"Clawed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the time, night-work, up forward, in clay so glutinous it would not leave the shovels and had mainly to be clawed out by hand—filthy, back-breaking, heart-rending labour. On calling the roll one dawn I found that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... out by Oswald lying flat on his front on the top barrel, and the Dentist clawed himself up by Oswald's hands while the others kept hold of the boots of the representative of the house of Bastable, which, of course, Oswald is, whenever Father ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... a boy of about twelve, propelled. Mother and baby sat on a mattress, high up, while two ragged girls and another boy hopped about where they could and shouted with excitement. As soon as the Rio di S. Trovaso was entered the oarsmen gave up rowing and clawed their way along the wall. Moving has ever been a delight to English children, the idea of a change of house being eternally alluring, but what would they not give to make the exchange of ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... a whip came the certainty that he was thinking of the Honorable Cuthbert, and that I was the rock on which their David-and-Jonathan friendship might split. Otherwise I suppose Miss Higglesby-Browne and I might have clawed each other forever ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... caught in a storm 'way up in the hills. When it rains in my part of Arizona, which ain't often, it sure does come down in sheets. The clay below the rubble on the slopes got slick as ice. My hawss, a young one, slipped and fell on me, clawed back to its feet, and bolted. Well, there I was with my laig busted, forty miles from even a whistlin' post in the desert, gettin' wetter and colder every blessed minute. Heaps of times in my life I've felt more comfortable than I did right then. I was ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... in wicked joy, He snaps his muzzle in the snows, His five-clawed feet Do scamper fleet Where Jane's bright lanthorn shows, Where ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... distance above her ears, I descried a smart brown bob, from beneath which had escaped some long strands of original scarlet—so like old Sarazin at two in the morning, when she has been losing at Pharoah, and clawed her wig aside, and her old trunk is shaded with the venerable white ivy ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... concluded; and it would stand to reason that such a hole might be somewhere near here. I'm a little anxious, because I've had an experience myself with such a sucker-hole, and came near losing my life in one. I managed to get hold of rocks on the bottom, and clawed my way outside the terrible suction that was drawing me steadily in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... great stress being laid upon a good sitting-room (in case the important friend should call), and I unpacked as usual. When my work was done, I asked her ladyship's permission to go out for a little while. She looked suspicious, clawed her brains for an excuse to refuse, but, as there wasn't a buttonless glove, or a holey stocking among the party, she reluctantly gave me leave. I darted away, plunged into the forest, and did not stop walking until I had got well out of sight of the hotel. Then I sat down on ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... go to patting them, or you'll get your hands clawed up. Tigers do purr like fun when they are happy, but these fellers never are, and you'll only see 'em spit and snarl," said Ben, leading the way to the humpy carrels, who were peacefully chewing their cud and ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... Shag was upon the fighters—only just in time, for Muskwa had A'tim in his long-clawed grasp, and in another instant would have crushed his Dog ribs. And in the succession of surprises one came to Muskwa with vivid suddenness, for he was lifted on a pair of strong horns, like a Cub, and thrown with great speed far ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... the spaniel was in her lap, her arms were about its neck, and she was pressing her soft, red lips to its head. The dog received these demonstrations of affection with delight; although it pawed and clawed the only decent frock which Mavis possessed, she did not ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... eh? By my dying declaration? Then I tell you 'tis fairer to judge a man by anything sooner than his speech. That only serves to hide what he's thinking. I wish I might be judged by mine, though, and not by my deeds. I've done a good many things in my time I would rather forget, now age has clawed me in his clutch. So have you; so has everybody. I don't see why I should ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... ease now, and more than ever in the mood for joyous company, Gonzague turned to re-enter the supper-room, but the hunchback clawed at him and brought him to a halt. Gonzague stared at his follower in a bewilderment which the hunchback proceeded partially to enlighten. "You have ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with a quaking heart to temptation, I leaned inside the vacant room, and dropped Florabella in the centre of the old lady's ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... waited for the wind to break. But at three o'clock she was in such a stupor that she did not know. Nor did she know at six o'clock when the dead calm settled down. She was shocked into consciousness when she was thrown upon the sand. She dug in with raw and bleeding hands and feet and clawed against the backwash until she was beyond ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... love she had not won by the use of this talisman. From the old lady to the lowest dependent of her bounty, Laura had secured the good-will and kindness of every body. With a mistress of such a temper, my lady's woman (who had endured her mistress for forty years, and had been clawed and scolded and jibed every day and night in that space of time), could not be expected to have a good temper of her own; and was at first angry against Miss Laura, as she had been against her ladyship's fifteen preceding companions. But when Laura was ill at ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nausea, Wilson clawed his way across the floor, swung open the laboratory door and stumbled outdoors. He weaved across the lawn and clung ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... beggar-children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw—the very same that had clawed together so much wealth—poked itself out of the coach window, and dropped some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems to have been Gathergold, he might just as ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of the good deacon to Boston,—as he was about to return home, he goes to the bridge and bargains for two live lobsters, fine, active, lusty-clawed fellows, alive and kicking, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... tube before him in a short half-circle. A smoking gash appeared suddenly in the vast fore-quarters of the monster. It stopped abruptly, its clawed feet plowing along the ground with the force of its momentum. An instant it stood there. Then, with its head swinging from side to side and lowered so that its looped neck dragged on the reddish, dusty ground, it began to back ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... their walk; wood- peckers fly volatu undoso, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. All of this genus use their tails, which incline downward, as a support while they run up trees. Parrots, like all other hook-clawed birds, walk awkwardly, and make use of their bill as a third foot, climbing and ascending with ridiculous caution. All the gallinae parade and walk gracefully, and run nimbly; but fly with difficulty, with an impetuous whirring, and in a straight line. Magpies and jays flutter with powerless wings, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... in blows that started from the floor was new to these lean creatures that clawed and clung like cats. But they trampled on those who went down before the flyer's blows and stood upon them to spring at his head; they crowded in in overwhelming numbers while their red hands tore and twined ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... our dress suits for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cushiony cactus and tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless pit. Humph! That's what you call Santa Fe! 'The city of the Holy Faith!' Well, I need a darned ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... gray rat dart across the floor with a good sized twig in its mouth. Jack kept perfectly still and the little fellow, not even seeing him, continued its way across the floor to the bunk on which sat Jack beside the doll clothes. It clawed its way up the side of the bunk, dropped the twig, then selected a soft, woolly skirt. Then it turned and scampered away through the door and out ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster
... silence; Butler's black eyes were almost starting from his bloodless visage; the hag, Montour, clawed the air ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife, without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done would have been slight, compared to that of letting him have his ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... evidences that he owed his being to the love of the god of the lake for one wearing the human form. He was shaped like a man—that is, he stood upright, and his feet and hands, and legs and arms, were fashioned like those of an Ottawa, save that the former were flat, and webbed and clawed like the paws of a white beaver(2). The head, which was placed upon a pair of shoulders similar to those of a man, resembled more nearly those heads which the hunter sees looking out of the cabins of the cunning little people[A] than the heads of men. It was shaped very nearly ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... half its length; and Norah, taken altogether by surprise, executed a graceful header over the bow of the boat. The mud received her softly, and clung to her with affection; and for a moment, face downward among the reeds, Norah clawed for support, like a crab suddenly beached. Then, somehow, she scrambled to a sitting position, up to her waist in mud and water—and rocked with laughter. A little way off, the boat swayed gently on the ruffled ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... clawed at the noose around his neck; he tugged at the rope, he took a little slack, and half sitting up, gnawed at it. But it was green buffalo-hide, as thick as his thumb, and he might as well have gnawed wire cable. His teeth did not even break ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... perceived that if I wanted to keep awake and alive I must get a light or open a window, so as to get a grip of something with my eyes. And besides, I was cold. I kicked off from the bale, therefore, clawed on to the thin cords within the glass, crawled along until I got to the manhole rim, and so got my bearings for the light and blind studs, took a shove off, and flying once round the bale, and getting ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... a strut while he stared fascinatedly in the direction Johnny had indicated. "Git in, bo, and we'll beat it. She may have power enough to hop us outa this death trap. We can come down somewheres else." He clawed ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... imparted to them by their exceedingly powerful bows, the arrows must have completely buried themselves in the monster's eyeball. At all events it was perfectly evident that the missiles had got home somewhere, for the huge creature was now rolling and bellowing in agony, as it clawed frantically at its eyes with its immense feet. It was a distressing sight to see such an enormous animal suffering so intensely, so presently Phil and Dick ran out, put fresh arrows to their bows, and stood at a distance of about a dozen paces from the beast, watching for an ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... then conscious that she was naked, clawed up the sheet; in a minute I was close to her. She went across to her own room to piddle, then into bed again she got, and in spite of her I put it into her. I felt the cunt tightening, looked at her: her manner was different, I felt her clasping me, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... your mother, without making any impertinent remarks about 'gammon and spinach' on the way, or something much more savage than the 'lily-while duck' will surely gobble you up! Stay in doors patiently, until sunrise sends the rough-clawed prowler back ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... came Mr Jacob Bumble, a sleek fat— pated Scotchman. Next I was introduced to Mr Alonzo Smoothpate, a very handsome fellow, with an uncommon share of natural good—breeding and politeness. Again I clapper—clawed, according to the fashion of the country, a violent shake of the paw being the Jamaica infeftment to acquaintanceship, with Mr Percales, whom I took for a foreign Jew somehow or other at first, from his uncommon name, until I heard him speak, and perceived he was an Englishman; ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the lurid light; and he knew his father and "the Wretch," and "the Wretch" knew him. "Oh!" "Ah!" passed like pistol shots; but not a word: even this strange meeting went for little, so awful was the moment, so great are Death and Fire. Edward clawed his rope to the bed; up to the window by it, dropped his line to fireman Jackson planted express below, and in another moment was hauling up a rope ladder: this he attached, and getting on it and holding his own rope by way of banister, cried, "Now, men, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Fingers clawed at the bolt, but it would not slip. Through all the horrible sounds the woman made, Sheila could hear the snarling and leaping and snapping of the dogs. She dashed to the small, tight window, broke a pane with her fist, and thrust ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... work was going badly. Perhaps seeing Mason had brought it to a head. The fifth of bourbon in the bottom desk drawer was partly gone from the party last month. He took a swallow neat, and the fire of the liquid burned and clawed its way down his throat and spread with blossoming warmth in ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... It's a domned purposeful rig, mon. The big felt hat is a daisy for keepin' off the sun, an' that gaudy bit av a rag around his neck keeps the sun and sand from blisterin' the skin. The leather pants is to keep his legs from gettin' clawed up be the thorns av prickly pear an' what not, which he's got to ride through, an' the high heels is to keep his feet from slippin' through the stirrups. A kid c'ud tell ye what he carries the young cannon for, an' why he wears it so low on his hip. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... with my own eyes. That mounseer chap had divided his dinner with the bear one day; the greedy baste had swallowed his own share, and was watching his master out of them cunning eyes bears has. Of a suddent he clawed away the victuals and bolted them; then there was a shriek from poor Frenchy, and we all saw as the bear had him in a grim death-hug. I tell you it took a few Northbourne men to separate them two, and when 'twas done, I don't forget ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... quarantine. The folks died in piles and de coffins was piled as high as a house. They buried them in trenches, and later they dug graves and buried them. When they got to looking into the coffins, they discovered some had turned over in dey coffins and some had clawed dey eyes out and some had gnawed holes in dey hands. Dey ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... as I could be; a few rags held together, but my shirt was gone, with the exception of some shreds that adhered to my arms. I was, of course, streaming with blood, and looked much more as though I had been clawed by a leopard than as having simply charged a bush. The camel had fallen down with the shock after I had been swept off by the thorny branches. To this day I have ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... night, and next day was taken to a place where a portcullis was lifted up, and the monster rushed forth. He was a mixture of hog and serpent, larger than an ox, and not to be looked at without horror. He had eyes like a traitor, the hands of a man, but clawed, a beard dabbled with blood, a skin of coarse variegated colours, too hard to be cut through, and two horns on his temples, which he could turn on all sides of him at his pleasure, and which were so sharp that they cut ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... sent it flying, and entering, saw Niccolosa astride of Calandrino. The former, seeing the lady, started up in haste and taking to flight, made off to join Filippo, whilst Dame Tessa fell tooth and nail upon Calandrino, who was still on his back, and clawed all his face; then, clutching him by the hair and haling him hither and thither, 'Thou sorry shitten cur,' quoth she, 'dost thou then use me thus? Besotted dotard that thou art, accursed be the weal ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hindrance and another, it was almost a quarter past five before daylight began to glimmer in the parlour. It found him on his knees—not in prayer, nor in thanksgiving, but eagerly feeling over the grey pile of rubbish and digging into it with clawed fingers. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... The American clawed at the edge of the massive frame, but all to no avail. Then he raised his sword and slashed the canvas, hoping to find a way into the place beyond, but mighty oaken panels barred his further progress. With a whispered oath he turned ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who, in standing up, had overset her heavy chair, and, falling to her knees, she babbled out—'Your cousin! Oh, let it not all come again. Call your guard. Let it not all come again'; and she clawed into the Queen's skirt, uttering ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... not dead, and daylight hath broken. Hold up thy face to the sky, man, and say 'I WILL win through this, so help me God!' and having said it, stick to it, even as Nero would have stuck to yon lion's throat until he was clawed away in shreds. Come, try ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the senses, like the brief numbness that follows the sudden cutting off of a limb, the pain not manifesting itself until some time afterward. But with me, the fact of Jim's death clawed and tore at the very foundation of my brain. It stamped itself into my sensibilities with such crushing force that I writhed under the burden of its bitter actuality. I felt as though I, myself, had died and my spirit, snatched ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... have clawed 'em a bit," admitted the man with the gun. "And perhaps it's jest as well I come along when I did. You folks live around here? Don't seem like ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... My fingers clawed futilely at the unyielding portal, while my eyes sought in vain for a duplicate of the button ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she contracted a bigamous marriage with a youthful officer, and within two weeks they fled to Spain for safety from the law. Her husband was drowned, and she made still another marriage. She visited Australia, and at Melbourne she had a fight with a strapping woman, who clawed her face until Lola fell fainting to the ground. It is a squalid record of horse-whippings, face-scratchings—in ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... a patrician. Omar Ben eyed him in a sort of wondering awe. The stranger was a long-barreled, rumple-furred, devil-clawed street arab, of a caste—or no-caste—that battles for existence with the world—and beats it. On his tail were rings of missing fur, suggesting former attachments, not of lady friends, but of tin cans and strings. For further assets, he possessed one eye and a twisted ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... in we fought against solid walls of black snow which flowed past us and tried to hurl us down the slope. Once started nothing could have stopped us. I saw Birdie knocked over once, but he clawed his way back just in time. Having passed everything we could find in to Bill, we got back into the igloo, and started to collect things together, including ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... with the milk of camels, asses, sheep, and goats, all mixed together, was suspended to the ridge pole of a tent, and then swung to and fro by a child, until the butter was produced. The milk was then poured off, and the butter clawed out of the skin by the black dirty ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... roar and scramble, that outdid everything that had gone before, and a surging mass of struggling men and boys covered the apples. They threw themselves upon each other's backs. They clawed like wild-cats, barked like wolves. They kicked each other out of the way, and scratched and mauled each other, crushing hats, tearing coats, bruising shins. As fast as one man filled his hands or arms ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... very slippery indeed. He tried first with one hand, then with the other, and at last with both. It was of no use at all. He just couldn't budge that fish. He couldn't cough it up, because it had gone too far down for that. The more he clawed at that waving tail with his hands, the funnier he looked, and the harder Little Joe Otter and Billy Mink and Jerry Muskrat laughed. They made such a noise that Spotty the Turtle, who had been taking a sun-bath on the end of an old log, slipped into the water and ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... followed by another, equally crushing; long, white teeth set in wide-open jaws flashed for an instant ere they met to sever the mutilated head from the quivering body. In a moment the snake had been clawed and mauled into a mass of pulp, and leaving it where it lay Suma hastened to the side of the now wide awake Warruk. She pushed him over gently with her nose, licked his face and sides, grunted with satisfaction and then curled up ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... pressure, or dexterity and tact in motion. And as the actions of the foot and the hand in man are made by every great painter perfectly expressive of the character of mind, so the expressions of rapacity, cruelty, or force of seizure, in the harpy, the gryphon, and the hooked and clawed evil spirits of early religious art, can only be felt by extreme attention to the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... that has happened to yourself or to someone in your family, and you will capture their interest at once. They will talk about you with a certain personal pride to all their acquaintances. 'Man I know intimately, fellow called Blenkinthrope, lives down my way, had two of his fingers clawed clean off by a lobster he was carrying home to supper. Doctor says entire hand may have to come off.' Now that is conversation of a very high order. But imagine walking into a tennis club with the remark: 'I know a man who has grown ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... has bell-shaped flowers, arranged in short-branched panicles, each flower 3/4in. across, and sometimes, when well expanded, quite an inch; the colour is a delicate pink-tinted white; petals obovate and concave, inserted in the calyx, clawed, sometimes notched and even lobed; stamens long as petals, inserted in throat of calyx, stout, green changing to pink; anthers large and brick red when young; styles massive, joining close together, turgid, nearly long as stamens, and pale green; stigmas, ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... curving back her trunk and "roomping" out the perturbation of her spirit, she reared on her hind-legs, boosted herself upon the roof of the house, and clawed aft. This auto-shifting of cargo lifted the bow of the little schooner. Her jibs, swashing soggily about her bow, were hoisted out of the water, and a gust bellied them. On the pivot of her buried stern the Dobson swung like a top just as twin ledges ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... like to feel a sovereign—just to feel it," muttered Simon, in a sort of apologetic tone, that was really pathetic; and as Vaudemont scattered some coins on the table, the old man clawed them up, chuckling and talking to himself; and, rising with great alacrity, hobbled out of the room like a raven carrying some ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Meyers' hands were peculiar hands for a fat man. They were tapering, slender, delicate, blue-veined, temperamental hands. At this moment, despite his purpling face, and his staring eyes, they were the most noticeable thing about him. His fingers clawed the empty air, quivering, vibrant, as though poised to ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... not tell them yours is not of gold; so do not be afraid;" and off she went, leaving his majesty in a very uneasy state of mind. But he had nothing to fear from her, for although she did not cry, "Vive l'Empereur!" when he skated gorgeously by, she never revealed the fact that he was only a long-clawed griffin. ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... from behind greeted the proud thought; two hands clawed at his shoulders, and from his shoulders slipped to his waist, and from his waist slid down to his ankles, where for a moment they held, and sent the runner tripping over on his nose in the mud, with the ball spinning away ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... I came to an abrupt standstill, and the cry of some hunted animal burst from my lips. Unwittingly I had run against a huge wall of granite, and escape was now impossible. Again and again I clawed the hard rock, until the skin hung in shreds from my fingers, and the blood pattered on the dark soil, that in all probability had never tasted moisture before. All this amused my pursuer vastly; it watched with the leisure of one who knows its fish will be landed ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his movements a bit ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... great building was so remarkable, but as a channel or a river- course for the flooding freshets of corn. It is so built that both railway vans and vessels come immediately under its claws, as I may call the great trunks of the elevators. Out of the railway vans the corn and wheat is clawed up into the building, and down similar trunks it is at once again poured out into the vessels. I shall be at Buffalo in a page or two, and then I will endeavor to explain more minutely how this is done. At Chicago the corn is bought and does change hands; and much of it, therefore, is stored ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... clawed his way through the undergrowth, and when he was certain that the creepers had completely veiled him from the eyes of watchers on the yacht he picked up a small flat stone from the ground, drew a yachting knife from ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Melissa clawed past him with all six legs. Sacharissa had run to what was left of the fertile brood-comb. "Down and out!" she called across the brown breadth of it. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... some assistance from Harriet, who clawed at the roots of the tree and pushed with her hands until she finally got to the top once more. Reaching there she got up and surveyed ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... The bear clawed the bark a little while, as a cat is sometimes seen to do when "stretching" herself, and it was during these few minutes that the girl thought nothing could save her ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... art; I first discerned Which of night's visions hold a truth for day, I read for them the lore of mystic sounds, Inscrutable before; the omens seen Which bless or ban a journey, and the flight Of crook-clawed birds, did I make clear to man— And how they soar upon the right, for weal, How, on the left, for evil; how they dwell, Each in its kind, and what their loves and hates, And which can flock and roost in harmony. From me, men learned what deep ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... wood, trying to daunt him, Led him confused in circles through the brake. He was forgetting his old wretched folly, And freedom was his need; his throat was choking; Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. Mumbling: 'I will get out! I must get out!' Butting and thrusting up the baffling gloom, Pausing to listen in a space 'twixt thorns, He peers around with boding, frantic eyes. An evil creature in the twilight looping Flapped ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... not call out for fear the others would hear. Where was that damned door? He rested again and listened. Not a sound was to be heard from within or without. He clawed his way frantically along the unsympathetic wall. It was a mile wide, that laboratory of Shelton's. Ah—at last! Weakly, he ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... with a yell as Nicanor released the gray, and the two beasts leaped at each other and closed in the middle of the ring, rolling over. Men clawed over one another's shoulders to see better; at opposite sides of the ring the owners squatted, each urging on his animal with hisses and clapping hands. The light from the smoking lamps and candles fell upon the crowd, throwing into ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... things!" cried Mrs. No-Tail. "That chocolate must have disappeared. It must have gone up like a balloon. I will have to buy some more of you, and put that on." Then she went over and looked at the cake, and she wondered at the queer scratches in the top, just as if a cat had clawed off the chocolate. But there were ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... monster howled, but his voice cut short as his foul mouth, with its razor-edged fangs, closed on the other's body. His talons, seeking a hold, clawed deep. ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... hours were burned into Sorez' mind forever. At her heels he had clawed his way up the steep hillside expecting at every step a spear thrust in his back. He tore his hands and knees, but, drawn on by a picture of the girl, moving shadow-like in the moonlight ahead of him, he followed steadily after. Pausing ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... against the outrageous excursions of his predatory humour. The raw bleeding pieces—each, as one almost feels, with its own peculiar cry—of the living body of the world, clawed as if by tiger claws, are strange morsels for the taste of some among us. But for others, there is an exultant pleasure in this great hunt, with the deep-mouthed hounds of veracity and sincerity, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the tiger. One can lie in bed amid downy pillows and dream tigers as terrible as any in the pathless wild. I was a little girl when one night I tried to cross the garden in front of my aunt's house in Alabama. I was in pursuit of a large cat with a great bushy tail. A few hours before he had clawed my little canary out of its cage and crunched it between his cruel teeth. I could not see the cat. But the thought in my mind was distinct: "He is making for the high grass at the end of the garden. I'll get there first!" I put my hand on the box border and ran swiftly along ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... rail from the little station of The Huts to the large town of Drum, thirty miles to the east. Here, with the most perfect courage and dignity of bearing, she interviewed a printer and arranged for the publication of her poems in their own original form, no longer staled and clapper-clawed by the pencil of the senior office boy. When the proof-sheets came to Janet, she had no way of indicating the corrections but by again writing the whole poem out in a neat print hand on the edge of the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... clawed his chin she examined him narrowly. Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... extremely hungry, tried to get it also. On which all the seven began to fight; and they scuffled, and huffled, and ruffled, and shuffled, and puffled, and muffled, and buffled, and duffled, and fluffled, and guffled, and bruffled, and screamed, and shrieked, and squealed, and squeaked, and clawed, and snapped, and bit, and bumped, and thumped, and dumped, and flumped each other, till they were all torn into little bits; and at last there was nothing left to record this painful incident except the cherry and ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... might not be almost instantaneous, or, on the other hand, whether it might not be deferred for a couple of hours. Anyway, they all agreed, it was vastly preferable to being thrown down into an evil smelling bear-pit and being clawed and mauled to ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... fell short, and David Bright was on the point of being dropt into the sea when his friends' fingers clawed him back ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... spitting himself through and through, while his axe fell; but I had wrenched myself and the shaft at once to one side, and he fell over, burying the axe head in the ground but an inch from the collier's foot. Yet had he not done with me, for, leaving the axe, he clawed the ashen shaft and dragged himself up along it, howling, not with the pain, but with madness, and I must needs smite him with my sword, for his dagger was ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... of them: Black Arrow, whose ear had been clawed off by a bear; Leaping Sturgeon, who had hung two scalps at his girdle before the chiefs had pronounced him old enough to be a brave; her own cousin, White Owl, the most wonderfully tattooed of them all; and the Nansamond young chieftain who wore a live snake as an earring in ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... stone image than to bring back the head of Medusa with the snaky locks. For, not to speak of other difficulties, there was one which it would have puzzled an older man than Perseus to get over. Not only must he fight with and slay this golden-winged, iron-scaled, long-tusked, brazen-clawed, snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... tried to get a paw into his ear. Something hurt him terribly just then, and the next minute his sensitive nose was frightfully stung. He rubbed his face with both sticky paws. The sharp stings came thicker and faster, and he wildly clawed the air. At last he forgot to hold on to the branch any longer, and with a screech he tumbled ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... the brick walls each side, and she was muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists and gave it a grip,—just twist enough to make the other hand ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... and the thought of it still tingled on the girl's cheek and clawed her heart when Geoffrey handed her down at the portico of Drury Lane Theatre. A new pantomime was afoot. Geoffrey's father (that bluff red baron) had chartered a box, was already there with his lady ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... your ladyship is that nasty, stinking wh—re (Jenny Cameron they call her), that runs about the country with the Pretender? Nay, the lying, saucy villain had the assurance to tell me that your ladyship had owned yourself to be so; but I have clawed the rascal; I have left the marks of my nails in his impudent face. My lady! says I, you saucy scoundrel; my lady is meat for no pretenders. She is a young lady of as good fashion, and family, and fortune, as any in Somersetshire. Did ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... narrative opens, on July 17th, a third convict had dropped the boards over the hole into which Old Man Anderson, the lifer, and Detroit Jim, had crawled. This convict had then frantically kicked dirt over the boards, had clawed down still more dirt, to make sure nothing could be seen of the hole—had made the thing look just like part of the big dirt-pile indeed—and then had legged it to the ball-game now in progress on this midsummer Saturday afternoon, at the extreme south end of the yard, behind ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... bird sailing in wide, graceful circles. Instantly Peter crouched a little lower in his hiding-place, for he knew this for a member of the Hawk family and Peter has learned by experience that the only way to keep perfectly safe when one of these hook-clawed, hook-billed birds is about is to keep out ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... under sudden fire. Indeed, there were the same extravagant gestures and contortions as attend wounds and deaths in war; the very same uncanny cessations of speech—for the trombone was cut off at midslide, even as a man drops with a syllable on his tongue. They clawed, they slapped, they fled, leaving behind them a trophy of banners and brasses crudely arranged round the big drum. Then that end of the street also shut its windows, and the village, stripped of life, lay round me like a reef at low tide. Though I am, as I have said, an apiarist in ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... afraid to be seen walking. She couldn't hire a coach-in-four—by playing fast and loose with her husband! "And it's me you're talking to!" exclaimed Dolores, stepping forward with blood in her eyes. But she did not go far. For her "Granny's" clawed talons were upon her shoulder, pulling her back. "Into the cart with you! Your fish is weighed! No public scenes to-day! It's late, and they want their orders up in the Market! Of all the loving pairs of ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that they be hastily y-sung, — Not for to hold a priest jolly and gay, He singeth not but one mass in a day. "Deliver out," quoth he, "anon the souls. Full hard it is, with flesh-hook or with owls* *awls To be y-clawed, or to burn or bake: Now speed you hastily, for Christe's sake." And when this friar had said all his intent, With qui cum patre forth his way he went, When folk in church had giv'n him what them lest;* *pleased He went his way, no longer would he rest, With scrip and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... this had just the contrary effect; for the whilom Hostess of the Stag o' Tyne, enraged at the Indignity offered to her, did so bemaul and bewray Madam Macphilader with her tongue, shaking her fist at her meanwhile, that the Gaoleress in a fury clawed at least two handfuls of M. Drum's hair from her head, not without getting some smart clapperclawing in the face; whereupon she cries out "Murther" and "Mutiny" and "Prisonrupt," and sends post-haste for ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... men huddle, Fumed in fear, falling face downward; Vainly I clutched and clawed, Dumbly they cringed and cowered, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the house had gone to bed that night, Minx, the kitten, came out from behind the broom, and prancing up to the little pasteboard and wool dog that lay tipped over in the corner, pawed him about until he was as full of fun as herself. Then she jumped upon the table and clawed the three dolls out of mamma's work-basket, sending them ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... common civility, he disfigured my papers, that no sooner came into his hands, but he fell upon them as a lion rampant, or the cat upon the poor cock in the fable, saying, Tu hodie mihi discerperis—so my papers came home miserably clawed, blotted, and blurred; whole sentences dismembered, and pages scratched out; several leaves omitted which ought to be printed,—shamefully he used my copy; so that before it was carried to the press, he swooped away the second part of the Life wholly from it—in the room of which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... matter how they hate it. If two Kilkenny cats he knew was to get married and one of them was to bolt he'd fetch her back and tie 'em both up, heads together, so as she shouldn't do it again. And if they clawed each other's guts out he wouldn't care. He'd say they were livin' a nice, virtuous, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... of thousands of layers of crystallized plastic came a reddish, three-dimensional landscape, as if viewed from a height. Orange dust swirled across a gaunt, clawed plain under a transparent pink haze. A feeling as of sub-visual vibration, emanating from the cube, tugged ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... are to-day, the most famous and the most fortunate was the man who was known as Messer Griffo of the Claw. He was so nicknamed, I think, because of the figure on the banner that he flew—a huge dragon with one fiercely clawed foot lifted as if to lay hold of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... had once been accustomed to, but as he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and he clawed at it furiously with bleeding hands while twice the bowsprit raked a sea and dipped him waist-deep in. At length the other man flung him the end of the gasket, and they worked back carefully, leaving the sail lashed down, and scrambled aft to help the others ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... same build—and covered with a thin sandy bristly hair, just like some hogs are. They were not "pig-headed," however. Their heads were exactly like those of the grey rabbit, and instead of hoofs they were toed and clawed. This gave them altogether a lighter appearance than hogs, and yet they did not run as fast, although when first noticed they appeared to be doing ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... leaped back, and it was well that he did so, for the grizzly fell forward with a heavy thud, almost where he had been standing, clawed at the rocks and stones for a few moments, ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... mamma!" shrieked the child. She fought and clawed like a little, wild animal, but the old woman, in whose arms great strength could still arise for emergencies, and in whose spirit great strength had never died, got the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dawn pushed pale thin fingers above the flattened sea, Groping blind white fingers that clawed the shroud of night; 'Till from the straining eddies the pale forms turned to flee, And a million tongues of madness rose singing through ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... at the moment when his first spring had spent itself, he was no match for the protector of the herd. No bone could resist the impact of those heavy terrible hoofs. No skull was thick enough to save. The cougar squealed, clawed, and bit wildly, but in an incredibly quick space he was trampled to death and lay quite still. The boys believed that every bone in him must ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was spent in the cackling consultation, which at length came to an end, not as before in their passing on to another place, but by the whole flock setting to, and with their great clawed feet scratching up the sand, which they scattered in clouds and ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... hand away and stared at me. For a moment I thought everything was over. Certainly I could not be a very appealing sight, standing there sweating with fear, my hair all stuck up on my head where I'd clawed it, shivering in my nightclothes more from miserable nervousness than from cold; but somehow those eyes of his softened; he gave me one of the looks that people who care for Worth will go far to get, and ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... on the floor, snarling at him. She was quite the most hideous thing Cappen had ever seen: nearly as tall as he, she was twice as broad and thick, and the knotted arms hung down past bowed knees till their clawed fingers brushed the ground. Her head was beast-like, almost split in half by the tusked mouth, the eyes wells of darkness, the nose an ell long; her hairless skin was green and cold, moving on her bones. A tattered shift covered some of her monstrousness, ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... Tasper clawed his hand over his head and the crest of his pompadour bristled more horrently. "He could at least try to undo some of the trouble he has caused by his tongue. He could be at City Hall, where he belongs. The fact that he isn't there—that he can't be found—speaks a whole lot to ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... matter which) "late last night. Though these night-scenes are part of our daily living, a fresh eye would find them dramatic. We are awakened in the dead of night by a sharp steam-whistle, and soon after feel ourselves clawed by little tugs on either side of our big ship, bringing off the sick and wounded from the shore. And, at once, the process of taking on hundreds of men—many of them crazed with fever—begins. There is the bringing of the stretchers up the side-ladder between the two boats; ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... first to close in. Struggling, slipping, hampered rather than helped by our great strength, we clawed our way aft. A combined lurch of ship and blast of wind threw Captain Crane down, ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... alley was pretty dark. I heard Lefty's breath suck in sharply as I came up out of my crouch, diving for him. After all, it was only pain, something inside my head. It wasn't as though I had been really crippled. My fingers clawed at his jacket, and would have held him. But the other guy grabbed at my ankle and threw me down on the slippery ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... right off. I never heard of him doing it, because no man would give him a chance. Father wouldn't. One day, when father was down on the beach, Boo-oogh took after mother. She couldn't run fast, for the day before she had got her leg clawed by a bear when she was up on the mountain gathering berries. So Boo- oogh caught her and carried her up into his tree. Father never got her back. He was afraid. Old ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... said Waring, closing the discussion with a mighty yawn. 'I say, Spirit, take yourself off. Something is coming ashore, and were it old Nick in person I should be glad to see him and shake his clawed hand.' ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... voice of the helmsman querulously maintain that he was steering his course by Anschutz, so I got up and gingerly clawed my way into the control room, where I found by comparing Anschutz with magnetic that the former had gone to hell, the reason being obvious, as the stabilizer was exerting a strongly biased torque. I stopped the Anschutz and asked the pilot to give the helmsman ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... other but what was smutted with evil intent. In daily double-leaded editorial columns the chief preached a Holy War, and in the local pages we fought the foe tooth and nail, biting and gouging and clawing, and they gouged and clawed back at us like catamounts. That was where the hard work fell upon Devore. He had to keep half his scanty staff working on politics while the other half tried to cover the run of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... as in similar compositions by Fra Angelico, are absolutely sublime, while those of the wicked are almost childish, especially the demons with faces of cats and jackals, with red eyes and mouths, black bodies and clawed feet. How much happier he is in the clear and joyful note of colour in some figures standing before a door on the right! And how much better we recognise his sweet spirit in the features of the blest, with their clear eyes ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... surprised Jimmie, as he wriggled to get free. Without a word, the woman who had been suffering from his brutality, now sprang upon the rescuing policeman with the fury of a lioness robbed of her cub. She clawed at the bluecoat's face and cursed ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball |
