"Steely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a loving heart; he thinks so now. But one glimpse of Blakely's mother was enough for me. She had a heart of stone; everything about her was militant, uncompromising; her eyes were of a piercing, steely blue; the gowns she wore were insolently elegant; she radiated a superb self-satisfaction. When she looked at you through her lorgnette, you felt as if you were on trial for your life. When she ceased looking, you knew you ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... her hands on her knees. Her gray eyes, warmed almost to blue by joy and tenderness, were steely as ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... and clouds rolled up from the north-west in ragged grey banks which scudded ominously over a cold steely blue sky. For some days the sea had been moderately calm, but it was mid-winter and quiescence of the elements could not be expected to last. Slowly the face of the Atlantic grew lined with white. It began with a moaning wind which soon developed into a stiff gale, accompanied ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... earthly paradise it is, If ye will read aright, and pardon me Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss Midmost the beating of the steely sea, Where tossed about all hearts of men must be, Whose ravening monsters mighty men must slay, Not the poor singer of an ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... Hugh Ritson entered, followed by the lawyer, Mr. Bonnithorne. There was a steely glimmer in his eyes as he stood just inside the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... worked around to circle the huge amphitheater. The way was a steep slant, rough and loose and dragging. The rocks were as hard and jagged as lava, and cactus hindered progress. Soon the rosy and golden lights had faded. All the walls turned pale and steely and the bridge ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent. She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight. The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely eyes were ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or in dryness; for that which comes off Clays, or has been wash'd and damag'd by Rains, requires less time than the dryer Grain that was inned well and grew on Gravels or Chalks; the smooth plump Corn imbibing the water more kindly, when the lean and steely Barley will not so naturally; but to know when it is enough, is to take a Corn end-ways between the Fingers and gently crush it, and if it is in all parts mellow, and the husk opens or starts a little from the body of the Corn, then it is enough: ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... thinking of these things now. The face of the sea was gray in sullen fury. From a blue horizon, dulled and almost obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the vermiculations of a serpent. And the wind, tearing along the floor of the sea, whipped off the wave crests and ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... halting. Her husband, man-like, had deserted her in her hour of utmost need and was fumbling with the door-knob. The steely stare with which the Rev. Cracklethorpe regarded her, instead of chilling her, acted upon her as a spur. It put her on her mettle. He should listen to her. She would make him understand her kindly feeling towards him if she had to take him by the shoulders ...
— The Cost of Kindness - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... Smaller it was than the other, and evidently intended to be placed further out of sight. It was addressed to Kate's father, and her stepmother opened it and read with hard pressure of her thin lips, slanted down at the corners, and a steely look in her eyes. Was it possible that the girl, even in the midst of her treachery, had enjoyed with a sort of malicious glee the thought of her stepmother reading that note and facing the horror of a wedding party with no bride? Knowing her stepmother's ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sense of degradedly diving into heaven which so many have known in so many human houses when they consented to stop to tea or were allowed to stop to supper. The slowly reviving chauffeur was set in the back seat; Turnbull and MacIan had fallen into the middle one; the lady with a steely coolness had taken the driver's seat and all the handles of that headlong machine. A moment afterwards the engine started, with a throb and leap unfamiliar to Turnbull, who had only once been in a motor during ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... There was a hard, calculating light in his eyes—eyes which alternated between a soft, friendly blue and a steely gray. Finally he ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... had heard of Music Halls. A stout lady had denounced them across our dinner table on one occasion—fixing the while a steely eye upon her husband, who sat opposite and seemed uncomfortable—as low, horrid places, where people smoked and drank, and wore short skirts, and had added an opinion that they ought to be put down by the police—whether ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... in finding a place for the tent that evening; the surface was equally hard everywhere, and at last we had to set it on the bare ice. Luckily for our tent-pegs, this ice was not of the bright, steely variety; it was more milky in appearance and not so hard, and we were thus able to knock in the pegs with the axe. When the tent was up, Hassel went out as usual to fetch snow for the cooker. As a rule he performed this task with a big knife, specially made for snow; but this ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... aspect in everything; it is metallic, and everything is made of the same horrible white metal. Nothing seems familiar; not only are the wonted forms and outlines vanished, and all their varied textures and materials and beautiful diversity of color gone also, but there is a steely immobility restraining everything which is so complete that it seems as if it were a shell that could ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Gretzinger from under his bushy eyebrows with a steely glint showing. The lines of ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... the brace, his face was clear, even white, his eyes steely, and he never moved a muscle. When Jo thought it was funny, that he was loose in the pasture, and kicked up a little behind, father gave him a sharp cut with the whip and said: ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... A dragon-fly with steely wings lit upon the trough and, skilled little acrobat, balanced upon the extreme edge as if thus to take in the full ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... into the wood-land, Muckintosh, the great and mighty, Muckintosh, the famous thinker, He whose brain was all his weapons, As against his rival's soarings, High unto the vaulted heavens, Low adown the swarded earth, Rolled he round his gaze all steely, And his voice like music prayed: "Oh, Creator, wondrous Spirit, Thou who hast for us descended In the guise of knowledge mighty, And our brains with truth o'er-flooded; In the greatness of thy wisdom, Knowest not our limitations? Wondrous thoughts have we, thy servants, Wondrous ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... a flattened spindle, carries on the forward half of the lower face a double row of steely spines. The innermost row contains a dozen, alternately long and black and short and green. This alternation of unequal lengths makes the weapon more effectual for holding. The outer row is simpler, having ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... fragments were flying around them in all directions—but with no more noise than is made by so many light flakes of thistle-down floating about some warm afternoon in summer. The blinding, blasting steely white glare of the explosion almost bereft the travellers of the use of their eyesight forever, but no more report reached their ears than if it had taken place at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In an atmosphere like ours, such a crash would have ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... The steely sound of the command moved something in the souls of the soldiers, and took the enjoyment of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of comfort. "That's good—that's what I want," she considered aloud, and sat down once more. And the man lifted a chair to the window where the breeze reached him. Rain was falling now in sheets and the steely light played on his dark face and sombre dress and the sharp white note of his collar. Through the constant rush and patter of the rain the girl's voice went on—a low voice with a note of pleasure and laughter in it which muted with the tragedy of ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... was not at all lightened by the discovery of the flapper in the waiting car. She gave him the little double-nod and regarded him with that peculiar steely kindness he so well remembered. It was undoubtedly kind, that look, yet there was an implacable something in its quality that dismayed him. He wondered what she exactly ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... visible whenever the Princess laid her hand on his head. So that it was as much as the archers of the guard could do to hide their laughter in their beards. But hide it they did, having a wholesome awe of the emerald eyes of their mistress, or perhaps of the steely light which sometimes ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... or eight months of cold, biting, steely frost causes one almost to forget that there ever was such a thing as summer heat, summer scents, summer sounds, or summer skies. The first thaw is therefore like the glad, unexpected meeting of a dear old friend; and the trumpet voice of the first goose, the whirring wing of the first duck, ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... to have collapsed, and the flesh hung flabbily, bulging in deep pouches under the eyes and in loose folds at the corners of the mouth. His head was grizzled an iron-grey but the hair at the temples was white as driven snow. Only his eyes were unchanged. They were the same grey, steely eyes, restless, shifting, unreliable, mirrors of the man's ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... so, Fleming," he added contemptuously. "I've already thrashed you once and I don't care to soil my hands with you again. But I've been aching for months to get my fingers on the man that made me out a liar and a contract-breaker. I have him now," he added, with a steely glance ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... is, as it were, a wild dance of colour in the noble vault, where cold green and pink and crimson wind and flush and softly glide in mystic mazes; and then—the sun! The great flaming disc seems to poise for a little, and all around it—pierced here and there by the steely rays—the clouds hang ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... follow thou; tread down the snow; Leave all the road behind; Heed not the winds that steely blow, Heed not the ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... sibilantly. "Miss Lessing might hear you.... What will happen if you disobey me," he added as the shop girl turned in at the gateway, lowering his own voice and fixing the shipping clerk with a steely stare, "will be another accident, much resembling that of this afternoon—if you haven't forgotten. Now mind what I ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... was a fine type of the American gentleman who is marked by a touch of the old school. There was a clean-cut crispness about him; the white mustache and the hair which matched it looked as if they would crackle if rubbed. His eyes were steely blue, and he held himself very erect as he walked, and he tapped the pavement briskly ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... man, after boring Hiram and then the Cap'n for a time with steely eyes, "I happened to run across one Ferdinand Parrott on the train, and he seemed to have what I've been looking for, a property that I can convert into a sanitarium. My name is Professor Diamond, and I am the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... scarred and wrinkled countenance. A bullet that had pierced his cheek and broken three of his teeth at the battle of Moncontour had left a livid scar that lost itself in his long white beard. His forehead was high and bald, and his eyes were of a steely keenness under their tufted brows. He was dressed with Calvinistic simplicity entirely in black, and just as this contrasted with the King's suit of sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of his countenance contrast with ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... long trouble of it, he painted her a rapt Presence floating evenly to our earth. A grey, translucent sea laps silently upon a little creek, and in the hush of a still dawn the myrtles and sedges on the water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in half tones that he gives us, grey and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness— owls and night hawks and ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor's reprieve in her hand. Looking at it, she wondered why it had ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... on him at a time when he probably hadn't the steely resistance Frenchmen been showing on the West Front. Or, being in a strange country, mebbe he didn't know when politeness to Genevieve May Popper would become mere cowardice. Anyway, he could talk English well enough; and Genevieve May brought him to town ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... now, until two score of heads met in one continued circle, forehead to forehead and ear to ear, whilst in the midst of them an oil lamp flickered low and lit up at fitful intervals the sober, callous faces with the hard mouths and cruel, steely eyes. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... steely look, Miles rose to his feet and stepped back hesitantly. Then, suddenly, he jumped up on the chair, scrambled to the top of the master control panel, and ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... a look that I shall never forget, and the large steely-blue eyes flashed fire, but she spoke no word. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... morning. Great had been the speculation as to whether he would or not. When he stood up in his pulpit and faced the crowded pews and the steely glances of curious eyes through the shifting flutter of fans, he was as austerely composed as ever; but a buzzing whisper went through the audience like a veritable bee of gossip. "He looks dreadful," they hissed in each other's ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... know!" And the wide mouth of her ladyship grew still wider, and the black eyes more steely. "Will Lucy ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... time; Beside him stood a globe, whose figures traced A future empire in each present waste; All former works of men behind him shone Graved by his hand in ever-during stone; On his calm brow a various crown displays The hero's laurel and the scholar's bays; His graceful limbs in steely mail were drest, The bright star burning on his lofty breast; His sword, high waving, flash'd the solar ray. Illumed the shrouds and rainbow'd far the spray; The smiling crew rose resolute and brave, And the glad sails ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... affaire, desirous by some figure and motto to manifest to the world his intent, this figure and motto together is called an impress, made to signify an enterprise, whereat a noble mind levelling with the aime of a deep desire, strives with a steely intent to game the prize of his purpose. For the valiant and hautie gentlemen, disdayning to conjoine with the vile and base plebeians in any rustique invention, have procured to themselves ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... happy exception to its desert neighbors, for it secreted water which had many times saved the lives of men. Last of the cacti to attract Gale, and the one to make him shiver, was a low plant, consisting of stem and many rounded protuberances of a frosty, steely white, and covered with long murderous spikes. From this plant the desert got its frosty glitter. It was as stiff, as unyielding as steel, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... through the open casement. Miss Thorne was very fond of flowers. That was a queer trait in a person who seemed to care so little for persons. There always seemed something frozen about this gray-haired, immobile-faced woman with her stern manner and steely eyes. Sometimes Berta thought of her as like a dying fire ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... for him. Dobigel's hand was a full three inches from Drake's thigh when a set of fingers grasped his wrist in a viselike hold. Steely fingers bit in, pressing nerves against bone. With a gasp, Dobigel opened his hand. A small, metallic cylinder ...
— Heist Job on Thizar • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Texan did not understand. Fraser waited for the officer to develop the object of his visit, and it was set down to his credit. A weaker man would have rushed at once into excuses and explanations. But in the prisoner's quiet, steely eyes, in the close-shut mouth and salient jaw, in the set of his well-knit figure, Sheriff Brandt found small room for weakness. Whoever he was, this man was one who could hold his own in ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... a wave of crimson surged to her face in spite of herself. To hide her confusion she turned her head, and her eyes met those of Amalia, brilliant and steely, as they rested upon her. They looked at each other for an instant. The feline mouth of the Valencian was wreathed in a smile. Fernanda tried to respond by a similar one, but it was a failure. She turned again to the count, and talked of ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... ahead. The gloomy woods on the vast slopes threw a marked shadow over the prospect. Ahead lay a wide vista of tremendous mountains, with their crowning, snow-bound peaks lost in a world of gray, fleecy cloud. In the heart of one distant rift lay the steely bed of a glacier, hoary with age and immovable as the very bedrocks of the mountains themselves. It sloped away into the distance, and lost itself in the heart of a mighty canyon. Even to these men on their trail of death, living, as they did, so adjacent to these ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... soon as I could, however, I covered its inappropriateness with a steely frown. "I do not need to glance at the dictionary to see that you would be a detestable room-mate," said I, "and on second thoughts I prefer to sleep quietly in the stable rather than press my claim here." With this, I turned ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... was a steely glint in Mitchell's eyes which betokened trouble, "I shall send for a locksmith ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... sun rose clear, and revealed the blinking assembly to itself. As soon as it realized that it was a crowd we saw the shiver of horror and mutual repulsion shoot across it precisely as the steely flaws shot across the lake outside. Nothing was said, and, being half blind, of course it moved slowly. Yet in less than fifteen minutes most of that vast multitude—three thousand at the lowest count—melted away like frost on south eaves. The remnant stretched ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... my last look at the gloomy building from the fields which lie between it and the town. The flying afterguard of the late storm was hurrying across the sky, the fields were sodden, and rainpools lay here and there reflecting the dull steely hue of the heavens. A single light burned red and baleful in one window, and right over the black bulk of the gaol one star beamed. It seemed to me like a promise of mercy beyond, and I went back to my hotel filled with thoughts which will hardly ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... him out of his steely blue eyes, but said nothing. He began to understand what Archie was driving at, and a deep disgust for the man before him, who was trying to "put over" this cheap falsehood to "save his face," filled ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... see the bounding barb, Clad like his Chief in steely garb, For warding steel's appliance!— Methinks I hear the trumpet stir! 'Tis but the guard to Exeter, That bugles ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... the star soon turned deep red, and its redness was visibly intensified at each of its recurring minima of light. Blanching, however, ensued upon the development of its nebulous proclivities; and its surviving rays are of a steely hue. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... storm ceased. The rain disappeared with a last futile spray, and the dark clouds overhead parted sullenly to reveal a cold frozen moon of silver. The thousands of tiny aberrations in the tossing wavelets on the ocean's bottom sent steely reflection of the moon's luminescence in sparkling sheens to the Searcher's eyes. For long he hung there motionless, a gaunt shadow peering into the distant darkness of the horizon. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... calm look which seem'd to all assent, And that complacent speech which nothing meant: He'd but one care, and that he strove to hide - How best for Richard Monday to provide. Steel, through opposing plates, the magnet draws, And steely atoms culls from dust and straws; And thus our hero, to his interest true, Gold through all bars and from each trifle drew; But still more surely round the world to go, This fortune's child had neither friend nor foe. Long lost to us, at last our man we trace, - "Sir Richard Monday died ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... her thin, little face to his with an audacious glance, whereat "the strange boy's" eyes dilated with the steely flash which she ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the crowd scattered helter skelter, terrified and desperate. None seemed to have a thought for the miserable man smitten down before their very eyes. All took care to avoid approaching him in their hasty flight. He lay with his face upturned to the steely, pitiless summer sky. A woman coming furtively along with a market basket upon her arm suddenly set up a dolorous cry at sight of him, and setting down her basket ran towards him, the ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the dance was fully in progress, Inspector Kerry walked slowly around the room in the direction of the stair. Parties seated at tables were treated each to an intolerant stare, alcoves were inspected, and more than one waiter meeting the gaze of the steely eyes, felt a prickling of conscience and ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... make him look heroic, With no end of golden braid. Figure sort o' stout and dumpy, Hair and whiskers kind of red, But he's always moving forward, When there's trouble on ahead. Five foot five, of nerve and daring, Eyes pale blue, and steely bright, Not afraid of man or devil, That is Funston in ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... be surprised and flattered, but she gave no indication of being either the one or the other. She fixed her steely blue eyes sternly on the visitor, and inquired stiffly what he thought she wanted a husband for, and what use he reckoned sich-like 'ud be to her. Ted edged his chair yet a little nearer, and thrust forward his face till it was within a ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a third time, speaking in ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... under that steely stare. "I leave it to you, Gov'ner," he continued to stammer at length. "S'y you was me and I was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... the attack, each time to be met by the occupant of the hole. I suspected an English sparrow had taken possession of Downy's cell in his absence during the day, but I was wrong. Downy flew to another branch, and I tossed up a stone against the one that contained the hole, when, with a sharp, steely note, out came a hairy woodpecker and alighted on a near-by branch. Downy, then, had the "cheek" to try to turn his large rival out of doors—and it was Hairy's cell, too; one could see that by the size of the entrance. Thus loosely ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... cry, appeared on the stairway. For a moment her eyes refused to grasp the scene before them; Conward cowering, terror-stricken; Dave fierce, steely, implacable, with his revolver lined on Conward's brain. Through some strange whim of her mind her thought in that instant flew back to the bottles on the posts of the Elden ranch, and Dave breaking five out of six on the gallop. Then, suddenly, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... there in the cool of the day. I went down the path leading to the stream on the east side of the garden, brushing aside the rockets that were bending across it drowsy with dew, the larkspurs on either side of me rearing their spikes of heavenly blue against the steely blue of the sky, and the huge poppies like splashes of blood amongst the greys and blues and faint pearly whites of the innocent, new-born day. On the garden side of the stream there is a long row of silver birches, and on the other side a rye-field reaching ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... and they were both older and both in their prime. And the two did not speak to each other, but were silent with their thoughts. And when I looked up the sky was grey, and the two walked up the white castle-stairway, and she was full of indifference, yes full of hate in her steely eyes, and when I looked for the third time I saw also anger and hate in his glance, and his hair was grey like the ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... curious, there is a species of diluted Indian-hater, one whose heart proves not so steely as his brain. Soft enticements of domestic life too, often draw him from the ascetic trail; a monk who apostatizes to the world at times. Like a mariner, too, though much abroad, he may have a wife and family in some green harbor which he does not forget. It is with him ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... steely ring to her tones as she said the words, and the glance of her eyes was both ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... baths in all, natural basins of rock fed by streams of mountain water, and shaded by the dense foliage of lofty trees. One of them is circular in form, and the water is curiously coloured, by some trick of reflection or refraction, to a dull steely blue. A plunge in the clear cool water was well worth the trifling fee we paid to the celestial, and we returned to our hotel with a famous appetite ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... unavenged the wrongs which my father's family has suffered at your hands. Be careful how you hinder my going." The doctor, apparently inferring from the bitter tone of the young man, and the hard, steely gleam in his blue eyes, that perhaps there was something to be considered in his last words turned his horse's head, without a word, and went away like the two ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... so relieved to know that my boy can have a wife from his own class—and still have it right up there—with Him, you know!" she concluded with an upward glance, as Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost steely—watched her as one might watch an ant. She had the look of one whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... spare clothing—was wet also, but the rain was no longer beating down on the canvas. The air inside the tent was pervaded by a foul, acrid stench. I threw the flap aside and looked out. The vast expanse of steely blue was dotted with glittering stars and on the eastern horizon it merged into a faint pallor. The air was deliciously fresh. We got up one by one, yawning, groaning and grumbling, and dressed and went ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... dark-brown horse, fully caparisoned in the Spanish fashion. His garb was of buckskin, but plain and devoid of ornamentation. A wide hat swept over his well-tanned face, and from beneath its brim there shone the steely glance of gray-blue eyes. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... brand-new home—and it was one of those foot-hill late afternoons that make you think of the same old razor-blade muffled up in the same old panne-velvet, an evening of softness shot through with a steely sharpness. There was a Chinook arch of Irish point-lace still in the sky, very much like the one I had left behind me, and the sky itself was a canopy of robin-egg blue crepe de ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... in in his steely voice: "If you do not throw out these women, Puma, we fix them and your hall and you—all at one time, my friend. Also! Iss it then for February the first, our understanding? Or iss it, a little later, the end ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... calls was made about four o'clock in the morning, in the steely light of dawn. Lucifer was fading into day across Durnover Moor, the sparrows were just alighting into the street, and the hens had begun to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of Farfrae's ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "Ja wohl!—ja wohl!" he went on chuffily, summing up: latent fever,—the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he would go,—oui?—then go!"—with a chuckle. "All right, gluck Zu!" And so shuffled out. Latent fever? ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... hatches were at last taken off, and they were permitted once more to go on deck. Grey was the prevailing colour. The great seas, which seemed unable to recover from the wild turmoil into which they had been lashed, were of a cold greenish grey, flecked and tipped with white. The sky was steely grey with clouds that verged on black; and both were so mingled together that it seemed as if the little vessel were imbedded in the very heart of a drizzling, ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... breast-plates had begun to tighten, a thunderstorm came up behind, rolling across the low hills and drowning any noise less than that of cannon. The first flash of the lightning showed the bare ribs of the ascent, thc hill-crest standing steely-blue against the black sky, the little falling lines of the rain, and, a few yards to their left flank, an Afghan watch-tower, two-storied, built of stone, and entered by a ladder from the upper story. The ladder was up, and a man with a rifle was ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... winced at these words, but meeting Peter's steely gaze and realizing his power over her, ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... extraordinary in the presence of the illustrious Delobelle at a cafe concert, as he spent all his evenings away from home; and yet the old cashier felt vaguely disturbed, especially when he discovered in the same row a blue cape and a pair of steely eyes. It was Madame Dobson, the sentimental singing-teacher. The conjunction of those two faces amid the pipe-smoke and the confusion of the crowd, produced upon Sigismond the effect of two ghosts evoked by a bad ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... it were he, seemed afflicted with a sudden shortsightedness. He met the incredulous gaze both of Lessingham and his wife without recognition or any sign of flinching. At that distance it was impossible to see the tightening of his lips and the steely flash ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... A thousand steely points on every scale Form the bright terrors of his bristly male.— 165 So arm'd, immortal Moore uncharm'd the spell, And slew the wily dragon of the well.— Sudden with rage their injur'd bosoms burn, Retort the insult, or the wound return; Unwrong'd, as gentle as the breeze that sweeps ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... of anatase crystals may be distinguished. The commoner occurs as simple acute double pyramids {111} (fig. 1) with an indigo-blue to black colour and steely lustre. Crystals of this kind are abundant at Le Bourg d'Oisans in Dauphine, where they are associated with rock-crystal, felspar and axinite in crevices in granite and mica-schist. Similar crystals, but of microscopic size, are widely distributed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... garments of a cornfield scarecrow and Mr. Luther Barr's sharp features were not improved by a small growth of gray hair; of the kind known as a "goatee" that sprouted from his lower rip. For the rest of the boys noticed that Mr. Barr was gifted with a singularly gimlet-like pair of steely blue eyes that seemed to bore ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... lifetime at the Treasury, recognised her type immediately. She was of the type that wheedles, but never permits itself to be wheedled. And she was so pretty, and so simpering, and her blue eyes were so steely. And Mr. Prohack, in his original sinfulness, was pleased that she was thus. He felt that "it would serve Softly Bishop out." Not that Mr. Softly Bishop had done him any harm! Indeed the contrary. But he had an antipathy to Mr. Softly Bishop, and the spectacle of ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... cold, still afternoon with a hard, steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... newcomer, whose present was a thing that none ever saw sufficient reason to question, and whose future suggested nothing so much as the general uncertainty of things human. He was a man of harsh exterior and, apparently, harsh purpose. His eyes were steely and his tongue ironical; he possessed muscles of iron and a knowledge of poker and all its subtleties that had never yet failed him. He was a dead shot with a pistol, and, in consequence, fear and respect were laid at his feet ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... calling themselves "enfants de Dieu." Bending out from the front seat of the motor, my gaze plunged far down into the beds of foaming rivers, or soared far up to the dazzling white world of snow and steely sky toward which we steadily forged on. Oh, there was no hope of hiding the snow now from those whom it might concern! But Lady Turnour still believed, perhaps, that ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... point the lake could be seen, a steely blue line on the horizon. But it rained on Sunday, and the visitors arrived so bedraggled by the storm that their feast seemed doomed. Sommers produced a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and they warmed and cheered themselves. The Baking Powder clerk grew loquacious first. The Baking Powder ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... green sky is gleaming; The steely stars are few; The moorland pond is steaming A ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... a magnificent specimen of man, No, rather, he is a man whose like I have never yet seen among the living. He is in the Belvedere, graven in marble, with the same slender, yet steely musculature, with the same face and the same waving curls. What makes him particularly beautiful is that he is beardless. If his hips were less narrow, one might take him for a woman in disguise. The curious expression about the mouth, the lion's lip which slightly discloses ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... have a chromo that comes with soap, myself," said Bert. "Its cold steely look only adds to that hygienic and sanitary aspect Dot detected. It makes me homesick for ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... and pines growing up to the border of the amphitheatre on all sides; blackberry vines and sumach bushes overran the gradines almost to the margin of the pool which filled the centre; at the edge of the water some clumps of willow and white birch leaned outward as if to mirror their tracery in its steely surface. But of the life that the thing inarticulately recorded, there was ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... way," she repeated. "They have left me but one weapon, and it's for my life;" and the lips set themselves in hard lines, and the dark eyes looked steely and resolute. What wild purpose was taking shape in the tortured brain of Sybil Burrill? planted there by the impulsive ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... floor, and its broad window of plate glass looked over the roofs of the town. Beyond them stretched a wooded landscape in which the last fires of sunset were picking out a steely gleam. Charity gazed at the gleam with startled eyes. Even through the gathering twilight she recognized the contour of the soft hills encircling it, and the way the meadows sloped to its edge. It was Nettleton Lake that she was ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... a pin about—either of us. You've got plenty to do with, and nothing to spend it on. I can't get myself out of their way by dying without going against what's Scripture and proper, but——" Her steely calm broke. She burst out in a screaming, hysterical voice: "You've just got to, Emma Hulett! You've just got to! If you don't I won't never go back to 'Niram's house! I'll lie in the ditch by the roadside till the poor-master ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... under way again, proceeding carefully, so as not to raise the dust, and headed due southwest. Scantier and scantier grew the grass; the hollows were washes of sand; steely gray dunes, like long, flat, ocean swells, ribbed the prairie. The gray day declined. Late into the purple night they traveled, then ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... ammunition dump and exploded. In an instant the whole dump was alight. It was like some terrible and giant display of pyrotechnics. Gas shells, Verey lights, and stink bombs filled the air with their nauseous odors. Shells of all sizes blew up and fell in steely splinters. The noise was deafening. Cursing our luck, we waited until it died down into a red, smouldering mass, and then edged up cautiously to continue our work. By this time, Borwick's tank came up, and he emerged, with a broad ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... rotisserie, before whose upright fender of scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a shiny brown. In a furrier's window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts of "awful brave convicks"; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses, just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear (meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the igloo at night). And the florists! There were orchids that (though he only half ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... by contrast with the yellow rays from the candle against the wall. Elfride, timidly shrinking back, and nearest the entrance, received most of the light therefrom, whilst Stephen was entirely in candlelight, and to him the spot of outer sky visible above the steps was as a steely blue patch, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... huge awful tract of forest, And you must have felt some doubt of your chance of winning out Of all perils when your need was at the sorest. Mortal sickness now and then, and the pranks of lesser men, Must have tried your iron health and steely temper. But, like SCIPIO of old, you 're as patient as you're bold, And you turn up tough and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... flashed out and grasped the other's wrist in a steely grip. The medic's fingers tightened on the needle-beam, and managed to pull the trigger. A bright beam flared briefly against the lab's plastalloy floor, doing nothing but scorching it slightly. Wayne's other ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... of those glances that intoxicate like wine. They were quite near the bridge now, all rosy under the setting sun. The river looked motionless and steely throughout its sinuous length. Reeds swayed and shivered on the banks, and some stakes, fixed in the clay of the river-bed to fasten nets, shook with ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... my hands," directed he. I did so; his palms flew into the air; and with a steely snap the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... band, With the arm of fight and fire; Strike fast for God and Fatherland, For mother, and wife, and sire. Though thunders roar and lightnings flash, Oh! Southrons, never fear, Ye shall turn the bolt with the sabre's clash, And the shaft with the steely spear. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... lands between the Brezon and the Mole. With each mile, now, the landscape took on new beauty and wildness. The superb mountains—some with cloudy white turrets, some thrusting out huge snow-powdered prongs, and others tapering to steely dagger-points—hemmed them in on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... certain cloying sweetness, however. The dancing is as graceful as the pudgy little bodies of the women are capable of achieving—a little more pleasing than the capering of a butcher's block, but not quite so much so as that of a wash tub. Its greatest merit is the steely rigor of its decorum. The dancers, however, like ourselves, are a shade less appallingly proper off the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... raising his head simply, with a steely gleam in his eyes that matched the other's, "when I try to cheat you or Lewiston or any man out of what has been put up on me, I'll give you leave to say what you please. At present ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... making a low inarticulate whimper like a frightened child. Miss Higglesby-Browne seemed to have petrified. Her skin had a withered look, and a fine network of lines showed on it, suddenly clear, like a tracery on parchment. Beyond her I saw the face of Dugald Shaw, gray with a steely wrath. A gun had been trained anew on him and Cuthbert, and the bearer thereof was arguing with them profanely. I suppose the prisoners had threatened outbreak at the spectacle of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... valley, it is always filled from end to end with beauty, ever changing, perishing, ever renewing itself. In spring the copse is full of tender points of green, uncrumpling and uncurling. The hyacinths make a carpet of steely blue, the anemones weave their starred tapestry. In the summer, the grove hides its secret, dense with leaf, the heavy-seeded grass rises in the field, the tall flowering plants make airy mounds of colour; in autumn, the woods blaze with ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... present I can't hear you, but maybe if you said it outside I could," the deputy suggested gently, a gleam of steely anger ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... golden grain roll in successive undulations to the mighty Ganges, the sacred stream of the Hindoos. Innumerable villages, nestling amid groves of plantains and feathery rustling bamboos, send up their wreaths of pale grey smoke into the still warm air. At frequent intervals the steely blue of some lovely lake, where thousands of water-fowl disport themselves, reflects from its polished surface the sheen of the noonday sun. Great masses of mango wood shew a sombre outline at intervals, and here and there the towering chimney of an indigo factory pierces the sky. Government ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... she! what am I! those are the arms That are triumphant when the battle fails. O Julian, Julian! all thy former words Struck but the imbecile plumes of vanity; These, through its steely coverings, pierce the heart. I ask not life nor death; but, if I live, Send my most bitter enemy to watch My secret paths, send poverty, send pain - I will add more—wise as thou art, thou knowest No foe more furious than forgiven kings. I ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... fiercely hurling spears on spears, From right to left he wheeled; Thrice, facing round as he careers, The steely grove the Trojan bears, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... he not dress in plain black, without any jewelry? He certainly did. Did he not have those long, slender, flexible fingers? Such was, indeed, the correct description of those fingers. Was not his eye a keen steely-blue eye that seemed to have the power of looking right through you? Steely-blue was the right word, all right. Well, then, what more ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... made no answer. The thoughtful expression on his pale, care-worn face showed that he was thinking hard. What was passing in his mind no one knew, but whatever it was it caused the lines about his strong mouth to tighten and the steely blue eyes to flash. A million dollars? God! What will a man not do for a million dollars? Turning to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... played with the tattered flags of the palms, leaving openings here and there that exposed the steely-white glare of the sky, and showed, far away to the northward, the denuded red dome ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had none of that fatal folly in him. He was a mountaineer of Vermont—a man of steely sinews that took well to the grip of a sword. He cut his way to fame in the Northern army when the British came first to give us battle, and a bloody way it was. I have now a faded letter from Ethan Allen, grim old warrior, in which he calls my father "the best swordsman that ever straddled ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller |
