human heads. One of these was made half of gold and half of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... clanged hollow on my shield Just as my spear transfixed him through and through; A moment towering o'er the foam he reeled, Then sank beneath the roaring falls from view. A dying yell that haunts me yet he gave, And as he fell the crippled water coiled About him like a wounded snake, and boiled, Lashing itself ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... been compelled to reiterate, in response to the most eloquent and, saving for a single instance, admirable man, their cousin, the representative of 'the blood,' supplicating them. A recreant thankfulness coiled within her bosom at the thought, that Dorothea, true to her office of speaker, had tasked herself with the cruel utterance and repetition of the word. Victor's wonderful eyes, his voice, yet more than his urgent pleas; and also, in the midst of his fiery flood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the frightened pony lay coiled a gigantic rattlesnake, its ugly head and tail raised and its rattles singing ominously. Two more steps and the pony would have ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... with yellow stripes and red freckles came like a javelin down to her, and coiled and curled round her head, and she slept an hour. When she arose the Vizier was yet there, sitting with folded knees. So she sped the serpent to the Lake Karatis, and called her women to her, and went ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enormous thorns, that even the hunted deer or savanna wolf will rarely attempt an entrance. The earth is overgrown by an impenetrable carpet of creeping plants, under whose treacherous shelter innumerable rattlesnakes, king's-heads, and copperheads, writhe themselves, or lie coiled up on the watch for the wild pigeons, mockingbirds, parroquets, and black squirrels, who share with them the shelter of the thicket. Rarely is the maze broken by a clearing, and where it is so, is seen a chaos of mouldering tree-trunks, uprooted by the frequent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... rich glow upon the occupant, and the servants in plain frock liveries, with a cockade, of course, to imply their mistresses have seen service. I know but of one who sports any heraldic ornament, and that is the female Giovanni, who has the very appropriate crest of a serpent coiled, and preparing to spring upon its prey, a la Cavendish. The elegante in the dark vis, to whom our friend Horace is paying court, is the ci-devant Lady Ros—b—y, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... hood of the same shade and material as her dress and apron concealed all but the white lace frill of a "grandma cap," which fastened under her chin with a bow. Her dark hair drawn down plain to each temple was coiled there into tiny wheels, and a brass pin stuck through crosswise to hold each coil in place. Her bright, speaking eyes, more brown than gray, gave charm to a face which might have been pretty had disease not ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... ounces of cold coiled ham, and mince it very fine, adding a little pepper. Beat separately the whites and yolks of six eggs, and then mix them together add to them gradually the minced ham. Beat the whole very hard, and do not let it stand a moment after it is thoroughly mixed. Have ready some ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... locked dressing-case under her own bed where she jealously kept them. They were famous pearls and many of them. One string was presently wound in and out through the coils of hair that crowned the girl's delicate head; the other string coiled twice round her neck and hung loose over the black dress. They were her only ornament of any ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from its nail one of the little wooden slabs, and showed her the roots coiled about it, with the cluster of bulbs. The flower was snow-white and shaped like a butterfly. The fringe of the lip was of a delicate rose-pink, and at the base of it were two spots of rich maroon, each with a central spot of the most vivid orange. Every color was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... For that coiled hair's brown crown, for that sweet and seemly way, The straight thoughts, the eager words, the dazzle of your day, Shall I turn base then and learn to whine and curse? Not though daggers of memory ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumballs always are: and I washed my hands, and took off Fanny's apron, and went ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... particulars of his royal visit to Bruce (who had anxiously watched his return), when one of the queen's attendants appeared; and presenting him with a silk handkerchief curiously coiled up, said, that he brought it from her majesty; who supposed it must be his, as she found it in the room where he had been playing the harp. Wallace was going to say that it did not belong to him, when Bruce gave him a look which directed him ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... ecstatically from her special little mug, filled by Katie, and taking great scalloping bites out of her square cake, while Robin, planted directly before her, but as quiveringly as if on coiled springs, watched every bite, snapping his own jaws each ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... round the treasures in a cave, as Fafnir, like a Python, lay coiled over his hoard. So constant was this habit among the dragons that gold is called Worms' bed, Fafnir's couch, Worms' bed-fire. Even in India, the cobras ... are guardians ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... clearness the writhing dark bodies of the crawling moccasins, even to the patches of white at their lips which gave them their sinister name of "cottonmouths." Fat and short and horrible to look upon, they were, as they slithered and twisted here and there along the bright-lit floor or coiled and hissed at sight of the flame and of the fast plying hand and arm of the captive just ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... maidens in like cases. While the struggle went on her tender face was brave; but, alas! Omens are against her: she holds an ever-present dreadful one on that fatal fourth finger of hers, which has coiled itself round her dream of delight, and takes her in its clutch like a horrid serpent. And yet she must love it. She dares not part from it. She must love and hug it, and feed on its strange honey, and all the bliss it gives her casts ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and leaned on his elbow. She came smiling out of the brush, light as a roe, and with much of its slim, supple grace. Before, he had seen her veiled by night; the day disclosed her a dark, spirited young creature. The mass of blue-black hair coiled at the nape of the brown neck, the flash of dark eyes beneath straight, dark eyebrows, together with a certain deliberation of movement that was not languor, made it impossible to doubt that she was a Southerner by ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... drawing-room. Her daughter stood in the sunlight by the window, tall, fragile, and exquisite, her features and outline not unlike her mother's, but frailer, softer, more delicate. The golden light struck one half of her high-bred, sensitive face, and glimmered upon her thickly-coiled flaxen hair, striking a pinkish tint from her closely-cut costume of fawn-coloured cloth with its dainty cinnamon ruchings. One little soft frill of chiffon nestled round her throat, from which the white, graceful neck and well-poised head shot up like a lily amid ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lucien, who had been prowling about, lifting up stones and looking under stubs in order to find insects, loudly called out to me. When I got up to him, I saw at the bottom of a hole a coral-serpent, measuring about a yard in length. The reptile was coiled up, and remained motionless while we admired its beautiful red skin, divided at intervals with rings of shining black. L'Encuerado promptly cut a forked stick and pinned the animal down to the ground. The prisoner immediately tried to stand up on end; its jaws distended, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... this belief by finding in connection with some of them little cup-shaped concavities pecked into the angles of the figures (as a, a, a). You will observe that a line is drawn from the middle and straight portion of my figure and coiled around the concavity at the right side, and that the terminations of the upper cross lines are bifurcated around similar though smaller concavities. This entire figure represents a water-animal god, one only of a number of semi-human mystic monsters. For convenience his ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... some of the many clever things Boy Scouts delight to learn, for several of the number carried signal flags; two had pieces of a broken looking-glass in their possession; while the tall lad, Seth Carpenter, had a rather sadly stained blanket coiled soldier fashion about his person, that gave off a scent of smoke, proving that he must have used it in communicating with distant comrades, by means of the smoke ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... slowly and cautiously, looking all about him. He remembered to have awakened once thus in India—and to have found a great cobra coiled at his feet. His inspection revealed the presence of nothing unfamiliar, and he stepped ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... was an idol, a hideous thing on which frogs and snakes squatted and coiled. It was a fitting piece to accompany the gruesome occupant of the little room in his long, last vigil. In fact, it almost sent a shudder over me, and if I had been inclined to the superstitious, I should ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... you will find that whenever electricity flows through a wire that is coiled around a piece of iron, the iron becomes magnetized just as when it is ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... laughed and frolicked; the girls got taffy on their hair—the boys got taffy on their chins; the girls got taffy on their waists—the boys got taffy on their coat sleeves. They pulled it till it was as bright as a moonbeam, and then they platted it and coiled it into fantastic shapes and set it out in the crisp air to cool. Then the courting in earnest began. They did not court then as the young folks court now. The young man led his sweetheart back into a dark corner and sat down by her, and held her hand ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the entire assembly broke into applause; and yet he was not the hero of the day, but an older and far more infirm Peer, Lord Rolle, who mounted the steps with difficulty, and stumbling at the top, fell, and rolled all the way back to the floor, where "he lay at the bottom of the steps, coiled up in his robes." At sight of the accident the Queen rose from her throne, and held out her hands as though to help him. It was a pretty incident, not for the poor Peer, but as showing Her Majesty's impulsive kindness of heart. The old nobleman was not hurt, but quickly unwound ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... lounge half turned toward the fire a girl in white was lying fast asleep. It was Christine. Her dark hair was all gathered loosely back and coiled in a large knot low down against her fair throat, from which the white lace of her gown fell backward, leaving its beautiful pureness bare. There was a charming air of foreign taste and fashioning about the whole costume. Poor Christine! She had put it on obediently when Mrs. Murray had brought ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... for itself where it chooses, a root contorts itself into more serpent-like writhing than branches can; and when it has once coiled partly round a rock, or stone, it grasps it tight, necessarily, merely by swelling. Now a root has force enough sometimes to split rocks, but not to crush them; so it is compelled to grasp by flattening as it ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... all parts of the boat, without avail; and the officers had decided that he had jumped overboard, with the desperate intention of swimming ashore. Just as they were about to give up the search, a noise was heard that seemed to come from a bureau in the ladies' cabin. Search was made, and there, coiled up in a narrow bureau-drawer, lay the leader of the band. He had been there two hours, and was helpless from cramp and exhaustion. He was placed in a cell at Fort Lafayette; but later, having been given the privilege of walking about the fort, managed to escape by making floats of empty tomato-cans, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... her red hair parted on the side and coiled into a womanly coiffure, wearing a simple white organdie, she was just one of the hundred graduates who marched into the chapel. But later, as she stood alone on the platform and delivered her oration, "The Flowers of the Garden Spot," she held the interested attention ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... prescribe it, Strake," said Syd, smiling, and the old man coiled up the piece of rope and put it in his pocket, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... family, coiled by misfortunes like that of the Laocoon (sublime image of so many lives), Godefroid, who was now on his way on foot to the rue Marbeuf, was conscious in his heart of more curiosity than benevolence. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... vaguely that he meant to say something else when he began; but she forgot to wonder what it was when she saw what he brought out of a little corner cupboard. It was a teapot of some fine, glistening purple ware, coiled over by golden dragons with gilded claws and scales. The lid looked like a beautiful golden flower and the handle was a coil of a dragon's tail. Rachel sat ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... oblong of sanded card gummed to apex: after 15 h. deflected 90o from the perpendicular and from the card: in the course of the three following days the terminal portion became much contorted and ultimately coiled ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... and again, and finally drag it crisscross once or twice to make assurance an absolute certainty, did not take long. Kent was particular about not wasting any seconds. The calf stopped its dismal blatting, and when Kent released it and coiled his rope, it jumped up and ran for its life, the cows ambling solicitously at its heels. Kent kicked the dirt over the fire, eyed it sharply a moment to make sure it was perfectly harmless, mounted in haste, and rode up the sloping side down, which he had ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... excited young man. He had come into the parlor on the invitation of Leopold, and had very modestly coiled himself away in the most obscure corner of the room. He was very much interested in the reading of Harvey Barth's diary, and especially in regard to the mysterious passenger. When Leopold read the name of "Joel Wormbury," ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... flew out of the temple. He grew and grew, and wound himself three times around the stage. He became as thick around as a small pail, and his head seemed like that of a dragon. His eyes sparkled like golden lamps, and he spat out red flame with his tongue. When he coiled and uncoiled the whole stage trembled and it seemed as though it would break down. The actors stopped their music and fell down on the stage in prayer. The whole multitude was seized with terror and ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Junior, writes:—"I found the nest of this bird on the 2nd July at Kossoom. The nest was of the ordinary Bulbul type, but much larger, and like a very shallow saucer. The foundation was a single piece of some creeping orchid, 3 feet long, coiled round; then a lot of coils of fern, grass, and moss-roots. The nest was 4 inches in diameter on the inside, the walls 1/4 inch thick, and the cavity 1 inch deep. It was built 10 feet from the ground, in a bush in ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the agony of its end; and his reflections were almost blasphemous. His religion seemed to crumble beneath the standing-place of his soul. A torture of doubt, a certainty of ignorance, in spite of the utmost efforts of faith, came over him. The cat coiled himself again and sank into sleep. Von Rosen gazed at him. What if the accepted order of things were reversed, after all? What if that beautiful little animal were on a higher plane than he? Certainly the cat did not ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... drink-houses, only prettier. A soft, thick carpet was on the floor, and a square glass lamp hung from the ceiling. I sat cross-legged on the floor, and he on a sofa, his feet cocked on a chair, and his tail coiled under him, comfortable as traders in a lodge. He hollered something, I couldn't make out, and in comes two black crook-shanked devils with a round bench and a glass with cigars in it. They vamosed, and the old coon, inviting me to take a cigar, helps himself, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... poised, and drove downward again. Geoffrey suddenly coiled his back muscles and heaved on his left arm, yanking himself up against Dugald's chest. He snapped his hips sideward, and Dugald's knife missed him completely for the third and fatal time. The Barbarian's knife slipped upward into Dugald's rib cage, and suddenly Geoffrey was drenched ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... All coiled down, and it's time for us to go, Every sail's furled in a smart harbour stow, Another ship for us an' for her another crew; An' so long, sailorman. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various |
