"Creeping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with myself again, night had come and I was in pitch darkness. My head still ached horridly, and I was burning hot all over, and yet from time to time shivering with creeping chills. What I wanted most in the world was a drink of water; but when I tried to get up, in the hope of finding some in the jug that no doubt was in the state-room, I went so dizzy that I had to plump back into my berth again. As the ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... stone was slowly creeping But that he did not know, Underneath he found an opening He thought that he could go. He soon got tired and worried, He soon then had to rest, The boulder still was creeping, It was tightening on ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... To trust none but those I have bought, to buy none worth trusting! To see a traitor in every smile, poison in every dish, a dagger in every hand! To lie awake at night, listening from hour to hour for the stealthy creeping of the murderer, for the laying of the damned mine! You are all spies! you are all spies! You worst of all—you, my own son! Which of you is it who hides these bloody proclamations under my own pillow, or at the table where I sit? Which of ye all ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... for the creeping and niggling of his dastardly trade; and gathered his moneys, and busied himself with his lawyer, and acted as his own bookkeeper and clerk, not without satisfaction. His wife's speculations, when they worked in concert, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she spoke the words which follow, And in terms like these addressed her: "O thou bride, my dearest sister, Thou my darling, best-beloved, Listen now to what I tell thee, For a second time repeated. Now thou goest, a flower transplanted, Like a strawberry forward creeping, 20 Whisked, like shred of cloth, to distance, Satin-robed, to distance hurried, From thy home, renowned so greatly, From thy dwelling-place so beauteous. To another home thou comest, To a stranger household goest; In another house 'tis different; Otherwise in strangers' ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... on the old woman like a bewildering dream. It began with the sudden appearance, as she dozed in her chair at Sapps Court, all the memories of her past world creeping spark-like through its half-burned scroll, a dream of Gwen in her glory, heralded by Dave; depositing Dolly, very rough-headed, on the floor, and explaining her intrusion with some difficulty owing to those children wanting to explain too. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... copper handles; and for himself he made boots and gloves and armour of iron; and as he worked he sang magic spells to give his work power to overcome the serpents. Then he harnessed to the plough the fire-breathing Hisi-horse, and went into the field. There were serpents of every sort, creeping and crawling over one another, and hissing horribly, but Ilmarinen cast a spell over them, and ploughed the field, so that all the snakes were buried in the furrows. And then he went to Louhi, and ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... Creeping along upon all-fours, he felt about for Sam's boots, and finding them at last, was just about to move away with ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... have begun to fly, for the enemy are creeping up through the smoke. You started the huts burning, of course?" ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... tension of her interview with Olive, slept that night in a succession of heavy-dreamed dozes punctuated by violent starts of waking, like a train creeping into a London terminus through an irregular detonation of fog-signals. Why had Riviere sent no answer to her message? What had Olive said to him? Had she done the best possible thing to free Riviere? That was the never-ceasing ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... would do as he had done in my sister's case,—make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching about there drinking at the alehouses. My rapid mind pursued him to the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, and contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the white vapor creeping over it, into which ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... select from. Nature has gone about so far, and I am just a believer enough in what the Bible says, that God made the heavens and the earth and put man here to tend and keep it, and made him master of everything above the earth and every creeping thing on the earth and everything beneath the earth, and it is up to you fellows to direct intelligently this mass of material you have to direct. You have got nuts growing where they are hardy, you have got big nuts, you have got little nuts, you have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... pulled down the blind. Before creeping to bed she drew the curtains to exclude the lingering daylight. As she did so, she made sure that her window was hasped wide. Her bedroom (on the ground floor) looked out upon a small cabbage-plot in which Brother Bonaday, until warned by the doctor, had employed his leisure. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life on the rubber plantations of to-day from the life of the gatherer of wild rubber in the jungle. In Brazil, the solitary workers have to plunge at dawn into the perilous forest, with its lurking wildcats and jaguars, its coiled and creeping serpents. The dwellings are flimsy huts, food is scarce and expensive, and disease and ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... were ordered to fight. So Major Martinez kissed his young wife and children good-by one day last week and sent them into San Juan for safety. His scouts brought word that an American column of double the garrison's strength was slowly creeping around to his rear. Then Martinez knew that he was trapped, and decided to go out and meet the enemy. He rode in advance of his slender column until he sighted Hulings's men, who were immediately apprised of the enemy's presence by a volley. Soon bullets were flying like hail. Martinez, mounted ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... they set, two thousand strong; and there was a heavy downpour of rain, but Xenophon, with his rearguard, began advancing to the visible pass, so that the enemy might fix his attention on this road, and the party creeping round might, as much as possible, elude observation. Now when the rearguard, so advancing, had reached a ravine which they must cross in order to strike up the steep, at that instant the barbarians began rolling down great boulders, each a wagon ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... door, into which the sombre shadows of twilight were already creeping, caused her to look around. "Oh that face! If it hadn't been for that," thought Fernando, "I could never have faced the Briton. She is twenty times handsomer than ever. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... since that time, whenever we hear a little tap-tapping in the tree city, we know that it is the poor Woodpecker digging at the dusty wood, as the Lord said she should do. And when we spy her, a dusty little body with black stockings, clinging upright to the tree trunk, we see that she is creeping, climbing, looking up eagerly toward the sky, longing for the rain to fall into her thirsty beak. She is always hoping for the storm to come, and plaintively pipes, "Plui-plui! Rain, O Rain!" until the drops begin to patter on ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... yourself," I ses. "It's nothing to do with you." and I couldn't 'elp noticing the smell of it. Nobody could. And wot was worse than all was, that the tide 'ad turned and was creeping over the ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... of using oil for light never seems to have entered the African mind. Here a bundle of split and dried bamboo, tied together with creeping plants, as thick as a man's body, and about twenty feet in length, is employed in the canoes as a torch to attract the fish at night. It would be considered a piece of the most wasteful extravagance to burn the oil they obtain from the castor-oil bean and other seeds, and also ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... The shadows were creeping down, and evening was approaching, as Bellew took his way along that winding lane that led to the House ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... approached by a vaulted passage. A garden long reconquered by nature; for the paths were lost in herbage, the seats were overgrown with creeping plants, and the fountain had crumbled into ruin. A high wall formerly enclosed it, but, in a shock of earthquake some years ago, part of this had fallen, leaving a gap which framed a lovely picture of the inland hills. Basil pulled away the trailing leafage from a marble hemicycle, and, having ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... road has given me back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now. And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their brown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty. And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had forgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, every night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to sleep naturally, to know ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... at daybreak from the drowse into which he had fallen. The train was creeping slowly over the track, feeling its way, and he heard fragments of talk among the passengers about a broken rail that the conductor had been warned of. He turned to ask some question, when the pull of rising speed came from the locomotive, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... past and the future; all rules of human duty, whether personal or social, domestic or national.... He spake to us of trees, from the cedar of Lebanon unto the hyssop on the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. He has put new beauty for us into the sky and the clouds and the rainbow, into the seas at rest or in storm, into the mountains and into the lakes, into the flowers and the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... long as you are young and beautiful, Rebellion beseems you. But when age Comes creeping on, and wooers stay away, What will be yours beside too late regret?... What would you lose now save a little pride, The phantom of ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... the causality theory of nature has its strong suit. The reason why the bifurcation of nature is always creeping back into scientific philosophy is the extreme difficulty of exhibiting the perceived redness and warmth of the fire in one system of relations with the agitated molecules of carbon and oxygen, with the radiant energy from them, and with the various ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... Ethel saw the change creeping over Basil as no one else saw it, and knew that not even the far future could shed a single gleam for her upon the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... There were, of course, no trees and no bushes; but right away at the farther end of the long valley there were some patches of very dark green. They did not look promising, but he would go and see. They proved to be a creeping sort of evergreen plant that trailed its stiff branches right on the very ground. He picked a bit, and on trying to light it, found to his surprise, that it blazed up in a fierce flame. For it was juniper, and so full ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... could not fail to mark the ignorance and degradation which prevailed, but I never speak of it, because, you know, it makes one very unpopular,' Here, Florry, you have the clew to the mystery. Americans quietly contemplate this momentous subject, and silently view the abuses which are creeping into our communities, because if they expose them, it is at the ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... also many creeping things, such as our "wilde wormes in woods," common toads, natter-jacks, newts, and lizards, and stranger still, many insects, have been ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... this work, some Turkish engineers stole forth from the trenches to reconnoitre. Approaching the cavalier, all was still as death; the bold sappers pushed on as far as the ditch by which the work was surrounded, creeping on hands and knees. They let themselves down noiselessly into the ditch, and then, one standing on the shoulders of another, peeped in upon their Christian foes. Whether or no the sentry had been slain by a stray shot, or ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... dead present of Fuenterrabia. Perchance of old there came hither knights and ladies, pricking o'er the plaine, perchance here was dancing and wassail. We close our eyes and would fain image the scene. We banish the ruined walls, the sunlight creeping among the ivy. We see the sheen of cloth of gold and the gleam of greaves and breastplates. We catch the tale of battle, the passing of the loving-cup, the stately treading of slow Spanish measures. We hear,—we hear,—what is it ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... felt a little improvement this morning, which I hope will continue; and I think I have reached the turn of this terrible disease. On Tuesday night I certainly was in the grasp of death; a cold clammy perspiration, with a tremulous motion, kept creeping slowly over my body during the night, and everything near me had the smell of decaying mortality in the last stage of decomposition and of the grave. I sincerely thank the Almighty Giver of all Good, that He, in His infinite goodness and mercy, gave ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... side, held together by no cement of soil, bound together by no roots or creeping herbs, gave way continually under our feet, and went rushing below into the plains, like a ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... her response and without delaying my departure longer, I lowered myself into the water and swam toward the opposite shore, creeping forth amid a tangle of roots, and immediately disappearing in the underbrush. Sam had already vanished, as I paused an instant to glance back, but she lingered at the edge of the wood to wave her hand. I found ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... Drouant had doubtless gone off in the cutter, it was impossible for me to return on board the Cultivateur. I directed my steps towards my lodgings, creeping along the walls, and taking advantage of the obscurity, when, on turning the corner of a street, I fell into the midst of a band of dockyard workmen, armed with axes, and about to proceed to the attack of the French vessels then in harbour. ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... now low, and the pines in the square and the upright of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went past the window. "The snow is gone," I said. "The snowbirds ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... walked to Woodside in the pleasant forenoon, and thence crossed to Liverpool. On our way to Woodside, we saw the remains of the old Birkenhead Priory, built of the common red freestone, much time-worn, with ivy creeping over it, and birds evidently at hone in its old crevices. These ruins are pretty extensive, and seem to be the remains of a quadrangle. A handsome modern church, likewise of the same red freestone, has been built on part of the site occupied by the Priory; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... withdrawal thither of the declining Indian tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. In studying increase of population, it sees in Switzerland chalet and farm creeping higher up the Alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; it sees movement in the projection of a new dike in Holland to reclaim from the sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in Japan's doubling of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... he would probably have come bumping down-stairs 'and beckoned with cold hand' in at the galley door to Juell. It must have been a pleasant feeling for 'Svarten' to stand there in the dark and see the bear come creeping ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... cliffs. The inland country immediately adjacent to the coast is level, flat, and bleak; it is only where the long stretch of dyke-enclosed fields terminates abruptly in a sheer descent, and the stranger sees the ocean creeping up the sands far below him, that he is aware on how great an elevation he has been. Here and there, as I have said, a cleft in the level land (thus running out into the sea in steep promontories) occurs—what they would call a 'chine' in ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was only the cry of the nightjar among the bracken. It was also rumoured that on one occasion some boys from the village had made their way into a natural cavern which ran beneath the rocks, and, after creeping some distance on hands and knees, had been startled by ghostly sounds. What they heard was the mournful whistling of a popular air, as it were by some caged bird, and then the strain was taken up by the voices of a man and woman singing ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... Creeping across the floor of the gymnasium, they hovered close to the entrance. All of them gripped their novel weapons of offense and defense with a grim determination to give a good account of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... of strangers, subjected to its trials and burdened with its sorrows, satisfied this little band that Holland could not be for them a permanent home. The "hardness of the place" discouraged their friends from joining them. Premature age was creeping upon the vigorous. Severe toil enfeebled their children. The corruption of the Dutch youth was pernicious in its influence. They were Englishmen, attached to the land of their nativity. The Sabbath, to them a sacred ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the providence of God, but unable to accomplish anything of themselves. Others again worshipped fire and water, and the other elements, things without soul or sense; and men, possest of soul and reason, were not ashamed to worship the like of these. Others assigned worship to beasts, creeping and four-footed things, proving themselves more beastly than the things that they worshipped. Others made them images of vile and worthless men, and named them gods, some of whom they called males, and some females, and they themselves set them forth as adulterers, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... pleasure, like Henry the Third, or of action, like Henry the Fourth. Its merits are those of the old,—grace and finish, perfect in minute detail. For these people are a little jaded, and have a constant desire for a subdued and delicate excitement, to warm their creeping fancy a little. They love a constant change of rhyme in poetry, and in their houses that strange, fantastic interweaving of thin, reed-like lines, which are a ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... old. One day, the Emperor, having drunk heavily, confessed to the Empress, Nakashi, that he entertained some apprehension lest this boy might one day seek to avenge his father's execution. The child overheard this remark, and creeping to the side of his step-father, who lay asleep with his head in Nakashi's lap, killed him with his own sword. Such is the tale narrated in the Chronicles and the Records. But its incredible features are salient. A deed of the kind would never have been conceived or committed by a child, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... you know. But here comes Bailie Craigdallie at last, with that poor, creeping, cowardly creature the pottingar. They have brought two town officers with their partizans, to guard their fair persons, I suppose. If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is such a sneaking varlet ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... day; thermometer at 78 deg. even here. 80 deg. was the height yesterday at Edinburgh. If we attempt any active proceeding we dissolve ourselves into a dew. We have lounged away the morning creeping about the place, sitting a great deal, and walking as little as might be ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... inside the dwelling, but Agatha was busy baking, and she failed to notice that the temperature had become almost Arctic, until she stood beside a window as evening was closing in. A low, dingy sky hung over the narrowing sweep of prairie which stretched back, gleaming lividly, into the creeping dusk, but a few minutes later a haze of snow whirled across it and cut ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... The creeping tide swells, shot with flame, Stole up and kissed away that name Which Fate indeed, with mocking hand, For her had ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... a distant corner. The bear advanced, creeping, his blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. The little man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of the tent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at his disappearing game. The little man, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... on as fast as I could, but my hands trembled so from excitement, that I could scarcely fasten a string. A cold chill was creeping through my whole frame, and, in spite of the joy I felt, I involuntarily burst into tears. Dashing away the unwelcome drops with the back of my hand, I bounded down the stairs, unlocked the back-door that led into ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... catamount. Old Rufus did not often laugh, but he laughed heartily on this occasion, and truly it was no wonder and when he corroborated what my brothers had already told me, I decided that what he said must be true. His presence at once gave me a feeling of protection and security and creeping close to his side on the cedar boughs which formed our bed, while the immense fire blazed in front of our tent, I soon forgot my childish fears, in a sound sleep which remained unbroken till the morning sun was shining brightly above the trees. But it was ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... Holder (a Member of our Society) who was then at Blechington, to be observed by those in the further part of the Garden, some very discernable time before it was observed by those in the House; creeping forward from the one place to the other. What other places in the Country it was observed at, I have not been informed: but at Oxford (which, it seems, was about the skirts of it) it was so small, as would have been ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... of Denmark are acknowledged to be fine, but the woods of Thuringia arose far more beautiful in the eyes of Anthony. More mighty and more venerable seemed to him the old oaks around the proud knightly castle, where the creeping plants hung down over the stony blocks of the rock; sweeter there bloomed the flowers of the apple tree than in the Danish land. This he remembered very vividly. A glittering tear rolled down over his cheek; and in this ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... to her table the animal who has printed what ensues. [Here follows the report of Moore's conversation on the subject of O'Connell.] As far as we are acquainted with English or American literature, this is the first example of a man creeping into your home, and forthwith, before your claret is dry on his lips, printing table-talk on delicate subjects, and capable of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... towards the north was a little square house surrounded by a privet hedge. It had a green door under a sort of wooden canopy with two flat windows on either side, and seemed to stand there defying the rows and rows of terraces, avenues and meanish semi-detached villas which were creeping up to it. Behind lay the flat fields under a wide sky just as they had lain for centuries, with the gulls screaming across them inland from the mud cliffs, and so the cottage formed a sort of outpost, facing ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... and they made their way into the crowded street. He paused for a moment on the pavement. The pleasure swirl was creeping ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cupiditatibus vero tanquam serpentes qui humi reptant"; [De Augmentis, Lib. v. Cap. I.] and it did not require his admirable sagacity and his extensive converse with mankind to make the discovery. Indeed, he had only to look within. The difference between the soaring angel and the creeping snake was but a type of the difference between Bacon the philosopher and Bacon the Attorney-General, Bacon seeking for truth, and Bacon seeking for the Seals. Those who survey only one-half of his character may speak of him with unmixed admiration or with unmixed contempt. But ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... glacis slowly at the most exposed places; now crawling on their bellies, now creeping on hands and knees, but, in the main, moving with erect and steady bearing. As they approached within short range, they suddenly found that the French artillery and mitrallleuses had by no means been silenced—about two hundred pieces opening ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... tall leafless trunks like ships' masts to a height of 60 ft. or 70 ft. From this we descend through a multitude of various shapes and sizes to the tiny tufted Mamillarias, no larger than a lady's thimble, or the creeping Rhipsalis, which lies along the hard ground on which it grows, and looks like hairy caterpillars. In form, the variety is very remarkable. We have the Mistletoe Cactus, with the appearance of a bunch of Mistletoe, berries and all; the Thimble Cactus; the Dumpling Cactus; the Melon Cactus; the ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... grace and gravity. It so happened that, in these saltations, he ascended a stool near the curtain behind which Monsieur and Madame Giraud were ensconced. Somewhat agitated by a slight flutter behind the folds, which made him fancy, on the sudden panic, that Rosalie was creeping that way, the epicier made an abrupt pirouette, and the hook on which the curtains were suspended caught his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... like Ariel, flitting hither and thither above the mist, dipping his feet in the vapour, as a sea-bird flies low across the sea. Think of the pity he would feel for the poor human creatures, buried in darkness below, creeping hither and thither in ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... old horror of a bold experimental novelty is still to be yielded to; that nothing in this so urgent affair is to be ventured but in a creeping inch-by-inch movement; that the reign of gross ignorance, with all its attendant vices, is to be allowed a very leisurely retreat, retaining its hold on a large portion of the present and following generations of the children, and therefore the adults; that their condition ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... words! They cut Like sharpen'd swords and burn like hissing flames! What is his will? His speech, though witless, ay, And senseless too, insults and threatens me.— It warns me too—of what?—Oh God, I quake! If but Brangaene came, or Dinas came! They come not and this creeping fear—how hard It grips my soul!—More Gaelic barons come—! How often have I stood concealed here And seen him come proud riding through the gate! My friend that comes no more! How grand he was! His lofty stature did o'ertop them all! How nobly trod his steed!—Dear Tristram, friend. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... him, and creeping amongst the high grass he endeavored not only to examine the new-comers, but to hear what they said. It was a detachment from Omsk, composed of Usbeck horsemen, a race of the Mongolian type. These men, well built, above ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... you came! Verdure and a mild heaven are above; clunking frogs and plants that keep company with man are beneath. But in the North Nature herself is wild. Of man she has never so much as heard. She has seen, perchance, a biped atomy creeping through her snows; but he is not Man, lording it in power of thought and performance; he is a muffled imbecility, that can do nothing but hug and hide its existence, lest some careless breath of hers should blow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... the park, and up to Malsis Hall. A hymn was lustily sung, and then the people were free to ramble about the grounds to their hearts' content. Gaily-coloured flags and bunting were displayed in profusion, and with the additional charm of the "pleasing sounds of music creeping into their ears" the quondam mill-workers could well imagine themselves permitted to spend a brief interval in a very paradise. But when the time for the "real" part of the feast was come, lo and behold! there was ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... this Danger.] So soon as it began to grow dark, we came creeping out of our hollow Tree, and put for it as fast as our Legs could carry us. And then we crossed that great Road, which all the day before we did expect to come up with, keeping close by the River side, and going so long till dark Night stopped us. We kept going the longer, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... reserves were inexhaustible. It was known that they had been heavily reinforced of late and that they largely outnumbered the American troops opposed to them. Over the dead bodies of their comrades which strewed the bridge they were creeping nearer, urged by the irresistible pressure from behind. Considering the disparity of forces, it was sound tactics to destroy the bridge before the foremost ranks could get a footing on the side where their overwhelming numbers ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... after he had absconded, and when he was quite thirty miles distant from Bar Harbour, he saw smoke arising from a dense scrub. Creeping along on his hands and knees he saw two men—escaped convicts like himself—engaged in skinning a wallaby. He at once made himself known to them and was welcomed. After a meal from the wallaby, the two ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... them. There was the Argus with its three columns and a half of "Important from South America," while none of the other papers had a square of any intelligibility excepting what they had copied from the Argus the day before. I felt a grim smile creeping over my face as I observed this signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to take a sip of the black broth as I glanced down my own article to see if there were any glaring misprints in it. Before I took the second sip, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... become portentous. The movement, involuntary and simultaneous, which had run through the crowd at first had stopped. They were waiting—each and all—waiting with eyes on the minute-hand creeping forward over the dial toward which the detective's glance ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... his farmyard, slipped into the wood, reached the bakehouse, penetrated to the end of the long passage, and having found the clothes of the soldier which he had hidden there, he put them on. Then he went prowling about the fields, creeping along, keeping to the slopes so as to avoid observation, listening to the least ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... to say; our astonishment was beyond speech. We began to look askance at Edmund, with creeping sensations about the spine. A formless, unacknowledged fear of him entered our souls. It never occurred to us to doubt the truth of what he had said. We knew him too well for that; and, then, were we not here, flying mysteriously through the ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... supplied us with tales of the true blood-curdling type. Thomas Hood's "Haunted House," S. T. Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," and some other weird works of poetry have also been found serviceable in producing that strange chill of the blood, that creeping kind of feeling all over you, which is one of the enjoyments of Christmastide. Coleridge (says the late Mr. George Dawson)[88] "holds the first place amongst English poets in this objective teaching of the vague, the mystic, the dreamy, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Fox was creeping along behind the old stone wall on the edge of the Old Orchard, Peter knew just where he was, though Reddy didn't know that. If he had known it, he would have ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... unit was two, a globe—which, if it were on Earth, would be a hundred feet high. And Lee himself? He would be a giant more than twelve feet tall now.... He stood staring at the dials for a moment or two. That little pointer of the first of the size-change dials was creeping around. An acceleration! Another moment and it had touched Unit four. A two hundred foot globe. And Lee, if he had been on Earth, would already be a towering human nearly twenty-five ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... and a woman with a white face, dark, piercing eyes, and a beak-like nose, is bending over her. The woman presents such an extraordinary spectacle that Liso is oblivious of everything else, and gazes at her with a cold sensation of fear creeping down her spine. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Labrador tea. Azaleas. Laurels. Rhodora. Rhododendrons. Leucothoe. Wild rosemary. Fetter-bush, Stagger-bush. Andromeda. Cassandra. Sourwood. Trailing arbutus. Creeping wintergreen. Bearberries. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... diplomacy or blows. From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from counts to princes, from princes to electors, and at last kings. Sometimes they are unscrupulous, sometimes feeble, sometimes nobly heroic and faithful; more often strong than weak in brain and hand. The Hohenzollern tortoise keeps creeping forward in its history, surpassing many a swift hare that once despised it in the race. I believe it is the oldest princely line in Europe. There is certainly none whose history on the whole is better. Margraf George of Anspach-Baireuth was perhaps the finest character ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... him at his house. He sends the oldest of them to fetch wood, and the younger to gather pot-herbs: these they steal where they can find them, either slily getting into gardens, or else craftily and warily creeping to the common tables. But if any one be caught, he is severely flogged for negligence or want of dexterity. They steal, too, whatever victuals they possibly can, ingeniously contriving to do it when persons are asleep, or keep but indifferent watch. If they are discovered, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... from his wallet and ate it as he went along: to quench his thirst he often had no resource but melting the snow in his mouth, which rather tends to increase the desire for water. At night he went into the depths of the forest, dug a hole under the snow, and creeping in slept there as best he might. At the first experiment his feet were frozen: he succeeded in curing them, though not without great pain. Sometimes he plunged up to the waist or neck in the drifts, and expected at the next step to be buried alive. One night, having tasted to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Magnetism, Creeping of. The gradual increase of magnetism when a magnetic force is applied with absolute steadiness to a piece of iron. It is a form of magnetic lag. It may last for half an hour and involve an increase of several per cent. of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... water could be heard pouring over the Falls of Niagara. As the Canadians had charged against the American guns at Chippewa, so now the Americans charged uphill against the guns of the Canadians, hurling their full strength against the enemy's center. Creeping under shelter of the cemetery stone walls, the bluecoats would fire a volley of musketry, jump over the fence, dash through the smoke, {374} bayonet in hand, to capture the Canadian guns. Time, time again, the rush was dauntlessly made, and time, time again ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... around, pulled down the mattress from his back, and putting it on the ground tried to step on it. That did not help, so he curled up his trunk behind to try to get me to step on. Each time he made an effort like that, however, he sank deeper into the mud. I saw the trunk curling back and creeping up to me like a python crawling up a hillside to coil around its prey. There was no more trumpeting or calling from the elephant, but a sinister silence through which he was trying to reach me. He had come to ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... channel, fretting at the rocks that obstruct its course, and racing toward a precipice, down which it plunges, some thirty or forty feet, forming a light, feathery cascade; and then, as if exhausted by the leap, creeping sluggishly its little distance toward the broad Hudson. The white spray, churned out by the friction against the air, and flung perpetually upwards, suggested to our sires a name for this miniature Niagara; and, without any regard for romance or euphony, they called it Buttermilk Falls. ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... by those singular steps, or ridges, formerly banks or shores oL antediluvian oceans, till it reaches the vicinity of the Holland river, a tortuous, sluggish, marshy, natural canal, flowing or lazily creeping into Lake Simcoe, at an elevation of upwards of seven-hundred and fifty feet above Lake Ontario, and emptying itself into Lake Huron by a series of rapids, called the ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... process of a living language is like the motion of a broad river, which flows with a slow, silent, irresistible current." He turns the tables on a writer who points out American barbarisms by showing a number of English barbarisms which had been creeping into use, and declares that in the use of language one nation as well as the other will commit these errors, but he returns again and again to his position that Americans in their use of language are not to wait passively upon ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... our feet To find a virgin forest, as we lay The beams of our rude temple, first of all Must frame its doorway high enough for man To pass unstooping; knowing as we do That He who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their foot-prints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know him first, then trust him and then love When we have found him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the creeping cereuses, usually known by the name of the night-flower, is said to be as grand and as beautiful as any in the vegetable system. It begins to open in the evening, about seven o'clock; is in perfection about eleven, perfuming the air to a considerable ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... north. The most vulnerable point was the section at and about that eminence, and the necessity for supplying Clark with further reinforcements became urgently manifest. Baker sent up a second detachment, and 200 Sikhs came out from Sherpur at the double. But the Afghans, creeping stealthily in great numbers up the slope from out the Chardeh valley, had the shorter distance to travel, and were beforehand with the reinforcements. Their tactics were on a par with their resolution. The left of their attack ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... purr, Curl up in a ball, and refuse to stir, But you need not try to look good and wise: I see little robins, old puss, in your eyes. And this morning, just as the clock struck four, There was some one opening the kitchen door, And caught you creeping the wood-pile over,— Make a clean breast of it, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... fell. The curious activity of desert-life, interrupted for the time by the presence of the fugitives, resumed its tenor and droned on about them. The rasping grasshopper, the darting lizard, the scorpion creeping among the rocks, a high-flying bird, a small, skulking, wild beast put sound and movement in the desolation of the region. The horizon was marked by undulating hills to the west; to the east, by sharper peaks. The scant growth was blackened or partly covered with sand, and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the bullet wound, was pushing the iron door, behind him as he faced Shirley. Suddenly a frightful sound broke the stillness: it was the final exhalation of air from the dead man's lungs. It sent a creeping chill through Shirley's blood. Warren's right hand dropped, nervously for an instant, despite his resolution. In that second Shirley had brought his own weapon up to a ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... well knew, but not so much for a night like this night. He would ride to kill those he hated; she would ride to save those she loved. Her horse already was on the Elbow grade; she knew it from his shorter spring—a lithe, creeping spring that had carried her out of deep canyons and up long draws where other horses walked. The wind lessened and the rain drove less angrily in her face. She patted Jim's neck with her wet glove, and checked ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... as the princess perceived this monster, 'You dog,' said she, 'instead of creeping before me, dare you present yourself in this shape, thinking to ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... the way here, some of you, or whether you won't; because if you don't do it right on end, he'll lock you up! 'What! YOU are there, are you, Bob Miles? You haven't had enough of it yet, haven't you? You want three months more, do you? Come away from that gentleman! What are you creeping round there for?' ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... a creeping of the spine, as if somebody was threatening his neck. But he shrugged with indifference. It began to rain. Here was a change. He stopped the car and got down ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... March 1544 the Elector's wife, Sybil, asked him 'anxiously and diligently' about his own health and that of his wife and children, he answered: 'Thank God, we are well, and better than we deserve of God. But no wonder, if I am sometimes shaky in the head. Old age is creeping on me, which in itself is cold and unsightly, and I am ill and weak. The pitcher goes to the well until it breaks. I have lived long enough; God grant me a happy end, that this useless body may reach His people ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... repent of that bit of passion, but he was contemptuous of the "for her sake," which was all Harold uttered as further defence. "What! tell him it was for her sake when she was creeping about the house like a ghost, looking as if she had just come out of ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his way till he came to a ploughed field. Here he noticed a little mouse creeping wearily along on its hind paws, for its front paws had both ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... trial of strength and endurance between them. He strained his free arm as though to crush in this demon's ribs. He kicked out with his feet and knees; he dug his head into the fellow's chest. The latter clung without cry or word like a living nightmare. His hand was creeping towards Donaldson's throat again. He felt it stealing up inch by inch and was powerless to check it. He rolled and tumbled and pushed. Then his head came down sharply on a ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... madly plunging at the woody barrier, and trying to force his enormous antlers through the unyielding limbs preparatory to leaping it in pursuit of his victim, who had eluded the infuriated animal, and barely escaped the fatal blows of his uplifted hoofs, by creeping under the providentially placed obstruction. Claud instantly raised his piece, when, feeling uncertain of his aim, he withheld his fire, and stood waiting for a fairer view. But, before he could obtain it, the moose, tired of vain attempts to force his passage through the bristling barricade ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... stems, whereon The tangled creepers coiled; here entered they— Watering their horses at a stream—and pushed Deep in the thicket. Many a beast and bird Sprang startled at their feet; the long grass stirred With serpents creeping off; the woodland flowers Shook where the pea-fowl hid, and, where frogs plunged, The swamp rocked all its reeds and lotus-buds. A banian-tree, with countless dropping boughs Earth-rooted, spied they, and beneath its aisles A pool; hereby they stayed, tethering their steeds, And dipping ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... any chance meeting. His immediate neighbors, however, had no such fear; they edged closer and closer together as they climbed. At last, stopped against a perpendicular wall ten feet high, he heard them creeping toward him from both sides, with a guarded "Coo-ee!" each to the other; John Wesley slipped down the hill to the nearest bush. His neighbors came together and held a whispered discourse. They viewed the barrier with marked patience, it seemed; ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... for you, Hazel, you see. All these garden plots must have something in them; and as soon as may be I want to see roses and vines creeping over these walls. But we must go slowly. You and I cannot do it. The only way for permanent results, is to rouse the desire, excite the ambition, and then supply the means. Outside the gardens I mean to plant trees, ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... overwhelmed him. He turned again to the Woman. There she sat in the golden mantle of her hair, enthroned on the snow's pure whiteness. Creeping to her humbly, he fell to covering her feet with kisses, so great was ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... full throat, uttered its liquid, joyous song. This was apparently the signal. The east turned gray. Mt. Tamalpais caught the first ghostly light. And ecstatically the birds and the insects and the flying and crawling and creeping things awakened, and each in his own voice and manner devoutly welcomed the brand-new day with its fresh, clean chances of life and its forgetfulness of old, disagreeable things. The meadow larks became hundreds, the song sparrows trilled, distant cocks crowed, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... inspiriting us to take so very long a promenade twice a day, in order that we might lose nothing of the splendour of the sea. One day the sun deceived us; we set out as usual; but had not got half to the end of the ramparts, when a series of dark clouds came creeping over the blue sky; a hollow wind began to sigh amongst the leaves, and the light became fitful and lurid, till, on a sudden, a loud crack in the sky was heard, and in an instant down rushed the rain in a perfect deluge. We had reached the most exposed part of the boulevard; ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... brown; polypidom pinnate; the stems arising from creeping radical tubes, very thickly intertwined around a long slender body. The stems are from one to four inches long, the pinnae about 1/4 to 1/2 inch, alternate. The rachis of the stem is divided into distinct internodes, from each of which are given off two pinnae, and upon ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray |
