"Writhed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and in the pith; all sorts of queries as to winter transport in the Provinces, the disposition for fight of the people, and so on. Then it was demanded, What we had to suggest? Van Koughnet, who writhed under the tone adopted, bluntly said, "Why, to fight it out, of course; we in Canada will have to bear the first brunt. But we cannot fight with jack-knives; and there are no arms in the country. You have failed to keep any store at all." This ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... with trembling fingers; the first ball shot straight into a waiting mouth. Another ignited a searing flame of acetlylene gas where a wet arm writhed in the hot carbide trail. The man leaned far out ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... know it," he said, in reply to my surprise. "Sold enough paper at the drugstore to qualify as a stationery engineer." He writhed as was his habit over his jokes, and then fell to work at the drawing again. "A book," he said, "and an axe, and a gibbet or gallows. B-a-g—that makes 'bag.' Doesn't go far, does it? Humorous duck, isn't he? Any one who can write 'ha! ha!' under ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the sunken boulder, and, acting as a key log, held in check the whole drive. Then began a wild scene, which once beheld can never be forgotten. Stopped in their mad career, the logs presented the spectacle of unrestrained passion. The mighty, heaving, twisting mass groaned, pressed and writhed for freedom, but with the awful grip of death the sturdy key log held firm. Steadily the jam increased in size, and whiter threw the foam, as one by one those giant logs swept crashing down, to be wedged amidst their companions as if driven ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Big Medicine writhed in the restraining grasp of those who held him. "Look at that there! As good hearted a boy as ever turned a cow! Never harmed a soul in 'is life. Is all your dirty, stinkin' sheep, an' all your lousy herders, worth that boy's life? Yuh shot 'im down like a dog—lemme go, boys." ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... sought again to take her hand, she whispered, with a touching and womanly sentiment, "Ah! respect him: see!—" and Sidney, looking then at his brother, saw, that though he still attempted to smile, his lip writhed, and his features were drawn together, as one whose frame is wrung by torture, but who struggles not ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The lieutenant writhed in the negro's grasp and with a kick caught Tom on the right shin. Immediately Tom released his bold and sought his brass knuckles. Before he could strike, however, Lieutenant Blum had ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... Italian under the armpits, and swung him clean from the ground up to the brown mare's neck. "Divinity and medicine," he said genially, "soul healer and body poisoner, we'll ride double for a time," and proceeded to bind the doctor's hands with his own scarf. The creature of venom before him writhed and struggled, but the minister's strength was as the strength of ten, and the minister's hand held him down. By this I was off Black Lamoral and facing my lord. The color had come back to his lip and cheek, and the flash to his eye. His hand went ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... woman was madly in love with a young man, and she gave the servant man a jug of beer for procuring a frog for her. This he did; and she took the poor creature to the garden, and thrust several pins into its back. The tortured creature writhed under the pain, but the cruel girl did not cease until the required number had been inserted. Then she placed the frog under a vessel to prevent its escape, and turning to my informant, she said, "There, he ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... tenants were the shadows, and the painted figures the realities,—I have sometimes felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this great unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night after night was one ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my last ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about men's heads, and writhed them till they went to the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, and so they tormented them. Some they put into a chest short and narrow and not deep and that had sharp stones within, and forced men therein so that they broke ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... spectacle, and in such haste to escape, that his foot slipped, and he fell down the stone steps: his ankle was sprained by the fall, and he was brought to Dr. Campbell's. Forester was shocked at this tragical end of his intended comedy. The poor man was laid upon a bed, and he writhed with pain. Forester, with vehement expressions of concern, explained to Dr. Campbell the cause of this accident, and he was much touched by the dancing-master's good nature, who, between every twinge of pain, assured him that he should soon be well, and endeavoured to avert Dr. Campbell's ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... They had thirsted for vengeance; they had longed to humiliate this "high-minded dude"; and now not only was the opportunity lost to them, but the "job" they had determined to wrest from him was indifferently hurled back in their faces—he DIDN'T WANT IT! Absalom and Getz writhed in ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... seemed to him that his was the most flagrant folly that ever left a man in the world, but with no place in it. A sorry object for pride he seemed to himself, but he quivered, and scorched, and writhed in its hot flames. His one object was to take himself out of the sight and sound of Colbury, till he might have counsel within himself, and perfect his scheme of revenge—not upon the woman. Poor Theodosia, with her limitations, could hardly have conceived how she had shattered the ideal to which ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... flagellate all the frati, or lay brothers of the convent. They were, therefore, armed for their wonted pious discipline, when the miserable Salvatoriello fell in their way; whether he was honored by the consecrated hand of the prior, or writhed under the scourge of the procurator, does not appear; but that he was chastised with great severity more than proportioned to his crime, is attested by one of the most scrupulous of his biographers, Pascoli, who, though he dwells lightly on the fact, as he does on others of more importance, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... playing, an unbidden contrast leaped to his mind. Mary's music reminded him of church. It was cold and bare as a Methodist meeting house. But Polly's was like the mad and lawless ceremonial of some heathen temple where incense arose and nautch girls writhed. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... wildly, but without a tithe of the force needed to stop the impact of a heavily built adversary. He had to change feet too, and he was borne to the earth by that catamount spring before he could avoid it. For a few seconds the two writhed in the snow in deadly embrace. Then Stampa remained uppermost. He had pinned Bower to the ground face downward. Kneeling on his shoulders, with the left hand gripping his neck and the right clutching his hair and scalp, he ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... dusk outside and the low room was already in darkness, but the picture shone with a wondrous splendour before Rosa's eyes. She writhed on the floor, her delicate body trembled with pain ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... suspected as an accomplice. The mere fact that one man could disarm, bind and gag him, would be used as a suspicious circumstance against him. Although he did not know the exact sum of money in the safe he was aware that it was of a very considerable amount, and he fairly writhed in his agony of mind. In an instant Cummings (or, as he had been called by the messenger, Bronson) was on his feet, revolver in hand, and again the cruel, murderous expression dwelt on his face, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... chameleons! The foliage actually was hidden beneath their coils, so that the beholder might have fancied that he saw before him a new kind of tree that bore reptiles for its leaves and fruit. And all this horrible living mass writhed and twisted in the first rays of the morning sun! Joe experienced a keen sensation or terror mingled with disgust, as he looked at it, and he leaped precipitately from the tree amid the hissings of these ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... going into the churches and chapels. He sometimes went into such places himself and he always found there huddled forms kneeling in the pews, even when no service was being held. Sometimes they were men, sometimes women, and often they writhed and sobbed horribly. He did not know why he went in; his going seemed only ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every wrinkle ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... above all, he stands as the representative of his age: a wit among the comic dramatists who were going out and the essayists who were coming in; a man of the world with Lady Mary and the gay parties on the Thames; a polemic, who dealt keen thrusts and who liked to see them rankle, and who yet writhed in agony when the riposte came; a Roman Catholic in faith and a latitudinarian in speech;—such was Pope as a type of that world in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... all through the war, and had kept in perfection the grand and uncritical appetite and splendid physical vigor which those four years of tough fare and activity had furnished him. Sage went supperless to bed, and tossed and writhed all night upon a shuck mattress that was full of attentive and interested corn-cobs. In the morning Harris was ravenous again, and devoured the odious breakfast as contentedly and as delightedly as he had devoured its twin the night before. Sage sat upon the porch, empty, and contemplated the performance ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... de Bechamel, Grandee of Spain and Prince of Volovento, in our Assembly what was the oath you swore?' The old man writhed as ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... fellow himself had done. He struck his bayonet into his head; the leopard rose at him; he fired; and this time the ball took effect, and in the head. The animal staggered backward, and we all poured in our fire. He still kicked and writhed; when the gentlemen with the spears advanced and fixed him, while some natives finished him by beating him on the head with hedge-stakes. The brave artilleryman was, after all, but slightly hurt. He claimed the skin, which was very cheerfully given to him. There was, however, a cry among the ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... drew nearer and finally entered it, the young SS man saw that this was, indeed, unlike any jungle or forest he had ever seen or heard about. Tall trees whose branches writhed as though alive, yet never attacked one. Underbrush so thick it seemed impassable, yet which twisted away from their approach as though afraid of a contaminating touch, only to swish back into place as ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... about our heads. It was bumpers and no heeltaps, and we were full to the throat. Then to the nard; and enter to us guitar and light fantastic toe. Thereafter, one shinned up the ladder, on post-prandial japery intent, another beat the devil's tattoo, a third writhed cachinnatory. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... and straightway he turned his eyes toward the golden cross that shone over the valley from Saint Olaf's steeple, and he called aloud on the White Christ's name. Then the god gave a fearful roar, fell on the ground, writhed and foamed and vanished into the mountain. In the next moment Lage heard a hoarse voice crying from within, "I shall return, Lage Ulfson, when thou shalt ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... startled urchins ran off as fast as they could go, and the abbe found himself left alone with the dog, which was painfully trying to rise. Before she could stand up, he knocked her back again, and began to hit her with all his strength. The animal moaned pitifully as she writhed under these blows from which there was no escape (for she was chained up) and at last the priest's umbrella broke. Then, unable to beat the dog any longer, he jumped on her, and stamped and crushed her under-foot in a perfect frenzy of anger. Another pup ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... my brother would say: 'Nay—I cannot wait longer. Poor Ibrahim's weeping eyes must be relieved at once,' and he would produce the bottle, uncork it, and hold it over Ibrahim's face as he writhed and screamed ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... creeping thing forcing its way through wet and tangled grass, or over dead leaves, . . one instant more, and a huge Serpent—a species of python some ten feet in length—glided through the round aperture made by the lifted bars, and writhed itself slowly along the marble pavement straight to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... this, Franklin Marmion looked directly at Hoskins van Huysman. He was the challenger now, and there was a glint in his eyes and a smile on his lips which showed that he meant business. The American writhed, and had it not been for Brenda's gently but firmly restraining hand, he might have jumped to his feet and precipitated matters in a somewhat embarrassing fashion. The chairman looked up at the lecturer with elevated eyelids which had a note of interrogation under each of them, and then there came ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... writhed and cried, telling her that it took all the wits that he had to keep awake enough to keep the devils off him without taking stuff to make him sleep, and that he was sure she'd never come back, and that he would very likely be left ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... He writhed and twisted in his chair, until a shred of his former assurance came back to him; when he managed to look up with a ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Colonel, raving like a madman, appeared upon the crest of the nearest slope, with an Arab hanging on to each of his wrists. His face was purple with rage and excitement, and he tugged and bent and writhed in his furious efforts to get free. "You cursed murderers!" he shrieked, and then, seeing the others in front of him, "Belmont," he cried, "they've ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for Rodney, he was the same man who, an hour ago, in the theater, had raged and writhed under what he felt to be an invasion of his proprietary rights ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... good doctor had been told about the little affair on the road at the time the barn hop was in progress; but he was a wise pedagogue, and made no mention of it in his address. Nick writhed in his seat every time he saw the principal look his way, his guilty conscience causing his fears to rise, with the thought that he might be further ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... Suddenly the lightning writhed and fell, the thunder broke out over Hugh's head, as he walked in the quiet lane; a rattling, furious peal, like leaden weights poured in a cascade upon a vast boarded floor—an inconceivable sound, from its sharpness, its tangibility, its solidity, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Nor solid might resist that edge: it met The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite Descending, and in half cut sheer; nor stayed But with swift wheel reverse, deep entering, shared All his right side. Then Satan first knew pain, And writhed him to and fro convolved; so sore The griding sword with ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... task, while her companions played in the sunshine. Nothing could be said against an unspoken accusation, especially in the presence of a stranger; but the sisters exchanged meaning glances across the table, and Nan stamped so violently upon Elsie's foot that that melancholy young person writhed on her seat. The best safeguard to the feelings of the family was to change the subject, which Chrissie at once ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lock. From a cleverly concealed pocket he brought forth a packet of papers. These he placed on the table and unfolded with almost reverent care. Sometimes he shrugged, as one does who is confronted by huge obstacles, sometimes he laughed harshly, sometimes his jaws hardened and his fingers writhed. When he had done—and many and many a time he had repeated this performance, studied the faded ink, the great seal, the watermarks—he hid them away in ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... who was there to help him here? He struggled to loose himself, for the impalpable power which had guided him so far was now at work within him more strongly than ever before. It called to him to come, it drew him onward, it whispered to him that the goal was near. But the more he writhed and twisted the deeper did the cruel cords or creepers cut into his flesh. Yet he fought on till, utterly exhausted, his head fell forward, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... were efficiently controlled, there were none who could swing the whole. Byng's decimated, forward-rushing fragment of a mixed brigade, tight-reined and working like a piece of mechanism, struck home into a mass of men who writhed, and fell away, and shouted to each other. A third of them was out of reach, beyond the British rear; fully another third was camped too far away to bring assistance at the first wild onslaught. Messengers ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... destiny. I realized with agony which I cannot describe that I could use no guiding hand. I hungered for the responsibility of a father. I cried out aloud that now, in this choosing of men, I should have a word. I writhed as I had often writhed, because, loving her too much, I was forbidden to perform the offices of my affection. The tears that had come before now came again, and I wept for hours, as I had wept ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... by many fallen trees, blown down and tossed together by the fierce tempests which often rent the swamp. The torn roots, the decaying trunks, and the shattered branches of the dead giants of the ancient wood, were dank with water-moss. Rank poison vines writhed everywhere, and crept like vipers beyond the deadly borders of the great Cypress Swamp. Through such dark and tangled density as this the smoky torches, burning dimly around the camp, could cast their light but ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... at all, it was only slightly, when she writhed and slipped, like a snake, to get her arm under his as it clasped her neck. Then she let herself go. He crushed her to him. He bent her backward—tilted her face with hard and eager hand. Like a madman, with hot working lips, he kissed ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... re-enacting the murders they had committed within the past few days; murders of innocent white women and children, and good men and true—among them the Cadi, God help him! Great fires were burning in the centre of the camp, and the bodies of the black devils writhed with hideous colour in the glare. Effigies of murdered whites were speared and mangled with brutal cries, and then black women of the camp were brought out, and mockeries of unnameable horrors were performed. Hell had emptied ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... burning devotion of his protege. And Daniel, intoxicated by a rather vague and not at all binding promise of a scholarship at the conservatory, fled from Bayreuth by night, made his way on foot back to Eschenbach, threw himself at his mother's feet, and almost writhed there before her and begged and implored her, and in words almost wild sought to prevail on her to attempt to change the mind of Jason Philip. He tried to explain to her that his life and happiness, his very blood and heart were dedicated to this one thing. But she, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... before it settled on the sandy floor. Its blinding whiteness made the more loathsome the sickening yellow of the flabby flowing thing that writhed frantically in the glare. It was formless, shapeless, a heaving mound of nauseous matter. Yet even in its agonized writhing distortions they sensed the beating pulsations that marked ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... a motion too quick for the eye to follow the free arm straightened and the mountain echoed wildly to the loud report of a forty-five. By the side of the road in the rear of the wagon a rattlesnake uncoiled its length and writhed slowly in the dust. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... from their private stores appeared on trays at his bedside, to be courteously declined by the Senor Perkins, in his new functions of a benevolent type of Sancho Panza physician. To say that this pleased the gentle optimism of the Senor is unnecessary. Even while his companion writhed under the sting of this enforced compassion, the good man beamed ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Her lips writhed slightly, and her eyes narrowed as if with pain. It was but a fleeting exposition of vulnerability, however, for in ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... afraid of Livingstone. His terror had gone on increasing during months of relentless pursuit; it had reached its climax now. Guy stood at the foot of the bed, contemplating the unhappy wretch with a cruel calmness that seemed to drive him wild. He writhed and cowered under the fixed gaze, as if it ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... claws outspread, belly glistening in the gray light, and over him circled two birds. As I reached the shelter I knelt and fired into the mass of scales, and at my first shot a horrible thing occurred—the lizard-like head writhed, the slitted yellow eyes sliding open from the film that covered them. A shudder passed across the undulating body, the great scaled belly heaved, and one leg feebly clawed ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... The crackling intermittent shocks of electric fluid passed through his body in fiery sequence. His limbs writhed. He mouthed horribly, and croaking gasps came from between his ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... her. He had bent to release Scooter, but like a streak of light he straightened himself. He saw—before any one else had time to realize—- the hideous thing that writhed in momentary entanglement in the folds of Tessa's cloak, and then suddenly reared itself upon her lap as she sat ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... hidden enemy became bolder and the regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... in the morning to the full burden of care and sorrow which sheer weakness and weariness the day before had in part laid down; to a quicker sense of the state of things than she had had yet. The blasting evil that had fallen upon them,—Fleda writhed on her bed when she thought of it. The sternest, cruellest, most inflexible, grasp of distress. Poverty may be borne, death may be sweetened, even to the survivors; but disgrace—Fleda hid her head, as if she ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... pricked by their invisible agency in revenge for refusing to subscribe to a covenant with the devil. Some were apparently stricken down by the glance of an eye from one of the culprits, others fainted, many writhed as in a fit. Tituba was beaten to make her confess. Others were tortured. Finally all the accused were thrown into irons. Numbers of accused persons, assured that it was their only chance for life, owned up ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... their demands were refused they cut his heart out. Lake cornered them a few minutes later and, without touching his blaster, disemboweled them with their own knives. He smiled down upon them as they writhed and moaned on the floor and their moans were heard for a long time by the other Gerns in the ship before they died. No ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... upset that his Skin, reacting to the negative fields racing over the Skin and the hormone imbalance of his blood, writhed away ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... which the fecund, supple, and heated land made possible to all Spanish fortifications. Beyond the tunal the naked hillside fell steeply to a narrow plain, all patched with golden flowers, and from this yellow carpet writhed tall cacti, fantastic as trees seen in a dream. Upon the plain, pearl pink in the sunset light, huddled the town. Palm-trees and tamarinds overhung it; palm-trees, mimosas, and mangroves marked the course of a limpid river. Above ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... and as devoid of feeling as any one could desire, and it was open to her comprehension that he avoided her whenever he possibly could. She told herself this was all she could, or did, desire; yet, nevertheless, she writhed beneath ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... a woman, Griffith was the man to wince. His wife to lean so on another; his wife to withdraw from the social pleasures she had hitherto shared with him; and all because another human creature disapproved them. He writhed in silence awhile, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... scene; this beautiful picture (though worked with the needle of the arras-worker rather than with pencil or brush) of the wood, the hunt, the solitary fountain in the Odenwald, where, with his spear leaned against the lime-tree, Siegfried was struck down into the clover and flowers, and writhed with Hagen's steel through his back. This canto is certainly interpolated by some first-rate poet, at least a Gottfried or a Walther, to whom that passage of the savage old droning song of death had suggested a piece of new art; it is like the fragments of exquisitely ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... "this" with a heavy blow from his fist. At the third blow the blood poured out of the mouth of the carpenter, who writhed under the pressure of his adversary's knee like a buffalo stifled by a boa-constrictor; he succeeded at last in freeing one hand, which he thrust into his ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... words came out in broken, strenuous speech, while the lady's fair face was writhed and drawn like that of one who looks upon a horror which strikes, the words from her lips. Du Guesclin gazed round the tapestried room, at the screens, the tables, the abace, the credence, the buffet with its silver salver, and the half-circle of friendly, wondering faces. There ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the couch, and burst into tears. Sobs convulsed him; he writhed in an anguish of conflicting passions. Waymark seemed scarcely to observe him, standing absorbed in speculation and the devising of ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... to the name of Hanover was enough to stir an angry feeling in the minds of the larger number of the English people. Even the very men who most loyally supported the House of Brunswick winced and writhed under any allusion to the manner in which the interests of England were made subservient to the interests of Hanover. Pulteney therefore took every pains to chafe those sore places with remorseless energy. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... had asked repayment of money lent to a friend. And he had done the thing blunderingly, without tact. For the purpose in view, it would have been enough to speak of his own calamity; just the same effect would have been produced on Franks. He saw this now, and writhed under the sense of his grossness. The only excuse he could urge for himself was that Franks' behaviour provoked and merited rough handling. Still, he might have had perspicacity enough to understand that the artist was not so sunk in squalor ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... the girl, naturally as sweet-souled as an angel, as pure as the new-fallen snow, to vulgar crime to satisfy, no doubt, those girlish and quite natural desires which it should have been his duty and his pleasure to provide for. Oh, he had done well with life! The soul within him writhed in agony as he reflected on the use which he had made of it. His heart went sick from shame. And—what would Anna ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... knew that their jaws were hungry for him. But that did not matter—it was the man, the man above him, and he ripped and clawed, and shook and worried, to the last ounce of his strength. But Leclere choked him with both his hands, till Batard's chest heaved and writhed for the air denied, and his eyes glazed and set, and his jaws slowly loosened, and his ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... all along the fields, was white, prostrate; swept fiercely one way; every blade stretched out helpless upon its green face. The little pear-trees, heavy with fruit, lay prone in literal "windrows." The great ashes and walnuts twisted and writhed, and had their branches stripped upward of their leaves, as a child might draw a head of blossoming grass between his thumb and finger. The beautiful elms were in a wild agony; their graceful little bough-tips were all snapped off and whirled away upon the blast, leaving ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... thrashing wind from the southwest and a downpour the most fiercely, relentlessly insistent that he had ever known. A cactus desert in the rare orgy of a rainstorm is a place of wonder. The monstrous, spiky forms trembled and writhed in ecstasy, heat-damned souls in their hour of respite, stretching out exultant arms to the bounteous sky. Tiny rivulets poured over the sand, which sucked them down with a thirsting, crisping whisper. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of ridicule—there was the weak point of the Afridi, as Ralston very well knew. To be laughed at—Futteh Ali Shah, who was wont to lord it among his friends, writhed under the mere possibility. And how they would laugh in and round about Peshawur! A fine figure he would cut as he rode through the streets with every ragged bystander jeering at the man who was walked into docility and submission by his Excellency ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... his hand to stroke his vanished beard. His risible lips writhed in a foxy smile; his chin was fuller than you would have expected, round and sensuous with a dimple in the ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... whom Moss addressed himself, was candidly looking about her—profoundly interested in what she saw. Dim forms in bronze and plaster stood on shelves, brackets, and pedestals, and at the end of the long room a big group of figures writhed as if in mortal combat. It was a work-shop—that was evident even to her—with one small nook ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... hot and comforting. He did not come near me all day. It may have been the expectation of food, together with the hot coffee, which stimulated my stomach, for that day I experienced what starving men dread most of all—the hunger-pain. It is like a famished rat that gnaws and tears. I writhed on the floor and cried aloud in my agony, while the cold sweat dripped from my face and hands. I do not remember what I said... I ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... time. Jack and Mark felt that if the cabin was going to fall, the open air was the safer place. Here, however, it seemed that they could not keep their feet. They reeled about like drunken men, and the forest trees bent and writhed as though an invisible wind tore at them, whereas the fact was that the wind had fallen and ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... of weight. His red face grew almost apoplectic, and the big body writhed in the chair. His tones were surcharged with a bitterness that he tried in vain to conceal. Morton regarded these signs of feeling with an amusement that he had no reluctance in displaying. On the contrary, he laughed ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... pollutions, with dreams. My day was one long agony of fear. How I dreaded to go to sleep in the same bed with my older chum, who never made any advances beyond embracing me passively cum erectione while he was asleep. My day was one long agony of fear. At meal time my feet constantly writhed in agony for fear that the headmaster's grown up young ladies should make fun of me, or that my lack of facial composure and my inability to look people in the eye might be commented upon. I tingled with apprehension, especially in the region of my stomach. Every nerve was ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the latter had said, as she put on her coat, looking at him all the while with heavy blue eyes: 'I think, Siegmund, I cannot come here any more. Your home is not open to me any longer.' He had writhed in confusion and humiliation. As she pressed his hand, closely and for a long time, she said: 'I will write to ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... idealized scorn and beauty as she uttered these stinging words. Her nostrils were dilated, her eyes flashing fire, her lips slightly protruded and parted, her hand waving him off. The young man gazed upon her with wild looks equally expressive of anger and agony. His form fairly writhed beneath his emotions; but he found ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... to obtain much sleep. The wind came in fierce gusts, the trees groaned and writhed, and once or twice Frank really heard a crash in the forest that told of a rent in ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... shaken by a giant's hands, the tree-tops above us swayed to and fro; then the shrubbery along the paths seemed full of wild terror and writhed in ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... wronged; because I know that a man is better than a moneybag. Why, that girl would marry you in a minute if you was rich. But because you're not she will strike for one of them rose-water snobs on Algonquin Avenue." Sam writhed, and his wheedling tormentor continued, watching him like a ferret. "Perhaps she has struck for one of them already—perhaps—oh, I can't say what may have happened. I hate the world when I see such doin's. I hate the heartless shams that give labor and shame to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... up, till they reached his knees, and the great burning beast roared like a hundred bulls with the pain. Then up the Firedrake leaped, and hovering on his fiery wings, he lighted in the midst of the Remora's back, and dashed into it with his horns. But the flat, cruel head writhed backwards, and, slowly bending over on itself, the wounded Remora slid greedily to fasten again on ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... As a general thing he writhed under sympathy, but, strangely enough, he found it very sweet to hear her speaking words of pity on his behalf, and to feel her soft eyes bent upon him with gentle concern. Probably no young woman quite understands the deep devotion she has inspired in the bosom of ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Beppo writhed his person at the continuance of the questionings, and obtaining a pause, he rushed into his statement: 'The Signor Mertyrio was well, and on the point of visiting Italy, and quitting the wave-embraced island of fog, of beer, of moist winds, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Frederick the Great, is as subject to the common infirmities of our nature, as John Nokes or Peter Styles. Whether Paganini's squire of the body looked on his master as a hero in the vulgar acceptation of the word, I cannot say, but in spite of his stinginess, which he writhed under, he regarded him with mingled reverence and terror. "A strange person, your master," observed I. "Signor," replied the faithful Sancho Panza, "e veramente grand uomo, ma da non potersi comprendere." "He is truly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... killing had lost its zest In the glut of those awful days, And Death writhed, gorged like a greedy snake, From the ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... to feel Medusa's dream, and to be made more restless by it. They twined themselves into tumultuous knots, writhed fiercely, and uplifted a hundred hissing heads, without opening ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... there in His marvellous purity and looking at me—not with any reproach, but with the sweetness of a wonderful Invitation upon His face. And immediately I saw myself utterly unworthy to come near Him: and I writhed in the agony of this fearful perception of my unworthiness till I could bear no more. I was sick and ill with remorse and regret, I was utterly broken up by it. I did not know then that this awful pain is ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... friendship, and they answered him with political expediency. Mr. Cleveland went down to the House, and attacked his old comates in a spirit of unexampled bitterness. He examined in review the various members of the party that had deserted him. They trembled on their seats, while they writhed beneath the keenness of his satire: but when the orator came to Mr. President Lorraine, he flourished the tomahawk on high like a wild Indian chieftain; and the attack was so awfully severe, so overpowering, so ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... back." This time it was Nam-Bok himself who spoke, putting a leg over the side of the bidarka and standing with one foot afloat and one ashore. Again his throat writhed and wrestled as he grappled after forgotten words. And when the words came forth they were strange of sound and a spluttering of the lips accompanied the gutturals. "Greeting, O brothers," he said, "brothers of old time before I went away with ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... have a boy about the house, and positively writhed under the irrelevant and irrepressible questions, the unnecessary noises and boisterous high spirits which nothing would subdue; his son's society was to him simply an abominable nuisance, and he pined for a release from it from the day ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... drowsy opiate of surrender began to spread its peace through his soul. His torment was the remorse of proving a traitor to his dead uncle's glory. The feather-dustery that had been a monument was about to topple into the weeds. Eddie writhed at that and at his feeling of disloyalty to the employees, who would be turned out wageless in a small town that was staggering under the burden ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... singing stars; Its subtle sound I see thro' these long-darkened eyes, I hear the Light He bringeth on His hands— Almighty Death! Softly, oh, softly, lest He pass me by, And that unquivering Light toward which my longing soul And tortured body through these years have writhed, Fade to the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... eclipse with bitterness. He had quit talking much, but writhed in silent fury at the sight of this tall athlete with his conquering gray eyes and smooth, serious face. Yet he was a regular attendant. The preacher's eloquence, the vibrant tones of his voice, full of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... man had risen to stand with assumed carelessness by the door, having writhed miserably in his chair until he could no longer endure the ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... tearing it was to leave her! Old Mother Nature must have writhed at this parting—groaned at the sight of the boy staring back from the high stern of the Truxton, at the stars lowering over the city and the woman, Adelaide. Possibly she retained something from the depth ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... 'Roundly! The stern priest writhed under it; and as he signed the ordinance, shivered his reed in rage. I never saw a man ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... the malicious jealousy of the New York clubman deepened to a steady hatred. A fellow of ill-controlled temper, his thin-skinned vanity writhed at the condition which confronted him. He was engaged to a girl who preferred another and a better man, one against whom he had an unalterable grudge. He recognized in the Westerner an eager energy, a clean-cut resilience, and an abounding vitality ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... brilliantly lighted theatre was crowded to overflowing. Of course there were English who scowled at the Americans, and Americans who smiled on every one and ate candy while Othello writhed in jealous rage, and a scattering of Germans with spectacles and a row of double-barrelled field glasses glued over them, and Frenchmen with impudent eyes and elegant gloves, and a general filling in of Italians, with the glitter here and there of nobility, and still oftener ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... with a shaggy, speckled beard and quick, twinkling eyes. He was at work upon a tangled length of tarred rope, pulling and twisting with much energy and deftness to straighten out the coil, so that it leaped and writhed in his hands like a ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... the world, renew'd by calm repose, Was strong for toil, the dappled morn arose; Before the pilgrims part, the younger crept, 150 Near the closed cradle where an infant slept, And writhed his neck: the landlord's little pride— Oh, strange return!—grew black, and gasp'd, and died. Horror of horrors! what! his only son! How look'd our hermit when the fact was done? Not hell, though hell's black jaws in sunder part, And breathe blue ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... him, the Pharaoh's face flushed red as if under the reflection of a fire; the blood had rushed from his heart to his face. The redness was followed by dreadful pallor; his eyebrows writhed like the uraeus in his diadem, his mouth was contracted, he grated his teeth, and his face became so terrible that the terrified Timopht fell on his face upon the pavement as ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Truth a-leaning on her crutch, Wan, wasted Truth in her utmost need, Thy kingly intellect shall feed, Until she be an athlete bold, And weary with a finger's touch Those writhed limbs of lightning speed; Like that strange angel [4] which of old, Until the breaking of the light, Wrestled with wandering Israel, Past Yabbok brook the livelong night, And heaven's mazed signs stood still In the dim ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... snatch it and run. He was an excellent runner. His opponent perceived this—the evil glance of desire and intention under all the flourish of arms. Something had to be done. Without warning he leaped upon the invader and bore him to earth. There he punched, jabbed, gouged, and scratched as they writhed together. A moment of this and the prostrate foe was heard to scream with the utmost sincerity. The Wilbur twin was startled, but did not relax ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the shoots of the last year, held in the hands of the experimentor by the extremities, with the angle projecting before him. When he came over the spot beneath which the water flowed, the rod, which had before been perfectly still, writhed about with considerable force, so that the holder could not keep it in its former position; and he appealed to the bystanders to notice that he had made no motion to produce this effect, and used every effort to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... man, placing violent and detaining hands on me. "That's all right," he continued, as the son closed in on me: "I kin handle the little killdee by myself. . . . Now, sonny," he went on, again directing himself to me as I struggled and writhed, helpless in his grasp, "you ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... invariable practice, and indulged in a severe personal denunciation of Ingersoll and Dickinson. Although he did not employ personal invective in his oratory, it was a weapon which he was capable of using with most terrible effect, and his blows fell with crushing force upon Ingersoll, who writhed under the strokes. Through some inferior officers of the State Department Ingersoll got what he considered proofs, and then introduced resolutions calling for an account of all payments from the secret service fund; for ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... horror. For the wailing suddenly ceased, and in his ears, high and shrill, sounded a peal of maniacal laughter. The eyes of the man met his own in a wild glare, while peal after peal of the horrible laughter hurtled from between the parchment-like lips that writhed back to ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... inviolable decisions, closed on it. The ragged one screamed. A man with a slant of black hair across his forehead who had stood smiling at him had without sound or warning reached out his hands to murder him. The beggar gasped and writhed, his eyes staring with horror into the immobile face of his assailant. And within himself Mallare ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... Bunco threw down his gun, and, drawing a long knife, rushed in upon his victim. His comrades, who thought him mad, sprang after him, but he had closed with the tiger and plunged his knife into it before they came up. The creature uttered a tremendous roar and writhed rapidly about, throwing up clouds of dust from the dry ground, while Bunco made another dash at him and a plunge with his long knife, but he missed the blow and fell. His comrades closed in and brandished their clubs, but the rapid motions of man and beast rendered it impossible ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... heartless. That bright as she was it was impossible for her to have been so easily persuaded into running away with a man she did not love. He had never found it so easy to persuade her against her will. Did she love him? Had she truly loved him, and was she suffering now? His very soul writhed in agony to think of his bride the wife of another against her will. If he might but go and rescue her. If he might but kill that other man! Then his soul would be confronted with the thought of murder. Never before had he felt hate, such hate, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... brightness of her shifting eyes, as she stood staring about her unconcernedly. Her glance happened upon Brencherly. Her lips began to twitch and her hands to make signals, as if anxious to attract his attention. She writhed ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... walking, falling, stumbling, but coming on. It swept like a long serpent parallel to the works, writhing, smitten but surviving. It came on through the wood, writhing, tearing at the cruel abattis laid to entrap it. It writhed, roared, but it broke through. It swept over the rail fences that lay between the lines and the abattis, and still came on! This was not ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... made a strong appeal to me, but never one of simple grief or sorrow. Its expression is rather of great dignity, and I remember watching in somewhat of awe one which grew near my childhood's home, as its branches writhed and twisted in a violent rain-storm, seeming then fairly to agonize, so tossed and buffeted were they by the wind. But soon the storm ceased, the sun shone on the rounded head of the willow, turning the raindrops to quickly vanishing diamonds, and ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... bang, bang, drums, trumpets, chairs, pistol-shots, pour out of the orchestra, which seems as mad as the dancers; whiz, a whirlwind of paint and patches, all the costumes under the sun, all the ranks in the empire, all the he and she scoundrels of the capital, writhed and twisted together, rush by you; if a man falls, woe be to him: two thousand screaming menads go trampling over his carcass: they have neither power nor ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tanks and rice-fields, cities with their mosques and minarets, gleaming among the stately palm-groves along the boundless horizon. Above me was a Hindoo temple, cut out of the yellow sandstone. I climbed up to the higher tier of pillars among monstrous shapes of gods and fiends, that mouthed and writhed and mocked at me, struggling to free themselves from their bed of rock. The bull Nundi rose and tried to gore me; hundred-handed gods brandished quoits and sabres round my head; and Kali dropped the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... heavily, he, too, writhed beneath this avalanche of pain; perhaps remorse and the consciousness of the anguish he had entailed upon them both tore and lacerated him. He had gone away at last, out of her life, back to the home and the ties that were hateful to him. He had gone away to take up his share ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... writhed inch by inch to one side, out of the path of the flow of the acid. He was just in time, for, at his last mighty effort, the consuming fluid flowed past, not an inch ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... rose, Like the roar of a burning forest, When a strong north wind blows, Now backward, and now forward, Rocked furiously the fray, Till none could see Valerius, And none wist where he lay. For shivered arms and ensigns Were heaped there in a mound, And corpses stiff, and dying men That writhed and gnawed the ground; And wounded horses kicking, And snorting purple foam: Right well did such a couch ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not have seized some poignard lying there? why not have sprung upon her, have slain her? Then silence had been simply secure. Then I could have smiled in their frustrated faces, one keen, deep smile, and died. I was dissolved in pain, writhed with prolonged strokes that thrilled me from head to foot, pierced as with acute stabs, my heart seemed to forge thunderbolts to break upon my brain,—but this agony had been spared me. They unbound me, fed me with some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... bullock, and, clasping Jim round the waist, deliberately carried him into the centre of the ring, making nothing of the short-arm punches that cut like a hammer. Three times he tried to dash Done to the ground, but the latter was lithe as a serpent, and his limbs writhed themselves about Quigley and clung tenaciously. The crowd was shouting the two men's names, and exchanging cries of triumph and abuse. Suddenly an arm shot across Pete's breast, an elbow was driven into ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... tightened the man redoubled his efforts. His body writhed and he lashed out furiously with hands and feet. Blows rained upon the young man's head but he burrowed close, shielding his face—and always his grip tightened—the finger ends drawing closer ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... himself down on his cot and writhed in blind despair. Might not even his mother have deceived him! Might not she too have been acting! What did he care now for name or liberty, or life itself! The girl had mocked him with what he thought was love, when it ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... his arm, and tore the muscle out of it (as the string comes out of an orange); then I took him by the throat, which is not allowed in wrestling, but he had snatched at mine; and now was no time of dalliance. In vain he tugged and strained, and writhed, and dashed his bleeding fist into my face, and flung himself on me with gnashing jaws. Beneath the iron of my strength—for God that day was with me—I had him helpless in two minutes, and ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... of sunlike grapes, as we writhed and struggled and raved and strangled, Bunch upon bunch of gold and purple daubed its bloom on our baked black lips. Clustering grapes, O, bigger than pumpkins, just out of reach they bobbed and dangled Over the vine-entangled sails of that most ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... dragon-covered cushions a man sat behind this table. The light from the swinging lamp fell fully upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow. From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke writhed aloft and at times partially ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... shape of their heads, and still more so in the form of their tails, that of the black snake being round and tapering to a fine point, while the thick rattle of the other was clearly discernible as they writhed and twisted round and round, its sound never ceasing while the deadly struggle continued; that and the angry hiss emitted by both alone broke the perfect silence which otherwise reigned around. At length the black snake ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... bring his talons out, His forfeit life to save; And planted thus, he writhed about ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... he had first started, broke into another camp, a long line of steel and flame met him, staggering, and for a little while, stopping his advance. But his gallant corps was still too fresh for an enemy, not yet recovered from the enervating effects of surprise, to hold it back long. For a while it writhed and surged before the stern barrier suddenly erected in its front, and then, gathering itself, dashed irresistibly forward. The enemy was beaten back, but the hardy Western men who filled his ranks (although raw and for the first time under ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... tightly to a tree, in such a manner as to keep his head at its usual height—about six feet from the ground. This done, we crossed to the other side of the ravine, and threw another noose over him, which we secured like the first. When he felt himself thus fixed at both ends, he coiled and writhed, and grappled several little trees which grew within his reach along the edge of the ravine. Unluckily for him everything yielded to his efforts: he tore up the young trees by the roots, broke off the branches, and dislodged enormous stones, round which he ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... he repeated, obviously surprised, if not displeased. He waved a hand towards the men laid on mattresses on the deck. Most were quite motionless; others writhed in agony. "She cannot come—it ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... crouched in the shelter of the mizzen mast, aware of shrieks and cries and the crash of falling spars, nor moved I for a space; lifting my head at last, I beheld on the littered decks below huddled figures that lay strangely twisted, that writhed or crawled. Then came the hoarse roar of a speaking trumpet and I saw Resolution, his face a smother of blood, where he leaned hard by across ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... grief and indignation, and, blended with the sharp cry of agony that broke from the nation's lips, came the murmurs of defiant hatred, and the pledges of a bitter vengeance. Never, for generations, had the minds of the Irish people been more profoundly agitated—never had they writhed in such bitterness and agony of soul. With knitted brows and burning cheeks, the tidings of the bloody deed were listened to. The names of the martyred men were upon every lip, and the story of ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... The wolf-dingo's bristles were thin there, and the skin comparatively soft. The fight was for life, and it was the whole of the Wolfhound's great strength that he put into his grip. Lupus's entire frame, every inch of it, writhed and twisted convulsively, like the body of a huge cat in torment. Finn's fangs sank half an inch deeper. The wolf-dingo's claws tore impotently at space, and his body squirmed almost into a ball. Finn's fangs sank half an inch deeper, and hot blood gushed between them. Lupus's great ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Rothesay's breast, and darkened his face with storms of passion, remorse, or woe? He gave no utterance to them in words. If any secret there were, he would not trust it even to the air. But, at times, his mute lips writhed; his cheeks burned, and grew ghastly. Sometimes, too, he wore a cowed and humble look, as on the night when his daughter had stood like a pure angel to save him from the abyss on the brink of ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... came through the desert thus it was, 25 As I came through the desert: Lo you, there, That hillock burning with a brazen glare; Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro; A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell 30 For Devil's roll-call and some fete of Hell: Yet I strode on austere; No ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... priest? But her Grace refused; for in fact she was a stern upholder of the pure doctrine. Anything else the old mother demanded she might have, but with the abominations of Popery her Grace would have nothing to do. Still the old nun prayed and writhed at her feet, crying and groaning, "For the love of God, a priest! for the love of God, a priest!" but her Grace drew herself up stiff and stern, and let the old woman writhe there unheeded, until at ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... By day, few objects of interest presented themselves: linnets and finches fluttered here and there upon the rare bushes, whilst swallows joined the caravan, and skimmed round and round for hours among the camels, almost brushing the faces of the drivers. Lizards glanced and snakes writhed across the path. We started three wadan or mouflon, churlish animals, fond of such solitudes. As to the birds, our people say they do not drink in winter, and in summer leave the Hamadah altogether. Four-fifths of the surface were utterly barren. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the best part of himself, and as if this loss were not cruel enough simply as a loss, it had left behind the conviction that in dying that worshiped brother believed the one who would gladly have died for him to be his slayer. No wonder Dan moaned and writhed, incapable of comfort. He wonder he shunned everybody, knowing ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... rose into the air, though near blind with the anguish of that iron grip, the little victim writhed upward and bit furiously at his enemy's leg. His jaws got nothing but a bunch of fluffy feathers, which came away and floated down the moonlight air. Then the life sank out of his brain, and he hung limply; and the broad wings bore him inland over the dyke-top—straight ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... She burst into loud, screaming sobs and tears, and flung herself on the ground, where she writhed for a time like one in convulsions. Alan seated himself, feeling somewhat sick and faint, and waited for the storm to spend itself. Some time elapsed before she became calm; but at last she raised herself panting ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... blackguards (for I forgot to say another man has been making similar applications to friends) what I undergo with their paws in my very bowels, you can guess, and God knows! No friend, of course, would ever give up the letters—if anybody ever is forced to do that which she would have writhed under—if it ever were necessary, why, I should be forced to do it, and, with any good to her memory and fame, my own pain in the attempt would be turned into joy—I should do it at whatever cost: but it is not only unnecessary ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr |
