"Snaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the neighbours who traded in the Piazza with fruit and indifferent photographs. Nothing went very well—thanks to that unspeakable old Marco! His girl grew longer and lazier and handsomer, with a shapelier bust and a pair of arms like that snaky Bacchante in the Opera. Maso had to quail more than he liked to admit before the proud stare of her eyes; and when she dropped the heavy lids upon them and sauntered away, arms akimbo under her shawl, he could only swear. And he always cursed Marco Zoppa who gave her chestnuts ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... a series of alternating rings of green and black starting two inches from the rear end and running four inches up the shaft. Or he made small circular dots and snaky lines running down the shaft for a similar distance. When with us he used dry colors mixed with shellac, which he preferred to oil paints because they dried quicker. The painted area, intended for the feathers, is called ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... generation; not only because the amateurs had so much insisted on his merit as the supreme of artists for grandeur of design and breadth of style; and because, apart from this momentary connection with my paper, the man himself merited a record for his matchless audacity, combined with so much of snaky subtlety, and even insinuating amiableness, in his demeanor; but also because, apart from the man himself, the works of the man (those two of them especially which so profoundly impressed the nation in 1812) were in themselves, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... plane that carried the bearded Council man and Denham. That plane swept forward and hovered above the ornithopter. The two flying things seemed almost fastened together, so closely did their pilots maintain that same speed and course. A snaky rope went coiling down into the lower ship's cockpit. A burly figure began to climb it hand over hand. A second figure followed. A third figure, in the drab clothing that distinguished Jacaro's men from all others, wrapped the rope about himself and ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... brothers than anything else. She set them at variance, and whether she meant to do it or not is all the same to me. I own I took a dislike to her when I first saw her. She was one of the light-haired, blue-eyed sort, with an innocent look and a snaky waist—not at all to be depended on, as ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... end, and all the ills of it, The axe of sharp Detachment ye would whet, And cleave the clinging snaky roots, and lay This Aswattha of ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... oars in quickest movement, and beheld a galley coming down upon him. The tall prow seemed doubly tall, and the red light playing upon its gilt and carving gave it an appearance of snaky life. Under its foot the water churned to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... we have! They're the meanest thing you can run across out of doors. If you step on one of those long, snaky branches, it'll turn around and hit you, no matter where you are, and whenever it hits those little ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. Fearful Megaera, with her snaky twine, Was cursed dam unto thy damned self; And Hircan tigers in the desert rocks Did foster up thy loathed, hateful life; Base Ignorance the wicked cradle rock'd, Vile Barbarism was wont to dandle thee; Some wicked hellhound tutored thy youth. And all the grisly sprights ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to help me,' she said, and started a little sing-song, then shouldered the post herself and carried it in. These posts are painted red, black, and white, with a snaky pattern, the Kurreah sign, on them. She also planted in my garden two other witch-poles, one painted red and having a cross-bar about midway down it from which raddled strings were attached to the top; this was to keep away the Euloowayi, black fellows possessed ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... are as brave a youth as I believe you to be," replied King Polydectes, with the utmost graciousness of manner. "The bridal gift which I have set my heart on presenting to the beautiful Hippodamia is the head of the Gorgon Medusa, with the snaky locks; and I depend on you, my dear Perseus, to bring it to me. So, as I am anxious to settle affairs with the princess, the sooner you go in quest of the Gorgon, the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... bustling about over pots and stew-pans, getting supper; old Peter stood at the table peeling potatoes. In an arm-chair before the fire sat another old woman with snaky-black eyes, hooked nose, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... huntress Dian her dread bow Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste, Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness And spotted mountain-pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid; gods and men Feared her stern frown, and she was queen o' the woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield That wise Minerva wore, unconquered virgin, Wherewith she freezed her foes to congealed stone, But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 450 And noble grace that dashed brute violence With sudden adoration and blank awe? So dear to Heaven ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... death-blow on that occasion. Its possibility had been demonstrated. The very next year (1851) Mr T.R. Crampton, with Messrs. Wollaston, Kuper, and others, made and laid an improved cable between Dover and Calais, and ere long many other parts of the world were connected by means of snaky submarine ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... ashore to look up that snaky lodger of Captain Boomsby's," answered Washburn. "There was certainly a lodger there, who furnished his own room, and stayed ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... away, they were intolerable. Aunt Judy goes about in a dignified silence, too full for words, only asking two or three times, "W'at I dun tole you fum de fust?" The food is a trial. This evening the snaky candles lighted the glass and silver on the supper-table with a pale gleam and disclosed a frugal supper indeed—tea without milk (for all the cows are gone), honey, and bread. A faint ray twinkled on the water swishing against the house and stretching away into the dark woods. It looked like civilization ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... interest, attorney's fees, detective bills, and remuneration for my own time and trouble. That's the reason that I'm so glad to meet him. Judge, I've gone to the trouble and expense to get his record for the last ten years. He's so snaky he sheds his name yearly, shifting for a nickname from Honest John to The Quaker. In '80 he and his associates did business under the name of The Army & Sutler Supply Company, and I know of two judgments that can be bought very reasonable against ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... leaped with a frantic snort. It was a swerving, nimble, tremendous bound. He went high. Lucy was unseated, but somehow clung on, and came down with him, finding the saddle. And it seemed, while in the air, she saw a long, snaky, whipping loop of rope shoot out and close just where ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... pages of my old journal, but the hope proves fallacious, and wherever I turn, the same subject is renewed. So there is no longer any reason in waiting until all mention can be avoided. Yesterday a little, sly, snaky creature asked me if I knew "the Hero of Port Hudson." "Yes," I said briefly. "Unmistakable! I see it in your face!" she remarked. "See what?" "That you betray yourself. Do you know that every one believes that you are engaged to him?" In surprise ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... religion incongruously mingled with every horror of the Christian—gorgons and harpies and chimaeras dire are tormenting the wicked under the eyes of the Madonna; centaurs are shooting and prodding them before the God of Love from the torrid banks of fiery lakes; furies with snaky heads are directing their punishments; Minos and AEacus are superintending their tasks; and, in the centre of all, a huge Moloch demon is devouring them bodily in his fiery jaws, with hideous tusks ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and drains a large lake, in which there is an immense multiplication of vegetable growth that floats perpetually to the Bay, and is called "lilies," though having the look of small cabbages. The stream is almost as broad as the Ohio, and, in its snaky turns, crooked as the Mississippi. The banks seem to be prevented from washing away by the dense matting of grasses, and the overhanging thickets, imposing in luxuriance. The houses are close to the water, for the tidal river does not rise and fall enough ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... not play harps, but horns When I chased the unicorns— Magic tubes with pistons greasy, Slides that pushed and pulled out easy, Cylinders of snaky brass Where the fingers like to fuss, Polished like a ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Perseus step forward. He shouted out: "I have brought something to you at last, O king—a present to you and your mocking friends. But you, O my mother, and you, O my friends, avert your faces from what I have brought." Saying this Perseus drew out the Gorgon's head. Holding it by the snaky locks he stood before the company. His mother and his friends averted their faces. But Polydectes and his insolent friends looked full upon what Perseus showed. "This youth would strive to frighten us with some conjuror's trick," they said. They ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... nameless words that slip From darkening soul to whitening lip. The snaky usurer,—him that crawls, And cheats beneath the golden balls, The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes— I stabbed them deep with muttered oaths: Spawn of the rebel wandering horde That stoned the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... stallion would answer that sound with start or whinney. The black lay perfectly still, and instead of lifting up to answer or to look, the head lowered with ears flat back until the long, outstretched neck gave the animal a snaky appearance. The dog, too, though it showed murderous fangs whenever Vic moved, did not stir from his place, but lay flattening into ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... must be no double work in this matter. Mr. Allen must see what I am worth to him—nothing could be plainer. His best policy now is to act promptly and liberally toward me, for I pledge you my word that if I see any disposition to evade my requirements I will blow out the bottom of everything," and a snaky glitter in his small black eyes showed how remorselessly he could scuttle the ship bearing Mr. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... one of these balls he whipped round, picked it up in his mouth and gave it a tiny pinch, just as a warning. At least, he thought it was a tiny pinch. The ball retaliated with unexpected ferocity. It twisted and turned. It emitted long, snaky spirals of some elastic substance, which clogged his teeth and tickled his throat and wound themselves round his tongue and nearly choked him. Panic-stricken, he ran to his mistress, who, with weeping and with laughter, removed the ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... seeming to be Enipeus,[21] didst beget the Aloidae; as a ram, thou didst delude {Theophane}, the daughter of Bisaltis.[22] Thee too the most bounteous mother of corn, with her yellow hair, experienced[23] as a steed; thee, the mother[24] of the winged horse, with her snaky locks, received as a bird; Melantho,[25] as a dolphin. To all these did she give their own likeness, and the {real} appearance of the {various} localities. There was Phoebus, under the form of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... were at the top, though, it wasn't so bad. We went a couple of hundred yards through a narrow gorge, and then we came out onto the old lake bottom Abe had spoken about. As far as our lights would shine in the snow, we could see stubby trees with snaky branches growing ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... the wind, their light gossamer gowns streamed the same way, whipped about their limbs as close as wet muslin. They were bare-footed, bare-armed, and bare-headed. They all had beauty, but it was not of earthly cast. He saw one with hair like pale silk, and one, ruddy and fierce in the face, with snaky black hair which, he thought, flew out beyond her for a full yard's measure. Another had hazel-brown hair and a sharp little peering face; another's was colour of ripe corn, and another's like a thunder-cloud, copper-tinged. About and about they went, skimming the tops of the grasses, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... while she wears only one gown at a time she will live with all her wall papers all the time. She decides to use a red paper of large figures in one room, and a green paper with snaky stripes in the adjoining room, but she doesn't try the papers out; she doesn't give them the fair test of living with ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... we are more concerned. Probably each of us has his mental picture that passes as a symbol rather than an idea of the different continents. This is usually a single picture-a deep river, with forest, hanging snaky vines, anacondas and monkeys for the east coast of South America, for example. It is built up in youth by chance reading and chance pictures, and does as well as a pink place on the map to stand for a part of the world concerning which we know nothing at all. As ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that; Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and in a wheedling undertone, with a continual snaky writhing of her whole body, except her eye, which seemed, in the intense fixity of its glare, to act as a fulcrum for all her limbs; and from that eye, as long as it kept its mysterious hold, there ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... I should do, in your place, if I found myself steering a little too nigh to the brown miss? I should—well, to put it in one word, I should scatter. Where's the harm, I'll ask you, if you try another girl or two, before you make your mind up. I shall be proud to introduce you to our slim and snaky sort at Coolspring. Yes. I mean what I say; and I'll go back with you across the pond." Referring in this disrespectful manner to the Atlantic Ocean, Rufus offered his hand in token of unalterable ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... Pools and from half a dozen other villages to the west. The ground here was different from the ground they had traversed in coming to the fort. This was boggy; here and there the foot sank with a sough into the pulp of morass and rotten leaves; the lianas were thinner and more snaky, the greenery, if possible, greener, and the air close and moist as the air of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... word adjustment to follow as for instance the substitution of "a thin dirk-slot" for "a dagger-slot," the word "thin" carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding lines—pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... the eyes of Jakie grew more pronounced; grew even snaky, in the opinion of Happy Jack. "It is that I am no more permitted the privilege of preparing the food for fich I have the judgment, yes?" His voice purred too much to be convincing. "It is that I am no more the chef to be ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... so they turned, and he ran on alone. The Iroquois guns seemed to flash in his face. It was like throwing himself among furious wolves. Snarling lips and snaky eyes and twisting sinuous bodies made nightmares around him. He felt himself seized; a young warrior stabbed him in the side. The knife glanced on a rib, but blood ran down his buckskins and filled ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... length Weston carefully clamped down a big copper cap on a length of snaky fuse and inserted it in ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... revolution has failed,' he said; and walking across quite suddenly to the train he got into it just as it was steaming away at last. And as I saw the long snaky tail of it disappear ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... his hand. I knowed what he was goin' to do—skelp my father! I braced up to 'im to keep 'im away, an' he jist laffed at me. I never think what the devil looks like without seein' that red demon with his snaky black eyes, ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... he had not stolen the buried gold, I would have returned in time," he muttered. "He is at the bottom of all this. As I walked away from Jack in the garden, I felt as if it was McKee that was following me with his black, snaky eyes." ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... kembutsu. So, likewise, are any situations from which beautiful scenery may be looked at, or any localities where one can enjoy such charming spectacles as the blossoming of cherry-trees in spring, the flickering of fireflies in summer nights, the flushing of maple-leaves in autumn, or even that long snaky motion of moonlight upon water to which Chinese poets have given the delightful name of Kinryo, 'the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... It was a coppery black—combining the hues of both races from whom he derived his origin. He had the thick lips and retreating forehead of the negro, but the Indian showed itself in his hair, which scarcely waved, but hung in long snaky tresses about his neck and shoulders. He was altogether less distinguished-looking than his comrade the mulatto. His dress partook of the character of his tribe—wide trousers of coarse cotton stuff, with a sleeveless shirt of the same material,—a waist scarf, and ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... quaint castellated building, battering the gates and moving their heavy iron hinges to a most dolorous groaning; it flung rattling hailstones at the narrow windows, and raged and howled at every corner and through every crevice; while snaky twists of lightning played threateningly over the tall iron Cross that surmounted the roof, as though bent on striking it down and splitting open the firm old walls it guarded. All was war and tumult without:—but within, a tranquil peace prevailed, enhanced by the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the light, do those dismal things, Its gleam they dare not face. Their snaky writhings, their bat-like wings, Their quaking menace of fangs and stings Make horror of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various
... ever flowed in the veins of a being so white and fair. It must be a phantom of his bewildered imagination. He was sure that when he reached the wigwam he should see the chief's daughter with her red skin, long, straight black hair and snaky eyes, just as he had pictured her in his imagination ever since his father ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... they come With snaky whispers at your ear; And when like swarming bees they hum You know the tinkling chill of fear. A whining thing will pluck your heel, A whirring insect sting your shin; You shrink to half your size, and feel The ripples o'er your body seal- 'Tis ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the windowsills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... talk with, though he could hear his hoarse, strong voice above the roar of wind and waters. For the sea was rising like the gable of a house, but the yacht was in no trouble; she had held her own in far worse seas. In the morning the sky was of snaky tints of yellow and gray, but the wind had settled and the waves were flatting; but John saw bits of trailing wreckage floating about their black depths, making the Firth ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... where Hollisters cedars had stood was a red chaos out of which great flames leaped aloft and waved snaky tongues, blood-red, molten gold, and from which great billows of smoke poured away to wrap in obscurity all the hills beyond. There was nothing they could do now. They watched it apathetically, too ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the snaky purpose, coiled behind those graceful, ambiguous forms of speech! Not new the tale to the man who sat and heard. She admired the black-haired, powerful head, and the square, pale face with its short, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... uncoiled its snaky twine from around the hill, and came to its rock in the river. When it perceived the Childe waiting for it, it lashed the waters in its fury and wound its coils round the Childe, and then attempted to crush him to ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... thus far with reluctance to the admonition of his friend, without intending to profit by it; but arose from the carpet of spinach, eyed his companion with a mortifying glance of contempt, pricked up his long snaky ears, and began to put himself into a musical posture. The nimble, small-hoofed elk, perceiving this, said to himself: "Since he has stretched out his neck and prepared his pitch-pipe, he will not remain long without singing." So ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... something like a light ring of smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed. Again, and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of his fury. And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the centre ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... fair type of marine officer, had, in fact, resigned from the United States service with Captain Moore. He was by no means an ill-looking man, but his snaky eyes and treacherous mouth told Ned ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... tipt with vile adders sting, Of that self kynd with which the Furies fell, Their snaky heads doe combe, from which a spring Of poysoned words and spightfull speeches well, Let all the plagues and horrid paines of hell Upon thee fall for thine accursed hyre, That with false forged lyes, which thou didst ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... young Shakespeare as he came up the green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost himself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested upon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed departed, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... of whatever it was that followed her. Hastily descending the cliff I ran to her assistance, when I saw Moira spring on to a flat rock upon which she generally landed from her canoe. At the same moment a snaky tentacle rose out of the sea and caught her, while other tentacles quickly enveloped her. The monster now dragged its shiny bulk upon the rock, and except in a nightmare surely no man had beheld such a creature before. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... inspired-looking creature whirled about on his axis, the black ringlets standing out in snaky spirals from his haggard head, his cheek-muscles convulsively twitching. Around him, but a long way off, the dancers rocked and circled with long raucous cries dominated by the sobbing booming music, and in the sunlit space between dancers and ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... he had really killed the Gorgon. It was Atlas, the old heaven-supporting giant; and when Perseus answered that he had, Atlas declared that he must see the head to convince him. So Perseus put a hand over his shoulder, and drew it up by its snaky hair; but no sooner had Atlas cast his eyes on it than he turned into a mountain, his white beard and hair becoming the snowy peak, and his garments the woods and forests. And there he still stands on the west coast of Africa, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have thought that the situation called for the sudden and stern action he had taken. Of course, Nan Sherwood thought, that snaky-looking Mexican was not wearing those two silver-mounted pistols in ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... tearing it in long strips she cross tore them and sifted the handful of small bits on the water, where they started a dashing journey toward the river. Mrs. Holt, narrowly watching her, turned with snaky gleaming eyes to her son and whispered: "A-ha! Miss ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... is still current among negroes affected by the voodoo superstitions of the South. The witch, too, had the power of riding winds, usually with a broomstick for a conveyance, after she had smeared the broom or herself with magic ointment, and the flocking of the unhallowed to their sabbaths in snaky bogs or on lonely mountain tops has been described minutely by those who claim to have seen the sight. Sometimes they cackled and gibbered through the night before the houses of the clergy, and it was only ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... out to sea Silence once more, and then a mountain cock, who had scorned the sweeping rain, uttered his shrill, cackling, and defiant crow, as he shook the water from his black and golden back and long snaky neck, and ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... than we expected." He was different from what we had expected. Perhaps that annoyed us. Instead of being able to laugh at him, we found something oppressive, chilling, to me frightful, in the cold, sneering smile which seemed perpetually hovering about his thin lips—in the fixed, snaky glitter of his still, intent gray eyes. His face was pale, his manners were polished, but to meet his eye was a thing I hated, and the touch of his hand made me shudder. While speaking in the politest possible manner, he had eyed over Adelaide and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... getting his knife into Fraser was meant in a very literal sense. "I mean to get even with my man if I come across him again. But I won't be such a fool as to attempt it here. Take a look outside and see if Snaky ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... it out willingly enough and spilled it out on the improvised table, a glittering mass of gold trinkets, watches, jewels. He picked out of the mass a chain of diamonds and spread it out on his snaky fingers so that the light could play on it. Andrew knew nothing about gems, but he knew that the chain must be worth ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... it, Ellhorn went away and forgot the earnest of his future good behavior. Emerson smiled that evening as he saw it trailing its snaky length over the back of a chair and stuffed it in the side pocket of his coat, thinking he would give it to Ellhorn the next time his friend should ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... grandchildren; a thousand and one lines seamed her coppery face, which was the colour of an old penny piece rather burnished from use. And she had eyes, Bob, little and wide apart, and black as sloes, with a snaky look. I don't think she ever took them off me, and 'twas no manner of use to stare at her in return. So, as I could not understand what they were saying,—gabbling a sort of patois of bad French and worse English, with a sprinkling ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... for roof the blue vault of heaven; the sun served for footlights and for the lights above the heads of those who acted. The three Furies—the Eumenides—with their hard and cruel faces and snaky locks, and with blood dripping from their eyes, were represented by actors so great that the hearts of their beholders trembled within them. In their dread hands lay the punishment of murder, of inhospitality, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... unsheathed, until a young fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness. You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—with results that were ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... through the fire line. He stepped like a calcium-lit figure over the wet, gleaming pavement, over the snaky hose, and among the rubber-sheathed, glistening firemen, gave one look at the ghastly heap on the sidewalk, and then became, like the host of raving relatives and friends and lovers, a man insane. It was as if the common surfaces of life—the busy days, the labor, the tools, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... down the strip of level beach the soldier hummed an old ballad song of Man, which Rose had loved to sing, and clean forgot the savage who, crouching in the shadow, fingered the knife hilt hidden in his waist cloth, and never removed the gaze of his snaky eyes from the figure of his ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... but I saw, as I gazed, Her spite—and her countenance changed with her mind As she plann'd how to thrall me with beauty, and bind My soul to her charms,—and her long tresses play'd From shade into shine and from shine into shade, Like a day in mid-autumn,—first fair, O how fair! With long snaky locks of the adder-black hair That clung round her neck,—those dark locks that I prize, For the sake of a maid that once loved me with eyes Of that fathomless hue,—but they changed as they roll'd, And brighten'd, and suddenly blazed into gold ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... near the summit of Scalped Mountain, a snaky form of mist was twisting swiftly down. He looked curiously. The thing grew, traveling with great speed that increased with every moment. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... Her character I had judged from her face, which was lovely. But faces deceive, and the loveliness of youth is not like the loveliness of age—an absolute mirror of the soul within. Was not Medusa captivating, for all her snaky locks? Hide those locks and one might have thought her ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of the world below the earth, to which all we mortals must one day come, grant me to tell a simple tale and declare unto you the truth. Not to look upon the blackness of Tartarus have I come hither, nor yet to bind in chains the snaky heads on Cerberus. It is my wife I seek. A viper's sting has robbed her of the years that were her due. I should have borne my loss, indeed I tried to bear it, but I was overcome by Love, a god well ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... his spoken and written thoughts? Was she always to see his face as she had seen it last, his great love for her shining in his eyes for all the world to read? Was she to see forever his pearl necklace, discoloured, snaky, and cold, as meaningless as the yellow slip of paper that had come ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... she was (for lofty Pride that dwells In towered courts, is oft in shepherds' cells), And too-too well the fair vermilion knew And silver tincture of her cheeks, that drew The love of every swain. On her this god Enamour'd was, and with his snaky rod Did charm her nimble feet, and made her stay, The while upon a hillock down he lay, And sweetly on his pipe began to play, And with smooth speech her fancy to assay, Till in his twining arms her lock'd her fast, And then he woo'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at Botticelli's "Spring." Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will serve to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... they rounded disclosed nothing more alarming than lichened boulders and pebbly shore, with here a dead fish, and there a heap of shining snaky kelp, and yonder a flock of startled gulls,—but who could tell what the next projection might be hiding? They walked with their fists gripped hard around their weapons, their eyes shifting, their ears strained, while the waves hissed around ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... began to flatter me. I liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... fierce and made the bristles of the spectators stand on their ends. And as those heroes endued with mighty energy fought on, the two mighty elephants, the Kurus beheld them with wonder. And those brave bulls among men assailed each other with arrows of snaky forms and resembling blazing fires. And as the couple of quivers belonging to the Pandava was inexhaustible, that hero was able to remain on the field immovable as a mountain. And as Aswatthaman's arrows, in consequence of his ceaseless discharge in that conflict, were quickly exhausted, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... crow's-feet and crafty. When I greeted the woman, she answered in Romany, and said she was a Stanley from the North. She lied bravely, and I told her so. It made no difference in any way, nor was she hurt. The brown boy, who seemed like a goblin, umber-colored fungus, growing by a snaky black wild vine, sat by her and stared at me. I was pleased, when he said tober, that she corrected him, exclaiming earnestly, "Never say tober for road; that is canting. Always say drom; ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... any direction, at any elevation. There were none of the helicopters of even five years ago, now. A molecular power suit was far more convenient, cost nothing to operate, and but $50 to buy. Perfectly safe, requiring no skill, everyone owned them. To the watcher in space, they were mere moving, snaky lines of barely distinguishable dots that shivered and seemed to writhe in the refractions of the air. Passing over them, seeming to pass almost through them in this strange perspectiveless view, were ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... Sphinx with golden nails ensnare, No Gorgon freeze it out of snaky folds, No Siren lull ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... their jet-black pools and purple heath, but lifeless, the color of sackcloth, with the corrupted sea-water soaking through the roots of its acrid weeds, and gleaming hither and thither through its snaky channels. No gathering of fantastic mists, nor coursing of clouds across it; but melancholy clearness of space in the warm sunset, oppressive, reaching to the horizon of its level gloom. To the very horizon, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... were seen this year (1845), mounting upon and twining round the broken shafts of pillars still standing, as if at the command of some invisible jinn; but they were all perfectly harmless. The jugglers were catching them, to exhibit their forky tongues and snaky folds, as venomous and deadly, to the marvel-loving crowd. The lion of The Desert is a myth. The king of beasts never leaves his rich domain, the thick forest and pouring cascade, where water and animals of prey abound, for ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the old frazzled-out rope all hammered in tight, the other man came and brought him something that looked all snaky, and it was shiny like the lead of a pencil, and it waved about as if it were heavy and it seemed to be ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... temple to seat herself on the tripod. She returns full of consternation, and describes what she has seen in the temple: a man, stained with blood, supplicating protection, surrounded by sleeping women with snaky hair; she then makes her exit by the same entrance as she came in by. Apollo now appears with Orestes, who is in a traveller's garb, and carries a sword and olive-branch in his hands. He promises him his farther protection, enjoins ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... gigantic, those things from the morass. They were hideous. They were things out of nightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what might have been gigantic frogs, save that frogs possess no tails. And there were long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vast palpitating bodies following those impossible small brain-cases, and long tapering tails that thrashed mightily as the ghastly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... infidel lady. A magnificent witch she was, like the Lady Geraldine; having the same superb beauty; the same power of throwing spells over the ordinary gazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to some solitary, unfascinated spectator the same dull blink of a snaky eye; and revealing, through the most fugitive of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what else to all others seemed the form of a lady, armed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... dugout, life was speeding up at a dizzying rate. The German artillery had sprung to sudden and wholesale activity. Far to the right of the Here-We-Come regiment's trenches a haze had begun to crawl along the ground and to send snaky tendrils high in air-tendrils that blended into a single grayish-green wall as they moved forward. The hazewall's gray-green was shot by yellow and purple tinges as the sun's weak rays touched it. To the left of the Here-We-Comes, and then in front of them, appeared ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... returned Jennie, who admired John greatly from her lowly sphere, and who for her own sake as well as Dorothy's was jealous of Queen Mary. "They do walk together a great deal on the ramparts, and the white snaky lady do look up into Sir John's face like this"—here Jennie assumed a lovelorn expression. "And—and once, mistress, I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... snaky knife against my stick; he, too, was a big strong man, well skilled in self-defence! Down he went, and I struck him again and again. "O my ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... snaky guest did not serve to hide from my watchful eyes that he was very much surprised when he beheld her. She placed herself near him and spoke in her sweetest, artless manner of the pleasure my return had given her, and of the gratitude she had felt ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... gate, took a flying leap right over the three-headed mastiff, and stood at the door of the palace in an inconceivably short time. The servants knew him both by his face and garb; for his short cloak, and his winged cap and shoes, and his snaky staff had often been seen thereabouts in times gone by. He requested to be shown immediately into the king's presence; and Pluto, who heard his voice from the top of the stairs, and who loved to recreate himself with Quicksilver's merry talk, called out to him to come ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... climb out upon the crest of the dam." 7 "A foraging fish-hawk winging above." 15 "The otter moved with unusual caution." 19 "Suddenly rearing his sleek, snaky body half out of the water." 23 "Poked his head above water." 33 "Sticky lumps, which they could hug under their chins." 41 "Twisted it across his shoulders, and let it drag behind him." 54 "Every beaver now made a ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his own business, but if twenty years o' gamblin' an' meetin' all kinds an' conditions o' men ain't made me as fly as a road-runner, then that there artesian well is spoutin' mint juleps. Say, Miss Donnie, if ever I see a cold-blooded, fishy, snaky, ornery man, it's this T. Morgan Carey—an' at that he's a dead ringer for a church deacon. That Carey man would steal a hot stove without burnin' himself. Now, this young Bob is an impulsive cuss, an' if he has any dealin's of a money nature with this sweet-scented porch- climber that's ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... into the Bois de Boulogne, the snaky lines of sap and trench bring the octopus daily nearer to the doomed modern Babylon. Flash of rifle gun and crack of musketry re-echo in the great park. It is now shorn of its lovely trees, where man and maid so lately held the trysts ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... had changed front with the speed of light and attacked with horse, foot and guns. She failed to see, she had declared, where this poor, lone girt was in great fault. Of course it was probable that she had listened to this snaky. tongued Rufus Coleman, but that was ever the mistake that women made. Oh, certainly ; the professor would like to let Rufus Coleman off scot-free. That was the way with men. They defended each other in all cases. If wrong were done it was the woman ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... up—like a steel gin. And his eye was the true soldier's eye, comprehending by signs, investing with life what was tongueless else. Over great stretches of barren country—that limitless land of France—he could see massed men on the move; creeping forward in snaky columns, spread fanwise from clump to woody clump; here camping snugly under the hill, there lining the river bluffs with winged death; checked here, helped there by a moraine—as well as you or I may foresee the conduct of a chess-board. He omitted nothing, judged times ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... by Danae, from a golden shower: Yet soon,—so mighty is the force of truth,— Acrisius grieves he e'er so rashly brav'd The god; his grandson driving from his court, Disown'd. Now one in heaven is glorious plac'd; The other, laden with the well-known spoil Of the fierce snaky monster, cleaves the air, On sounding pinions. High the victor sails O'er Lybia's desarts, and the gory drops Fall from the gorgon's head; the Ground receives The blood, and warms it into writhing snakes. Hence does the country with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... varmint looks considerable snaky." Then, without removing his glass, he let drop a word at a time, as if the facts were trickling into his telescope at the lens, and out at ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a question of sturdy fighting and squirming one's way through the meshes of a gigantic basketwork of every variety of fantastic branch and stem and stout strangling thorn-set vine, made the denser with snaky roots—not merely twisting about one's feet, but dropping from the boughs in nooses and festoons for one's neck; air-plants too, like birds' nests, further choking up the meshes, and hanging moss, like rotting carpets, adding still more to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... infernal looking eye, that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I have ever seen it; for it haunts me to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... walking straight forward with open front, he undulated along the pavement in a curved line. It may be too fanciful to say that something, either in his moral or material aspect, suggested the idea that a miracle had been wrought by transforming a serpent into a man, but so imperfectly that the snaky nature was yet hidden, and scarcely hidden, under the mere outward guise of humanity. Herkimer remarked that his complexion had a greenish tinge over its sickly white, reminding him of a species of marble out of which he had once wrought a head of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... print frocks, made in the English style, and several of them wore the hibiscus in their shining hair. Some of the older girls were beautiful in face as well as graceful in figure, but there was a snaky undulation about their movements which I never saw among Europeans. All looked bubbling over with fun and frolic, and there was a refinement and intelligence about their expression which contrasted favourably with that of the ordinary female face ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... in Mr. Walker's school library a book, one well known as Mrs. Trimmer's "Natural History." This I read, as usual, thoroughly and often, and wrote my name at the end, ending with a long snaky flourish. Years passed by, and I was at the University, when one evening, dropping in at an auction, I bought for six cents, or threepence, "a blind bundle" of six books tied up with a cord. It was a bargain, for I found in it in good condition the first ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... maid-servants, when I hears the Egyptian say, 'It's gwine beautiful.' 'How?' says t'other. 'He'll nibble like hanything,' was the answer, and then I hearn a nasty sort o' laugh. Soon after, I see you with a bootiful young lady, and I see that hinfidel a-watchin' yer, with a snaky look in his eyes. And so I kep on watchin', and scuse me, yer honour, but I can guess as 'ow things be, and I'm fear'd as 'ow this waccination dodge is a trick ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... fearful meteor, there, Should blaze, and blacken, and create dismay, Shaking fierce furies from its snaky hair; No!—thou should'st light the Nations on their way, And be to them a watchword to fight well; And should they fall, as Poland's patriots fell. Oh! cheer them with their exile-flag unfurl'd, And give them freedom here, in ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... in spring and summer, the trees which mark Box Hill are not box or juniper, but the whitebeams that patch the deeper green of the oaks and beeches with glaucous grey. The box-trees, though their thick, snaky stems look as if they might be any age, are not all of them old. The trees have more than once been cut and sold. Sir Henry Mildmay put them up for auction for L12,000 in 1795 and apparently sold them for L10,000 two years later, with twelve years ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker |
