"Crawling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her. She could resist no longer. She looked at the nasty, horrid, crawling toad, the dumb toad at her feet that ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... bit of black rock cropping out of the hill-side. I guess it is about two hundred and fifty yards away, and is about the size a red-skin's head would be if he were crawling through the grass towards us. Will you ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... on the rain-swept mountain the prostrate rider had regained his senses and now was crawling painfully towards the road-house. Seen through the dark he would have resembled some misshapen, creeping monster, for he dragged himself, reptile-like, close to the ground. But as he came closer the man heard a cry which the wind seemed guarding from his ear, and, hearing it, he rose and rushed blindly ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... a shriek at intervals and made their clothes flutter like ghosts' shrouds, and in spite of it King's shirt was drenched with sweat, and his fingers ached from clinging as if they were on fire. Crawling against the wind along a wider ledge at the top, they came to a chasm, crossed by a foot-wide causeway. The wind bowled and moaned in it, and the futile lantern rays only suggested unimaginable, things—death the least ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... own man would be away—ill, wounded, dying, for what she knew, without the comfort of any hospital attendance, without physic, with no one to comfort him; but those she hated with a hatred much keener than his were close to her hand, using some friend's house that had been forcibly taken, crawling out into the sun under her eyes, taking the bread from her mouth! Life in Alexandria at this time must have been sad enough. The people were all secessionists, but the town was held by the Northern party. ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... fond of cats: in his establishment at Ravenna he had five of them. Daniel Maclise's famous portrait of Harriet Martineau represents that estimable woman sitting in front of a fireplace and turning her face to receive the caress of her pet cat crawling to a ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... to know what she'd do if she knew the truth about it. She'd say, 'If I can never be well, what's the use of prolonging my life a year, or two, or five; not really living, just crawling around half alive and soaking up somebody else's life at the same time?' She'd say she didn't believe it was so bad as that anyway, but that whether it was or not, she'd go straight along and live as she's always done, and when she died, she'd be dead. Don't you know how it's always pleased ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... see the Reverend Goodman standing on his head, trying to lose a red-hot silver dollar; and Daisy Snow, whose debutante frock was available for the purpose, wriggled beneath the tickling crawling of a large but ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... of the fire-balls which they threw over, asked, as their victims fell, 'Why they did not come into Badajos?' In this dreadful situation, while the dead were lying in heaps, and others continually falling, the wounded crawling about to get some shelter from the merciless shower above, and withal a sickening stench from the burnt flesh of the slain, Captain Nicholas, of the engineers, was observed by Lieutenant Shaw, of the 43rd, making incredible efforts to force his way with ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... snow block from the entrance and cut away the accumulated drift, and crawling out at once looked about him with astonished eyes. On one side very near where he had been sleeping waves were breaking upon the ice, and far away beyond the waters lay the bleak and naked headland of Cape Harrigan. In the ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Beausejour, carrying a flag, and followed by several men in uniform, wading through the sea of grass that stretched beyond the Missaguash. When the tide was out, this river was but an ugly trench of reddish mud gashed across the face of the marsh, with a thread of half-fluid slime lazily crawling along the bottom; but at high tide it was filled to the brim with an opaque torrent that would have overflowed, but for the dikes thrown up to confine it. Behind the dike on the farther bank stood the seeming officer, waving his flag in sign that he desired a parley. He was in reality no officer, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... an appreciable space between, but with the promise of a coming storm in them. He took no notice of the bustle and stir all about that betokened the approaching holiday. The cries of the huckster hawking oranges from his cart, of the man with the crawling toy, and of the pedler of colored Christmas candles passed him by unheard. Women with big baskets jostled him, stopped and fingered his cabbages; he answered their inquiries mechanically. Adam's mind was not in the street, at his stand, but in the dark back ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Gloss. Northanymbr., has "unlead, nomen opprobrii;" but he gives a false derivation: Grose, in his Provincial Glossary, "unleed or unlead, a general name for any crawling venomous creature, as a toad, &c. It is sometimes ascribed to a man, and then it denotes a sly wicked fellow, that in a manner creeps to do mischief. See Mr. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... and, softly crawling up the straw, left the note by her head. He hastened to a farm-house. The farm-wife was inclined to be curious. O curious farm-wife, you of the cream-thick Essex speech and the shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was on ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... he gritted, "it's a spider. The hairy, crawling beasts! I'll man one of the tubes myself, just for the fun of seeing them dissolve into nice brown ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... by the men creeping and crawling over the fields was drowned by the cannonade, from the English side as well as the German. On the English centre and right things were indeed very brisk; the big guns were thundering and shrieking and roaring, the machine-guns were keeping up the very devil's racket; the flares ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... secret unsightliness of her husband. She had squatted herself on the ground, with her legs tucked under her, after the manner of tailors, and she kept wriggling about continually under the pretext that ants were crawling about her somewhere. Monsieur Dufour, whom the presence of strangers of politeness had put into rather a bad tempter, was trying to find a comfortable position, which he did not, however, succeed in doing, and the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... unfair to him. Atrociously unfair. He's not my sort of man, perhaps, but it will hurt him cruelly according to the peculiar laws of his being. He seems to me a crawling sort of lover with an immense self-conceit at the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... believed these qualities would make participation in politics uncomfortable, he abstained. To those of us who are wiser than he, who know that simple honesty and public spirit and self-respect and contempt of sneaking and fawning and bribery and crawling are the conditions of political preferment, Irving, in not perceiving this, must naturally seem to be a queer, wrong-headed, and rather super-celestial American, who had lived too much in the heated atmosphere of European aristocracies and altogether ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... just the same," Hawkins said. "I can't make it more than three and a half knots through the water. I would give a year's pay if it would go round dead ahead of us; we should soon pick her up then. As it is, she keeps crawling away. However, we can make her out, on such a night as this, a good deal further than she is likely to get before morning. Besides, we shall be having the moon up soon, and as we are steering pretty nearly east, it will show ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... of a person crawling toward him, the curse of a Russian who had been disturbed in what was probably his last sleep; then Johnny's lips uttered a low exclamation. He had caught the dull gleam of a golden ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... steam and wreath upon the foul beer-colored stream. The loathy floor of liquid mud lay bare beneath the mangrove forest. Upon the endless web of interarching roots great purple crabs were crawling up and down. They would have supped with pleasure upon Amyas's corpse; perhaps they might sup on him after all; for a heavy sickening graveyard smell made his heart sink within him, and his stomach heave; and his weary body, and more weary soul, gave themselves ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the tide would not turn until three in the morning; it had been rising for three hours now; it would not be possible to leave the cave and make our way by the cliff for an hour after that. Ten hours—ten long, crawling hours to pass in this cramped position! I thought of dear mother's horror if she knew of our peril, and then I thought of Allan, and a ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... were not crawling!" laughed Ilga. "Oh, it does seem so splendid to walk! I've got lots of messages for you, Polly. Your father came to the station to see me off—just think of that! Wasn't it lovely of him? And your mother made me a long call ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... themselves and their better feelings, lest they should see what crimes are being committed against their brothers in the beyond that they call 'the front.' Every man is sick who can still think, talk, argue, sleep, knowing that other men, holding their own entrails in their hands, are crawling like half-crushed worms across the furrows in the fields, and are dying like animals before they can reach the ambulance station, while somewhere, far away, a woman with longing in her heart is dreaming ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... sobers indeed those who are intelligent enough to perceive it. It is only the fool or the brute or the sentimentalist who is unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods of the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the hill, beside a little grove of uninjured trees, they stopped again. A new train of trucks was crawling past them, huge blots in the darkness. There were no batteries near, so they could hear the grinding roar of the gears as the trucks went along the uneven road, plunging in and out ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... crawling on hands and knees when his legs buckled under him, MacRae left a blood-sprinkled trail over grass and moss and fallen leaves. He lived over and over that few minutes which had seemed so long, in which he had ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Boulingrin, "is the curse of this world. It has killed the greatest of men. Whoever honestly serves his King must make up his mind to pay tribute to that crawling, flying horror." ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... found how things were going with them, and hides and bones and heads of horses and mules were boiled down into soup, and they were fed. But a time was to come when even that soup was wanted to keep the life in white people. You saw the famine-stricken black spectres crawling from refuse-pile to refuse-pile, and dying in that pitiless, beautiful sunshine, under the blue, blue February sky, because white people had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... useless mischief," she agreed readily. Then she laughed outright. "But to see you crawling along the deck just now, grabbing any old thing for support, and often missing it, was a sight to leave one wondering how much dignity owes to personality, and how much to environment. Guess environment's ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... specious electrical light Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, Wickedly red or malignantly green Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... attendant with Waverley, after motioning to Edward to remain quiet, and giving his comrade directions in a brief whisper, he retreated, favoured by the irregularity of the ground, in the same direction and in the same manner as they had advanced. Edward, turning his head after him, could perceive him crawling on all fours with the dexterity of an Indian, availing himself of every bush and inequality to escape observation, and never passing over the more exposed parts of his track until the sentinel's back was turned from him. At length he reached the thickets and underwood which ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... get his breakfast. His light shirt was blood-stained in the back,—seemed to be soaked. "What's the matter with your shirt, it's soaked with blood?" some one asked. "Then that durned Daisy Belle has been crawling in with me, that's all," he said. "Blame his bleeding snoot. I'll punch it and give it something ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... in a provincial household with few friends or visitors, hardly ever invited to a ball, she had fuddled her mind, in the solitude of her old manor-house, over setting the pace, now crawling-slow, now passionate, whirling, breathless, for all those imaginary waltzing couples, gathering them like flowers, leaving the ball-room for a moment to listen, where the wind sighed among the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... be killed. I don't know—it was lying down. And Yellowjacket was up that little gully just this side of the wreck, when I left him. They did try to hold the load, Frank. Something must have happened to the brake. I saw dad crawling out from under the wagon just before I got to where the load was standing. Or some one did. I think it was dad. But Caroline kicked my horse down off the road, and, I only saw him a minute—but it must have been dad. And then, a little way down ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... had seemed almost to sink under her misfortune; nor had there been any hypocrisy, any pretence in her apparent misery. She had been very wretched;—as wretched a human creature, we may say, as any crawling God's earth at that time. But she had borne her load, and, bearing it, had gone about her work, still striving with desperate courage as the ground on which she trod continued to give way beneath her feet, inch by inch. They had known and pitied ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... forward astride on the rock for some time; but he soon got within sight of a part where it would be possible to go on his hands and knees, and was just about to change his straddling position for the more comfortable one of crawling, when the constant shrieking of the young vultures in his bag was answered by a piercing cry from above, followed the next moment by the loud rushing of powerful wings close to his ear. The boy uttered an exclamation of horror, and clung with all his ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and he pointed in the distance to a moving object in the sand, crawling along on its stomach for all the world like a snake. "I will go," he said, "and if you see the Chief of the Goumiers, tell him I sent you." With a handshake we parted. I again turned to look at the Goumier scout, his movements fascinated me. Keeping low under the top ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... passion, pride, and pomp, and power, And high ambition, and hot lust of rule, Like sacrificial fruits, upon the altar Of Liberty, divinest Liberty! Then—but the dream that filled my soul was vast As his whose mad ambition thinned the ranks Of the Seraphim, and peopled hell. These slaves! These crawling reptiles! May the curse of chains Cling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... am I, away from her, and I feel that any day harm may come to her, and she 'll melt, and be as if the devils of hell were mocking me. Who's to keep harm from her when I'm away? What can I do but drink and forget? Only now, when I wake up from it, I'm a crawling wretch at her feet. If I had her feet to kiss! I've never kissed her—never! And no man has kissed her. Damn my head! here's the ache coming on. That's my last oath, mother. I wish there was a Bible handy, but I'll try and stick ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and every one, however humble, who had any cause of complaint against the unfortunate prisoner, was invited to present it. The summons was readily answered; and many an enemy now appeared in the hour of his fallen fortunes, like the base reptiles crawling into light amidst the ruins of some noble edifice; and more than one, who had received benefits from his hands, were willing to court the favor of his enemy by turning on their benefactor. From these loathsome sources a mass of accusations ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... considerable herd and followed it up the mountain till the "sign" was fresh. Then I tied up my horse and went forward on foot. For these animals are sufficiently acquainted with man as a mischief-maker to be vigilant in avoiding him, even in the Park. I was cautiously crawling from tree to tree, when out across an open space I descried a cow Elk and her calf lying down. A little more crawling and I sighted a herd all lying down and chewing the cud. About twenty yards away was a stump whose shelter offered chances to use the camera, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... than the evening before. His complaints were curious and contradictory. A million pins were pricking him. There was a weight under the skin; a cold, wet animal was crawling over him. Then there were other creatures ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... were to go once round the room, alternately crawling under and hopping over the sixteen beds; the finish was to be down the middle aisle, across the centre of which a row of chairs was placed, on which boys stood or sat to keep them steady while the racers crawled under the seats. In spite of the fact that ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... form was crawling through the window, but he seemed to be so occupied by keeping the sash up that he had not as yet noticed the two boys. As he threw one leg over the sill, he thrust his hand into his breast pocket and drew out a ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... to catch on to some kind of doings. Your old man, Joyce, ain't half the fool you'd like him to be. I wasn't napping when Billy Falster blabbed his warning. I wasn't napping when I saw that hand-holding and kissing from the top of Beacon Hill. I wasn't snoozing that night when you went crawling to Gaston's shack just after you'd given your word to me, and"—Jude had worked himself into a quivering rage—"I wasn't sleeping when you and him sat ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... in its happiest mood," observed Charley, "but even here under all this beauty are hidden countless serpents and crawling things, while everywhere under this fair appearance lurks fever ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... black, the harsh Sienna tone of this shell dulled the rug's reflections without adding to it. The dominant silver gleams in it barely sparkled, crawling with lack-lustre tones of dead zinc against the edges ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... from the Amba the day before, we had met on the road all the prisoners crawling along, many of them in hand and foot chains, having in that condition been obliged to walk down the irregular and steep descent. Their appearance was enough to inspire pity in the most callous heart; many had no other covering than a ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... tranquillity or peace. Almost all the many-formed and strange-shaped inhabitants of the pool were hunting or being hunted, preying or being preyed upon,—from the goggle-eyed, green-throated bullfrog under the willow root, down to the swarming animalculae which it required a microscope to see. Small crawling things everywhere dotted the mud or tried to hide under the sticks and stones. Curled fresh-water snails moved up and down the stems of the lilies. Shining little black water-bugs scurried swiftly in all directions. In sheltered places near ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... lighting even Bond Street—the dreariest street in town—with a little flame of gaiety. I have assisted at carnivals and feasts in various foreign parts—carnivals of students and also of the theatrically desperate apaches in the crawling underworlds. But, oh, what bilious affairs! You simply flogged yourself into it. You said, as it were: "I am in Vienna, or Berlin, or Paris, or Brussels, or Marseilles, or Trieste; therefore, I am gay. Of course I am gay." But you were not. You were only bored, and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... for; and he seemed no end relieved,—so relieved that I think I must have cocked my eye at him or something, because he said in an apologetic sort of way, 'I mean, because my wife will be delighted. It's a bit dull for her nowadays, only me and always me, crawling about more or ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... seen the meat spoiled when brought to us, covered with flies and fly blows, and even worms crawling over it, when we were compelled to eat it, or go without any at all. It was all spread out on a long table in separate plates; and at the sound of a bell, every one would take his plate, asking no questions. ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... whispered, "everybody'll be too busy to notice." Well, the mill started to-morrow! And besides that, Davy, who had been on the lookout while his fellow conspirator lay beneath the hedge, had spied Sawed-Off Wilmott come crawling from behind the lilac bushes at the Longs' gate, and go sneaking down the road. So the boys were anticipating high times. Sawed-Off would certainly be along to prevent the elopement, and they had determined to be on the watch, and miss none of the sport. And here, like two chivalrous ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... by miracle, Sir; by being drunk, and falling asleep under the Hall-Table with your Worship's Dog Tory, till just now a Dream of Small-beer wak'd me: and crawling from my Kennel to secure the black Jack, I stumbled upon this Lanthorn, which I took for one, till I found a Candle in't, which helps me to serve your Worship. [Goes to unbind ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... plagues, and those he expended upon the Egyptians. He no longer has it in His power to do harm." But God said: "Do ye but wait to see. I shall bring plague down upon you like of which hath never been." (33) This new plague consisted in mice crawling forth out of the earth, and jerking the entrails out of the bodies of the Philistines while they eased nature. If the Philistines sought to protect themselves by using brass vessels, the vessels burst at the touch of the mice, and, as before, the Philistines were at their ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Richard observed grimly, as he turned the handle of the car and they took their places in the little well-shaped space, "better say your prayers. I'm going to drive slowly enough but it's an awful job, this, crawling down the side of a mountain in the dark, with nothing between you and ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... just been wanting to get an Indian picture the worst way. Show him to me, please!" And Will came crawling hastily forth, of course clutching his beloved camera ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... hands went to bed, crawling into their blankets, where they were soon fast asleep. Late in the night Nance sat up. He thought he had heard the lion growl. Stepping to the door of the tent he listened. Not a sound could be heard save the mysterious whisperings of the Canyon. Jim went back to bed, not to awaken ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... the companionway, then looked out to sea at the black smoke made by a steamer crawling along the horizon, from Liverpool ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... through some opening directly upon you; while mosquitoes sing about your ears (would that they sang only!), and flies buzz noisily before your face; while birds flit past, and strange notes sound from behind; while rustling in the dead leaves at your feet suggests snakes, and a crawling on your neck proclaims spiders? If you have not, you can never appreciate the enthusiasms of a bird student, nor realize what neck-breaks and other discomforts one will cheerfully endure to witness the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... ears, listened a moment, and then shot down the slope. At the same moment Tammas hallooed: "Theer he be! yon's yaller un coomin' oot o' drain! La, Sam'l!" And there, indeed, on the slope below them, a little angry, smutty-faced figure was crawling ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... fever" was considered an ample justification. It was no affair of ours. I was only too rejoiced to join company with the runaways, of whose loyalty to myself I had proofs of old. Their guns— more especially the rifle of Sure-shot—would be a valuable addition to our strength; and, instead of crawling along under the cover of night, we might now advance with more freedom and rapidity. It was determined, therefore, to share our means of transport with our new comrades—an offer by them eagerly and readily ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... terrible than the fiercest winter blast, sweeps down the slope into their faces. There are lightning flashes and thunderbolts from the hill above. Men drop from their places, to lie forever still among the tangled branches. But their surviving comrades do not falter. On,—on,—creeping, crawling, climbing over the obstructions, unterrified, undaunted, with all the energy of life centred in one effort; like a tornado they sweep up the slope,—into the line of fire, into the hissing storm, up to the ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... come on," he said, crawling out and starting to beat his way against the gale toward the spot where the Overland girls were supposed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... isn't just nosing into the Slot, over the reef between the town and the island and letting go then, and beginning to sweat. This is much more, Harry. This is bloody frightening. Are the three minutes up yet? My stomach is crawling at the thought of you pushing that button and nothing happening. Listen, Bannister, you're not getting me down, so forget any assurances. I hope they never let you put anybody else up here like this. It's black again. We've ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... Hardress. "I suppose the Boche will do a good deal of crawling to get back among decent people after the war; but he'll never live down ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... over now, and long has been. To-day the iron horse, with its rattling train, carries such travellers by a different route—the screech of its whistle being just audible to wayfarers on the old road, as in mockery of their crawling pace. Of its ancient glories there remain only the splendid causeway, still kept in repair, and the inns encountered at short distances apart, many of them once grand hostelries. They, however, are not in repair; ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... those who did not know its nature. At a distance it looked like one of those horrible antediluvian monsters one reads of, with a lank body, about thirty feet long. It was reddish-yellow in colour, and came on at a slow, crawling pace, its back appearing occasionally above the underwood. Presently its outline became more defined, and it turned out to be a canoe instead of an antediluvian monster, with Big Waller and Bounce acting the ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... their cold bath, the worms, crawling along the ground behind the still-house, arrived at the back of another building, called the test-room; and here each one, making a sharp turn to enable him to enter, was pierced at the angle thus formed, and a vertical pipe some ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... hell there. The climate had done its work, he was well, but he had felt himself more a pariah than ever before. He had seemed like a fly crawling over a glass shield under which tempting dainties are clearly visible and maddeningly unattainable. A man wanted money in California—with money could lead the life, half vagabondage, half lazy luxury, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... full of eggs, which they exclude the instant they enter their last state. The water-eft is continually climbing over the brims of the vessel, within which we keep it in water, and wandering away: and people every summer see numbers crawling out of the pools where they are hatched, up the dry banks. There are varieties of them, differing colour; and some have fins up their tail and ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... was served for many days without fresh buffalo. As we wended our way up the valley of the Platte one could look back for miles and miles on a line of wagons, the sinuous line with vari-colored wagon covers resembling a great serpent crawling and wriggling up the valley. Fortunately for "our train" we were well in advance and thus escaped the sickness that later dotted the valley of ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... a chair, a couch, and sunlight through a window. Crawling sunlit snakes. The visitor shuddered. He sought the part of the mind that was clear, but he sought in vain. Only the whirling chaos and the ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates. I waited for an outbreak, motionless, dazed, muttering words that did not mend the case at all. "What a pity! Oh, I'm so sorry! If I had only known—" The student of the ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... "There's something crawling along right there. I can see a dark figure move," he said to himself as he strained ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... is a stranger monster (to an eye that hates it or merely wonders) than the many-jointed Rand demon crawling along the line of banked outcrop? I saw it first by day, when it seemed an elongated wire-drawn Manchester in a pure air, but I remember it best as I saw it when returning from Pretoria. First I beheld the gleam of electric lights, and remembered the glow of Fargo in Eastern Dakota as I saw it across ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... unmingled and burning revenge. There was nothing else the matter with him. It was just this: "You haven't given me what I want; now I'll kill you." For months after each presidential inauguration the hotels of Washington are roosts for these buzzards. They are the crawling vermin of this nation. Guiteau was no rarity. There were hundreds of Guiteaus in Washington after the inauguration, except that they had not the courage to shoot. I saw them some two months or six weeks after. They were mad enough to do it. I saw it ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... now. The fire was dying away. The hands of the clock were crawling off another hour, and still he did not come. But what did I care? All in the world that I loved I had lost—Mary and my brother—and Tim had taken both. He who had so much had come in his strength and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... enjoy a rest on my bed and read the reliable items in the "Citizen," when a shell burst right outside the window in front of me. Pieces flew in, striking all round me, tearing down masses of plaster that came tumbling over me. When H. rushed in I was crawling out of the plaster, digging it out of my eyes and hair. When he picked up beside my pillow a piece as large as a saucer, I realized my narrow escape. The window-frame began to smoke, and we saw the house was on fire. H. ran for ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... here are desperately poor, and the misery and suffering one sees crawling through the streets every day is heart-rending. I have not a doubt that I am in a real mission field, and thank God that He has given me the opportunity to do something towards alleviating some of this misery. But what about the work as regards the saving of souls and establishing of a Church? ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... in the ground. I knew that, but this was before I had learned that the caterpillar worked out a hole in the ground, and the pupa case only touched the earth upon which it lay. So when my Modesta caterpillar ceased crawling, lay quietly, turned dark, shrank one half in length, and finally burst the dead skin, and emerged in a shining dark brown pupa case two inches long, I got in my work. I did well. A spade full of garden ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... us tells us that Kaid is sick, and Nahoum the Armenian says, you shall, and you shan't, now. Which is another way of saying, that between us and the front door of our happy homes there are rattlesnakes that can sting—Nahoum's arm is long, and his traitors are crawling under the canvas ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... comfortably on the seat with some rugs and cushions we had got with us, he said, 'Now, Connie, you can go back if you like and leave me to talk to Fan. She is our guardian angel, and will watch over me, and keep away all ugly phantoms and crawling many-legged things —spiders, slugs, and caterpillars. And I shall repay her angelic guardianship with wise, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... he sat and held his magnifying glass before his eye, and looked at a drop of water that was taken out of a little pool in the ditch. What a creeping and crawling was there! all the thousands of small creatures hopped and jumped about, pulled one another, and pecked ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... spoke of crawling silently away, and coming back to join the balance of the patrol, he had his chums worked up to a feverish pitch ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry. She resembled an enormous and aquatic black beetle, surprised by the light, overwhelmed by the sunshine, trying to escape with ineffectual effort into the distant ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... long,—as the toad is kept alive in the solid rock. Hugh Miller says he is 'disposed to regard the poison bag of the serpent as a mark of degradation;' this venomous spite is certainly a mark of degradation, and it is only creeping, crawling souls that have it, but the creeping and crawling are a part of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with these two men, Nageedah and Chadozee. We came to some wild cherry bushes. I began to eat of the fruit when I saw a large silver-tip crawling toward us. 'Look out! there is a grizzly here,' I shouted, and I ran my pony out on to the prairie; but the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... we are all, men and women, poor worms Crawling up from the dampness and darkness of clay To bask in the sunlight and warmth of the day. Some climb to a leaf and reflect its bright sheen, Some toil through the grass, and are crushed there unseen. Some sting if you touch them, and some evolve wings; Yet God dwells in each of the poor, groping ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... with nearly every Southern California tribe of Indians—where those who were ill subjected themselves to the heroic treatment of parboiling over a fire, until in a profuse perspiration, to be followed, on crawling out, by a plunge into the icy water of the stream. It was truly a case ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... banks of the Nile for the Prince and his pashas, providing their own food, their own tools, their own housing, if housing there would be—if it was more than sleeping under a bush by the riverside, or crawling into a hole in the ground, their yeleks their clothes by day, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cooking, loaded the table with good things to eat. Hugh ate until both the man and woman declared he would burst if he did not stop. Then when they were not looking he went into the station yard and crawling under a bush went to sleep. The station master came to look for him. He cut a switch from the bush and began to beat the boy's bare feet. Hugh awoke and was overcome with confusion. He got to his feet and stood trembling, half afraid he was to be ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... girl's face made her think that these hills, this air and sky, were in fact alive to her,—real; that her soul, being lower, it might be, than ours, lay closer to Nature, knew the language of the changing day, of these earnest-faced hills, of the very worms crawling through the brown mould. It was an idle fancy; Margret laughed at herself for it, and turned to watch the slow morning-struggle which Lois followed ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... up the ladders. Up to this time the Makalanga appeared to have done nothing, but now they began to fire rapidly from the ancient bastions which commanded the entrance the impi was striving to storm, and soon through the thinning fog they perceived wounded Matabele staggering and crawling back towards their camp. Of these, the light now better, Jacob did not ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... man a dozen times on the way had not the Germans held him up. They were laughing, as if the whole thing was a joke, when crack! came a volley of bullets and with a great shout back rushed the French and Belgians in a counter-charge. I admit I ducked, crawling under the ambulance, and the Germans were so surprised that they beat ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... going off. Then, as the fight seemed over, the door was opened and we emerged. The Place had been evacuated by the mob, and was held by the troops. Fresh regiments were marching on it along the quay and the Rue de Rivoli. Wounded people were lying about or crawling towards the houses. Soon some brancardiers arrived and picked up the wounded. One boy I saw evidently dying—the blood was streaming out of two wounds. The windows of the Hotel de Ville were broken, and the facade ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... was there for all the time; and having finished his supper, just to show us what he thought of such silly tricks he picks up this stick, gives it a hitch through the loop, jerks at the same, and there you are, with three half scared fellows crawling out of the tent expectin' to find a tiger held up by the hind quarters. This is what they call coming down from the sublime to the ridiculous, ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the word she got out of bed, and crawling up to the kitchen, insisted upon taking 'Lena's place, saying, "she could sit in her chair and tell the rest ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... military salutes. You are under fire one minute, the next shooting through some captured palace or barracks or museum of antiques. At noon the guard is turned out in honor, at four you are watching distant shell fire from the Belgian dunes; at eleven crawling under a down quilt in some French hotel where the prices of food and wines are fixed by the local commandant. Everything is done for you—more, of course, than one would wish—the gifted young captain conductor speaks English one minute, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... seen crawling on his hand, And clinging bats, but dimly scanned, Full in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek; "Must I drink here?" He seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek: "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be:" (And this time ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... down his cheeks and his hands shaking; he was pulling cracknels, necklaces, gingerbread nuts, and all sorts of little presents out of his bundle and flinging them on the floor. Kuzka—he was three years old—was crawling on the floor, munching the gingerbreads, while Mashenka stood by the stove, white and shivering all over, muttering: 'I'm not your wife; I can't live with you,' and all sorts of foolishness. I bowed down at Vasya's feet, and said: 'We have sinned against you, ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... like a rain of gold, The fireflies stream steadily; and bright Along the moss the glowworm, as of old, A crawling sparkle—like a crooked light In smoldering vellum—scrawls a square ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... into the woods after game, he had perpetually to keep watch lest he himself might be hunted in turn. He never lay in wait at a game-lick, save with ears strained to hear the approach of some crawling red foe. He never crept up to a turkey he heard calling, without exercising the utmost care to see that it was not an Indian; for one of the favorite devices of the Indians was to imitate the turkey call, and thus allure within ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... recognised its owner, and said beneath his breath: "O Lord!"—his soul crawling with recognition. But nothing of this was discernible in the alacrity with which he jumped up and bent over a ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Violet sat down to her letters, with little Johnnie crawling at her feet; but in a few minutes she was interrupted by the entrance of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and knees all the way. Perhaps he could walk, stooped, touching the depressions in the snow at every step. In his own soul he did not believe that he had one chance in a hundred of making it through to safety. Crawling, creeping, groping from track to track would wear him out quickly. But was there any other course for him? If he didn't try that, would he have any alternative other than to lie still and die? He wasn't sure that he could even find the tracks in the snow, but if he were able to encircle ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... each ship, stood a young man with a long, flexible rule. This he laid rapidly along the width of each board, and then as rapidly entered a mark in a note-book. The boards seemed to move fairly of their own volition, like a scutellate monster of many joints, crawling from the cars, across the dock, over the side of the ship and into the black hold where presumably it coiled. There were six ships; six, many-jointed monsters creeping to their appointed places under the urging of ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... crossing the entry in two steps, found himself in a small dining-room opening directly out of the kitchen, where three tiny little children were playing, the youngest, who could not have been more than eighteen months, crawling about on the floor. Upon the ragged oilcloth which covered the table, Zilah noticed two pairs of men's gloves, one gray, the other yellow, and a heap of soiled white cravats. Upon a wooden chair, by the open door of the kitchen, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... weather and strong wind from the south-southwest. Nordahl, who is cook to-day, had to haul up some salt meat which, rolled in a sack, had been steeping for two days in the sea. As soon as he got hold of it he called out, horrified, that it was crawling with animals. He let go the sack and jumped away from it, the animals scattering round in every direction. They proved to be sandhoppers, or Amphipoda, which had eaten their way into the meat. There were pints of them, both inside and ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... knees, crawling from under the table, followed closely by her faithful shadow. She came cautiously up to Sunny's side ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all. But later your vision watched for men and women Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities, Looking for the souls of them to come out, So that you could see How they lived, and for what, And why they kept crawling so busily Along the sandy way where water fails ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... coherence and force of expression as he proceeded. At least, he made them understand something of the grim resolution which had animated Wyllard. He pictured, in terse seaman's words, the little schooner plunging to windward over long phalanxes of icy seas, or crawling white with snow through the blinding fog. His companions saw the big combers tumbling ready to break short upon the dipping bows out of the dark, and half-frozen men struggling for dear life with folds of madly thrashing sail. The pictures were, however, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... Kitty, speaking up from the hammock, where she swung, half in, half out, watching a colony of ants crawling along the ground underneath. "But I traded my turn to Elise, for her biggest paper ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... piano had ever been handled. Yes, Edwin was humbled. And he had a great wish to be able to do something brilliantly himself—he knew not what. The intoxication of the desire for glory was upon him as he sat amid those shirt-sleeved men, near the brooding Indian god, under a crawling bluish canopy of smoke, gazing absently at the legend: "As a bird is ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... objective. The foot of the hill was reached by the attacking force with two casualties. One company was then directed to the left to attack round the flank, and the ascent of the precipitous side of the hill was commenced. Crawling up a goat's track in single file, on hands and knees, through dense bush, the first portion of the ascent was accomplished, and the little force formed up under a spur to get breath before debouching into the open for the final rush to the top. After a short halt the advance ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... to look as Sarah carefully turned the stone over. There were numerous little crawling creatures beneath ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... bunches like shaken grapes. Nine-tenths of the besiegers were destroyed within ten minutes after the first movement had been noticed on the roof. Those who survived owed their escape to the rocks which concealed them, and they lost no time in crawling off into neighboring chasms, and, as soon as they were beyond eye-shot from the mill, ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... came upon a white haired squaw crawling feebly from her doorway toward a fish that lay at the foot of a tree. Charlie picked up the fish and he and Lydia helped the old woman back to her hut. In the hut was an iron pot and a pile of reed ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... suddenly and leaped to his feet. "Great Christopher! Look there!" Stane looked swiftly in the direction indicated, and as the veil of snow broke for a moment, caught sight of a huddled form crawling in the snow. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... leave the churn, for there was his little babe crawling about on the floor, and "if I leave it," he thought, "the child is safe to upset it." So he took the churn on his back, and went out with it; but then he thought he'd better first water the cow before he turned ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... she stood with the furs fluttering about her on the lurching platform, the cold went through her like a knife, and the roofs of a little prairie town rose up above the willows the train was now crawling through. The odors that greeted her nostrils were the reverse of pleasant, and glancing down with the faintest shiver of disgust, her eyes rested on the litter of empty cans, discarded garments, and other even more unsightly things which are usually dumped in ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... of furious bombardment, and with the Miraflores crawling slowly up to take part again in the encounter, Villavicencio, brave as he was, realised that he had walked into a trap and had caught a Tartar; for he now recognised the Angamos for what she really was—a cruiser. Something had happened to the Huemul, that was ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... admission. The servant was sent to drive him away; still he returned again, and was more importunate than before to be let in. The gentleman, weary of opposition, bade the servant open the door, that they might see what he wanted to do. This done, the dog deliberately walked up, and crawling under the bed, laid himself down as if desirous to take up his night's lodging there. To save farther trouble, the indulgence was allowed. About midnight the chamber door opened, and a person was heard stepping across the room. The gentleman started from ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... twigs and needles, crackling under his weight, sounded in his ears like exploding fireworks. He stopped; went on again; stopped; went on again. How could Dolph fail to hear him coming? The distance was less than two yards, but to the crawling lad ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... calculated to stagger humanity, and I must say I have participated in less fruity functions. It was well after four when I got home, and by that time I was about ready to turn in. I can just remember groping for the bed and crawling into it, and it seemed to me that the lemon had scarcely touched the pillow before I was aroused by the sound ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of a leaning alder, his attention was attracted by a slight movement of my arm; eyeing me an instant, with that crouching, utter motionless gaze which I believe only snakes and devils can assume, he turned quickly,—a feat which necessitated something like crawling over his own body,—and glided off through the branches, evidently recognizing in me a representative of the ancient parties he once so cunningly ruined. A few moments after, as he lay carelessly disposed in the top of a rank alder, trying to look as much like a crowded branch ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... improved but also became more difficult to live with as she got better. For example, when she came out of catatonic-like immobility, she became extremely promiscuous, and was determined to sleep with my husband. In fact she kept crawling into bed with him with no clothes on. Either we had to forcefully remove her or the bed would be handed over to her—without a resident man. Christine then decided (logically) that I was an obstacle to her sex life, and once more set out to kill me. This stage also passed, ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... advised Billina, pecking at a tiny bug that was crawling over the chair back. "Just at present they are out of mischief and perfectly safe, for they can't ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was on my way to the City to meet him. The Holborn Viaduct was then in building, and the traffic round about was in consequence always much disorganised. The 'bus on which I was riding became entangled in a block at the corner of Snow Hill, and for ten minutes we had been merely crawling, one joint of a long, sinuous serpent moving by short, painful jerks. It came to me while I was sitting there with a sharp spasm of physical pain. I jumped from the 'bus and began to run, and the terror and the hurt of it grew with every step. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... an anvil and the dull glow of a forge fire, where a smith was toiling in the early hours of the morning. A clever and resourceful little dog, Bobby made shift to do without legs. Turning on his side, he rolled down the last slope of Castle Rock. Crawling between two buildings and dropping from the terrace on which they stood, he fell into a little street at the west ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... dozen slaves to uprooting weeds or trimming flower beds, and had passed in later years to the breathless ministrations of negro infants, whose experience varied from the doubtful innocence of the crawling age to the complete sophistication of six or seven years. Dandelion and wire-grass rioted, in spite of their earnest efforts, over the crooked path from the porch, and periwinkle, once an intruder from the churchyard, spread now in rank disorder ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... could Creno be wrong? He knew everything as soon as the facts were in his mind. Yet here now were living things crawling toward the machine, just like the excrescence at one end but in no way a part of it! The feeling of willed effort as they crawled slowly toward it, white and pink striped, reaching grasping feelers into the turgid product, taking it in, then rising on easing legs as the food ...
— Sweet Their Blood and Sticky • Albert Teichner
... simile exemplifies the use of hyperbole at its happiest, an ornament, by the way, to which Statius is specially prone. It is a very short one. [30] It compares an infant to the babe Apollo crawling on ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Commandant within: while on the Russian part, under General Romanzow, there is a most tortoise-like advance,—except that the tortoise carries all his resources with him, and Romanzow's, multifarious and enormous, are scattered over seas and lands, and need endless waiting for, in the intervals of crawling. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... moon and stars fortunately aiding them. But the Mexicans did not venture again by that perilous road, although toward morning they opened a scattering fire from the plain, many of their bullets whistling at random among the trees and thickets. Some of the Texans, crawling to the edge of the wood, replied, but they seemed to have little chance for a good shot, as the Mexicans lay behind a swell. The besiegers grew tired after a while and silence ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among its members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny-shelled,—turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... howls of rage that announced the discovery of the silent one lying by the little stream, and knew that a desire for vengeance would add swiftness to the feet of his pursuers. His own seemed weighted with lead, and he felt that he was crawling; but though he could not realize it he was still running splendidly, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... at being addressed in this familiar way by a miserable, crawling creature who not only could not fly, but who could not sing a note, and did not know do from fa. Besides, it made her angry to think that he knew her secret and talked aloud about it so that ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... lay down, wrapped in our cloaks, in different parts of the vessel—on the top of the cargo, or wherever we could find room to stretch our legs—leaving the little cabin to the judge and his family. But what with cockroaches crawling over us, and the mosquitoes buzzing round our ears and running their sharp stings into our flesh, sleep appeared out of the question. However, I at length did close ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... but in my heart I was uneasy, and I felt vexed with my friend. I fell asleep late and dreamed that I was wandering with Susanna along underground, damp passages of some sort, and crawling along narrow, steep staircases, and continually going deeper and deeper down, though we were trying to get higher up out into the air. Some one was all the while incessantly calling us in monotonous, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... an occasional flash and glimmer of steel from the backs of all these huge crawling reptiles. From the road came creakings and grumblings as some surly guns were ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... meat as though it were peacock. During several days a Spaniard, who had left camp at night and lost his way amongst the swamps, ate such vegetation as is found in marshes. He finally succeeded in rejoining his companions, crawling along the ground and half dead. Such are the sufferings which these ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... he stumbled over a child, a girl about five, crawling on her hands and knees. He picked her up. She bit and thrashed and tore at him, her bare little body hard as whalebone and slippery with sweat. He could not hold onto her. She kicked herself free of his hands and rushed wildly out of reach, and one of ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... found on the neighbouring continent. The scenery was certainly not picturesque. Out of the black tufa-formed soil on the lower ground grew numerous curiously-shaped cacti, or prickly pear shrubs, and we caught sight in the distance of one or two monster terrapins crawling among them. At last we reached the entrance of a narrow valley, in which, to our surprise, we found a luxuriant tropical vegetation, not only of grass and shrubs, but of trees of considerable height, produced, we had no doubt, by a fountain of clear water which, issuing from ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... left an even sharper impression on my memory was the blackness that then began crawling over his face, obliterating the features, concealing their human outline, and hiding him inch by inch from view. This was my first realisation that the process of materialisation was at work. His visage became shrouded. I moved from one side to the other to keep him in view, and it was only ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... high-caste vegetarian at the very idea of drinking after a low-caste carrion-eater. If from the lowest, filthiest, and most poisonous dens in London, you were to take a man, reeking with beer and tobacco, and with his clothes crawling with vermin, and presenting, in short, every appearance of foulness, dirt, and disease; if you were to take that man and place him between two ladies at the administration of the Holy Communion, ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... makes them monsters of selfishness. They are the logical outcome of our predatory social system. They are like the insects which we are told will some day triumph over other forms of life. At least, I think of them as such when I encounter them rushing thither and yon over the face of the earth, crawling up mountains and flying through the air, their shiny wing-cases flashing in the sun and the sound of their progress making a buzz in the newspapers. Well! as I said, it was curious. Curious I should have found my girl in such surroundings, growing there like a ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... become quite impatient to visit the hallowed and celebrated convent, De Neustra Senora; a convent, to which pilgrims resort from the furthest parts of Europe, some bearing, by way of penance, heavy bars of iron on their backs, others cutting and slashing their naked bodies with wire cords, or crawling to it on all-fours, like the beasts of the field, to obtain forgiveness of their sins, by the intercession of our Lady ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... armed with a rifle, and Bobby with a harpoon, they stole down toward the seals, crawling toward them, Bobby now and again emitting a "Hough! Hough!" in imitation of the coughing bark of the seals, until they approached quite near. Then, almost simultaneously, they fired, and, springing up, ran forward. Two seals had been shot clear through the head, and lay dead on the ice, ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... the sandy beach indicated, and transformed himself into an oak stump. He had not been there long before the lake became perfectly calm. Soon hundreds of monstrous serpents came crawling on the beach. One of the number was beautifully white. He was the Prince. The others were red and yellow. The Prince spoke to those about him as follows: "I never saw that black stump standing there before. It may be Hiawatha. There ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... puberty, is a well-known fact, further testified to by the occurrence of these practices in folk-tales and fairy-stories. Lifting stones, jumping over obstacles, throwing stones, spears, and the like, crawling or creeping through holes in stones, rocks, or trees, have all been in vogue, and some of them survive even to-day in England and in other parts of Europe as popular tests of puberty and virginity. Mr. Dyer, in his Church Lore Gleanings, mentions ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... scurrying along the single village street. Horsemen raced here and there. A pig squealed. There was a shot. The tanks emerged from the other side. They went crawling swiftly toward the south. But they did not turn aside where the villagers had. They headed along the way Coburn had ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... thanks to his numerous escapes from the prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in the incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by sheer muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his hips, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of the stone, in the right ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo |
