"Cobra" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plug-ugly*, pug-ugly* [U.S.], Red Skin, tough [U. S.]; Mohawk, Mo-hock, Mo-hawk; bludgeon man, bully, rough, hooligan, larrikin[obs3], dangerous classes, ugly customer; thief &c. 792. cockatrice, scorpion, hornet. snake, viper, adder, snake in the grass; serpent, cobra, asp, rattlesnake, anaconda|!. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the top of one of those ponderous laminations tilted edgewise is the king of the gnomes of the new glen. We call him Pharaoh. How archly he looks out over his wide domain! His kingly cap is adorned with a cobra ready to strike, yet out on his ample breast floats a most royal but un-Pharonic beard. This is one of the ways the quondam haughty hills have of providing entertainment for the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... this deep, world-wise, and fluent man had now become to Hogarth like manna, or rather a vice, like opium: for in those grey eyes of the cleric was hinted anon the baleful glint of the cobra's. ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Mrs. de Warrenne saw the twitching body of a large cobra with its head severed close to its neck. Its head had just protruded from under her foot and she had saved the unborn life for which she had fought so bravely by just keeping still.... She had won her brief decoration ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... went down to the river very sorrowful, for she saw no hope of escape, as her father was from home. As she knelt by the river-side, washing her saree and crying bitterly, some of her tears fell into the hole of an old Seven-headed Cobra, who lived on the river-bank. This Cobra was a very wise animal, and seeing the maiden, he put his head out of his hole, and said to her: "Little girl, why do you cry?" "Oh, sir," she answered, "I am very unhappy; for my father is from home, and my stepmother ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... enormous cobra, and, under the circumstances, very frightful to see. The Cardysville express agent made a headlong bolt for the door. He slid clear outside across the platform, and landed in ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... with thrilling nerves, how a huge cobra, reared on his coils, sways his terrible head from side to side before striking. Well, all those black heads before us were swaying in unison, but with a sickening circular movement, which was regularly reversed in direction. Three times by the right and then three ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... by whirling with astonishing rapidity in a kind of frenzied dance around the wicker basket that contained the serpents, which were covered by a goatskin. Suddenly he stopped, plunged his naked arm into the basket, and drew out a cobra de capello, or else a haje, a fearful reptile which is able to swell its head by spreading out the scales which cover it, and which is thought to be Cleopatra's asp, the serpent of Egypt. In Morocco it is known as the buska. The charmer folded ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... of genius that I fancy most have erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remember what they tell of William Pinkney, the great pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. The hydraulic arrangements for supplying ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... (Folklore of Northern Counties, 248). This is exactly the same idea which exists throughout India. "Hidden treasures are under the special guardianship of supernatural beings. The Singhalese, however, divide the charge between demons and cobra capellas. Various charms are resorted to by those who wish to gain the treasures. A puja is sufficient with the cobras, but the demons require a sacrifice. Blood of a human being is the most important, but the Kappowas have hitherto ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... not our snowy birds of the Atlantic. We are lonesome out here, and the Albatross sweeps beside us, hooded like a cobra, an evil creature trying to hoodoo us, with owlish eyes set in a frame like ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... watchman and the barber, who knew all the gossip of the village, and old Buldeo, the village hunter, who had a Tower musket, met and smoked. The monkeys sat and talked in the upper branches, and there was a hole under the platform where a cobra lived, and he had his little platter of milk every night because he was sacred; and the old men sat around the tree and talked, and pulled at the big huqas (the water-pipes) till far into the night. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... strikingly marked serpent. Its colors are scarlet, black and yellow. This snake is found in the southeastern and central United States. It is a near relative to the deadly Cobra-de-Capello and is ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... sounds of the jungle. He told of the time when a soldier could get "jungling leave"; when he could go off with a Winchester and a pal and a native guide for two or three months; when the Government paid so many rupees for a tiger skin, so many for a cobra—a scale of rewards for bringing back the trophies ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... prehistoric man's reminiscence of now extinct monsters, the dragon is, in its artistic development, a mythical embodiment of all the powers of moisture to bless and to harm. We shall see how, when Buddhism entered China, the cobra-de-capello, so often figured in the Buddhistic representations of India, is replaced by ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... and a portion of the lobe of the right ear was gone. On the second finger of the left hand was a ring—a shield-shaped bloodstone set in gold, with a monogram that might have been either "B.K." or "B.L." On the third finger of the right hand was a silver ring in the shape of a coiled cobra, much worn and tarnished. Gunga Dass deposited a handful of trifles he had picked out of the burrow at my feet, and, covering the face of the body with my handkerchief, I turned to examine these. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... curious custom obtaining among this primitive tribe is observed by others only in the case of the purchase of cows, bulls and horses." In the Central Provinces, however, at least one parallel instance can be given from the northern Districts where any mark resembling the V on the head of a cobra is considered to be very inauspicious. And it is told that a girl who married into one well-known family bore it, and to this fact the remarkable succession of misfortunes which has attended the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the other's expression. There was to be no throwing in of the towel for Joe Mauser. At the first sign of such a move, the other would dart in, cobra-quick, and deal the finishing blow. The death blow. Rakoczi was fully capable of such speed. The man was a phenomenon, ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 'English will be the universal language.' But far the most important kind of modality, and the only one we need consider, is that which is signified by some qualification of the predicate as to the degree of certainty with which it is affirmed or denied. Thus, 'The bite of the cobra is probably mortal,' is called a Contingent or Problematic Modal: 'Water is certainly composed of oxygen and hydrogen' is an Assertory or Certain Modal: 'Two straight lines cannot enclose a space' is a Necessary or Apodeictic Modal (the opposite being inconceivable). ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Bellamy's face, but it went as quickly as it came, and the hard, determined look returned. The mysterious eyes grew cold and glittered, the head erected itself. At that moment Lady Bellamy distinctly reminded Mr. Fraser of a hooded cobra about ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... me no information as to what particular divinity this figure was intended to represent. The other pillar was crowned by the figure of a Newar monarch with an unpronounceable name, who was watched over by a cobra, standing upon its tail, and looking over his head with ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... the blacksmith, about some mower parts. And right off I was struck by the fact that Safety seemed to be his old self again; his air of false gayety and nervous strain had left him and he was cold and silent and deadly, like the poisonous cobra of India. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... gorgeous fragrant flowers and not quarrel with its leafless limbs. When the pipal and the neem glisten with star flowers and sweeten the foetid night-air, it matters nothing to me that the natives believe evil gods home in the branches. I know that even a cobra tries to get out of my way if I'll let him, and I know that the natives have beauty in their natures—one gets to almost love them as children. So, my dear Captain, when you tell me that the Gulab rendered you and me and the British Raj this tremendous service, and add, quite unnecessarily, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line that circled the throng like the deadly coils of the cobra. The buffaloes had become completely demoralized, and were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other. Now was the time for the onslaught. Tonsaroyoo, by whose side I was riding, placed the whistle to his ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... blow, I suppose," said the white-faced Jack, who had good reason to be terrified over the occurrence, for the rattlesnake, although ranking below the cobra in the virulence of its venom, is the most deadly serpent in America, and the veteran hunter fears it more than the ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... deadly. Such would probably be her explanation of the destructive processes which go on in the world without the knowledge of man; fire consumes the forest, the tiger kills the antelope, and the bite of the cobra kills the tiger because the human mind has attributed such tendencies to fire, to the tiger, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... her shoulders up, as if at the sight of a cobra in her path. "Why is Eddie coming to lunch? ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... First he saves them from being crushed by the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills it with his sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up, and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids him with his ingratitude, whereupon ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... best, a woman is a dangerous animal; but throw her in contact with another of her sex who is but poorly clad, socially beneath her, and in training her inferior, and you may behold all the grace, all the symmetry of the cobra as it unwinds its beautiful, sinuous body before the eyes of its ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... them during the drills. Darwin relates an interesting instance of the force of habit over the reason. He found that his habit of starting back at the sudden approach of danger was so firmly established that no will-power could enable him to keep his face pressed up against the cage of the cobra in the Zoological Gardens when the snake struck at him, although he knew the glass was so thick that there could be no danger, and although he exerted the full force of his will. But we venture to say that one ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Martinique almost uninhabitable; the tic paloonga (Daboii russelli) is the scourge of Cinghalese coffee estates; the giant ehlouhlo of Natal (unclassified) by its presence secures a forbidding waste for miles about; the far famed cobra de capello (Naja tripudians) ravages British India in a death ratio of one-seventh of one per cent. of the dense population, annually, and is the more dangerous in that an assumed sacred character secures it largely from molestation and retributive justice; and in Europe and America we have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... having at its entrance a bar, at the extremes of which rise two rocks. This bay is twenty-four leagues in length, and eight in width, and has in it many islands; some are cultivated and possess sugar-works. The most celebrated of them is named De Cobra, off which island ships cast anchor. On the opposite side of this city, a natural wall of rocks, called Los Organos, extends itself as far as the sea, and forms a perfect line of defence independently of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... hours on a window, one half of which has been left open. Even a pike continued during three months to dash and bruise itself against the glass sides of an aquarium, in the vain attempt to seize minnows on the opposite side. {34} A cobra-snake was seen by Mr. Layard {35} to act much more wisely than either the pike or the Sphex; it had swallowed a toad lying within a hole, and could not withdraw its head; the toad was disgorged, and began to crawl away; it was again swallowed ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... is still in town," said Colonel Ashley. "I passed his place a while ago. He has a pair of beautiful Benares candlesticks, in the form of hooded cobra snakes, that I want to get. Singa ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... looks part human and part beetle and has a face the color of the meat of an avocado. His head is shaped like a pear standing on its stem and has two eyes spaced about six inches apart and they are as friendly as those of a spitting cobra irked by hives. He is about four feet tall and has two pairs of arms. I guess I am still a little delirious or I would not have told the thing he would make a swell ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... where no kid could possibly have been. It is supposed by the natives to lure travelers to itself by this bleating. Several varieties, when alarmed, emit a peculiar odor, by which the people become aware of their presence in a house. We have also the cobra ('Naia haje', Smith) of several colors or varieties. When annoyed, they raise their heads up about a foot from the ground, and flatten the neck in a threatening manner, darting out the tongue and retracting ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... wild roses are very nice. But nobody ever thinks of either of them if the name is abruptly mentioned in a gossip or a poem. On the other hand, there are tame tigers and tame cobras, but if one says, "I have a cobra in my pocket," or "There is a tiger in the music-room," the adjective "tame" has to be somewhat hastily added. If one speaks of beasts one thinks first of wild beasts; if of flowers one thinks first of ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... although they lack both the fairy elegance of Netley Abbey, and the massive grandeur of a Pevensey Castle. The men who accompanied me advanced very cautiously through the thick underwood, beating with their sticks in order to drive away the Iguana Lizards, which they call the "bis cobra" and hold in deadly fear, believing its bite to be most surely fatal. This belief is universal among the natives of India, but there is no proof of its truth, and I need hardly say that the dental arrangement of Bactrachian reptiles is incompatible with the possession of poisonous qualities. ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... say," said Phil, as he coolly stalked out, and left Acton curled up on his chair, like a cobra balancing for ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... Naik, and 6 of Chaudhri. The section names are very mixed, some being those of eponymous Brahman gotras, as Sandilya, Kaushik and Bharadwaj; others those of Rajput septs, as Karchhul; while others are the names of animals and plants, as Barah (pig), Baram (the pipal tree), Nag (cobra), Kachhapa (tortoise), and a number of other local terms the meaning of which has been forgotten. Each of these sections, however, uses a different mark for branding cows, which it is the religious duty of an Agharia to rear, and though the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as he can. But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail. For the female of the species is more deadly ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors being poisoned at Canton with drugged "shampoo," for the sake of their money; and of the Malay ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... judgment of her was correct, Caley might have told him. Was she already false? She pondered within herself, and cast no look upon her maid until she had concluded how best to carry herself towards the earl. Then glancing at the hooded cobra beside her—"What an awkward thing that Lord Liftore, of all moments, should appear just then!" she said. "How ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... uttered a scream, and snatched her arm out of the hole. To it, or rather to her hand, was hanging a great hooded snake of the cobra variety such as the Boers call ringhals. She shook it off, and the reptile, after sitting up, spitting, hissing and expanding its hood, glided back into the wall. Tabitha sat still, staring at her lacerated finger, which ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... a Rifaee darweesh with his basket of tame snakes. After a little talk he proposed to initiate me, and so we sat down and held hands like people marrying. Omar sat behind me and repeated the words as my 'Wakeel,' then the Rifaee twisted a cobra round our joined hands and requested me to spit on it, he did the same and I was pronounced safe and enveloped in snakes. My sailors groaned and Omar shuddered as the snakes put out their tongues—the darweesh and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... more dangerous than either of these is the beautiful little coral snake, elaps fulvius, whose victim becomes ravingly insane and invariably dies. That he possessed some uncanny knowledge of the creature must be admitted because of its close relationship to the Cobra-de-Capello, of Asiatic fame, whose poison, we know, flies directly to the nerve centers and almost entirely ignores the tissue. Four days later I had ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and his troopers filed out. Umballa fingered the empty bags, his brow wrinkled. Cut off a cobra's head and it could only wriggle until sunset. Umballa gave the vanishing captain two weeks. Then he should ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... my ankle and looking down saw the snake glide into the undergrowth I believed it was all up with me. I had seen two or three natives who came up to the house for treatment die before my eyes. A saice bitten in the stables by a cobra died in twenty minutes. A mali cutting grass was struck on the hand and died in three quarters of an hour. A punkha coolie on the verandah lost his life within an hour after ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... crimes Of Horrid Serpents in the Times. It used to be a bitter pang That I was born without a fang, That Nature made me as a toy For any silly idle boy. But now the humble snake may pass For lurking cobra in the grass, While people think that Regent's Park Is Kipling Jungle ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... haje) is a species of cobra. It is a large snake, varying from three to six feet in length, and is extremely venomous. It haunts gardens, where it is of great use, feeding on mice, frogs, and various small reptiles. It has the power of greatly dilating the skin of the neck, and this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... there was no path—at least to be trodden by human foot. Birds flew around, scared in their solitary haunts. The armadilla and the wolf stood at a distance with glaring eyes. The fearful-looking guana scampered off upon the decaying limbs of the live-oak, or the still more fearful cobra di capella glided almost noiselessly over the dry ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... because you won the favor of the gods in some previous existence; or you were born a Sudra, predestined to a life of suffering and semi-starvation, because in your previous existence you failed to merit better treatment from the gods. If you are only a sweeper, be glad that you were not born a pig or a cobra. Kismet, Fate, has fixed at birth your changeless station in this life; and, more than this, it has written on your brow the things which must happen to you ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... inscrutability. The hand which took my letter was very large, very white, and looked as if it would feel horribly flabby. With the other he put on his nose a pair of enormous mother-of-pearl-framed spectacles—things exactly like those of a cobra's—and began to read. He had said precisely nothing at all. It was for him and what he represented that I had thrown over Carlos and what he represented. I felt that I deserved to be received with acclamation. I was ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... captain, who was named Indudu, perhaps because he or his father had longed to the Dudu regiment, crawled into the hut, whence presently emerged sounds not unlike those which once I heard when a ringhals cobra followed a hare that I had wounded into a hole, a muffled sound of struggling and terror. These ended in the sudden and violent appearance of Kaatje's fat and dishevelled form, followed by that of the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... little tent not two feet in diameter. After a few passes of the hand, the tent was lifted. The seed had already sprouted, and had become a twig with leaves. Covering the plant once more, he called our attention to a cobra-charmer, who played harmlessly with a hooded and venomous snake. At last he threw the tent wholly aside, and there stood a fully developed little mango tree, perhaps two feet high. It seemed impossible that the folds ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... "Pools," open and secret, grasping and malicious, may wreak at any hour disasters on the unwary. "Points" are given by one operator to another with the same mendacious glibness as of yore. The market is now dull with the torpor of a sleeping cobra, now aflame, like that reptile, with treacherous and poisonous life. In its repose as in its excitement our novice begins to know it, fear it, and heartily love it besides. The chances are nine out of ten that he loves it too much and fears it too little. Its hideous vulgarity has ceased ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... corner of the house, and showed him a little box in which was coiled a tiny snake, like the hair spring of a watch. She passed her hands over it, and it grew in size, till at last it became a huge cobra, with hood erected. The husband, terrified, begged his wife to lay the spirit. She passed her hands down its body, and it gradually ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... you. Perceiving that your Majesty's spirit was completely broken by some distress of mind under which you were labouring, I determined to rouse your energies by moving you to anger. Because To light a flame, we need but stir the embers; The cobra, when incensed, extends his head And springs upon his foe; the bravest men Display their ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... medical examination proved that the fellow had been killed by snake poison—cobra, to be exact, which is found ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... to that at Denderah, while in the middle of this table sat a small Murano hour-glass, filled with sand from the dreary valley of El Ghor. A huge plaster Trimurti stood close to the wall, on a triangular pedestal of black rock, and the Siva-face and the writhing cobra confronted all who entered. Just opposite grinned a red granite slab with a quaint basso-relievo taken from the ruins of Elora. Near the door were two silken divans, and a richly carved urn, three feet high, which had once ornamented the facade of a tomb in the royal days of Petra, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... That is a cobra he takes out; you know it by its large, flat head. It seems sleepy and stupid, but its bite is deadly. It is possible, of course, that he has abstracted the poison-fangs which make its bite fatal, but even without them I shouldn't care to handle it. It is a huge beast, seven or eight feet long ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... drew back in sudden horror. This tiny thing had taken the semblance of a snake. A vicious cobra cast at her feet would be less alarming, for the reptile could be killed, whilst his venomous fangs would only ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... small round stick. An innocuous snake, the Trovidonotus macrophthalmus, an inhabitant of India, likewise dilates its neck when irritated; and consequently is often mistaken for its compatriot, the deadly Cobra.[23] This resemblance perhaps serves as some protection to ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... ruddy soft gold, worked and graven with exquisite art in the semblance of a two-headed cobra; inside the band was an inscription so worn and faint that Amber experienced some difficulty in deciphering the word RAO (king) in Devanagari, flanked by swastikas. Aside from the stone entirely, he speculated, the value of the ring as an antique would have proven ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Nga-Kings and Queens (Melusines and Echidn) who guard the earth-treasures in Naga-land. The first appearance of the snake in literature is in Egyptian hieroglyphs, where he forms the letters f and t, and acts as a determinative in the shape of a Cobra di Capello ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... window besides. The lights were cunningly concealed behind a weirdly coloured fresco of Oriental figures. But one lamp alone on a small table burned with a still red glow. This lamp was supported on the stuffed skin of a hooded cobra. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... intense selfishness, which, in point of suffering, supplies the place of a heart. It was not because she could not feel for the wrongs of another that she could not feel anguish for her own. Arabella was avenged. The cold-blooded snake that had stung her met the fang of the cobra-capella. Matilda had learned from some anonymous correspondent (probably a rival of Gabrielle's) of Jasper's liaison with that adventuress. But half recovered from her confinement, she had risen from her bed—hurried to Paris (for the pleasures of which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fellow has to live on shore he gets roasted by day, with a good chance of a sunstroke, and he is stewed at night, and bitten by mosquitoes and other winged and crawling things, and wakes to find a cobra de capella or green snake gliding ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... choose a knife; a Westerner would take in preference that same harmless piece of rope. In his hands it takes on life, it gains a strange and sinister quality. One instant it lies passive, or slowly whirled in a careless circle—the next its noose darts out like the head of a striking cobra, the coil falls and fastens, and then it draws tighter and tighter, remorselessly as a boa constrictor, ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... dreary plain, marked every few yards by the bleached bones of camels fallen by the way; the only living thing met with for two days being a snake of the cobra type trailing across our path. The evening of the second day we camped in a long wadi, or shallow valley, full of mimosa trees, where our camels were hobbled and allowed to graze. They delighted in nibbling the young branches of these prickly acacias, which carry thorns at least an inch in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... I am talking here that serpent! that copperhead! that cobra capella! is coming round again! How astonishingly tenacious of life all foul, venomous creatures are!" exclaimed Cloudesley, as he happened to espy Throg moving slightly where he lay, and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... my hands of it all!" the priest retorted indignantly. "The half for me, or I wash my hands of it and tell Gungadhura that you know the secret! I will trust him to find a way to draw thy cobra from ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... entered not The cobra, since defiled. He watched, when the beasts had gone Our kissing and singing wild. Beautiful friend he was, Sage, not a tempter grim. Many a year should pass Ere Satan ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... the egg of Fear— Only lidless eyes are clear. Cobra-poison none may leech, Even so with Cobra-speech. Open talk shall call to thee Strength, whose mate is Courtesy. Send no lunge beyond thy length; Lend no rotten bough thy strength. Gauge thy gape with buck or goat, Lest thine eye should choke thy throat After gorging, wouldst thou sleep? ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... pit-like depression between the nose and eyes, and hence are called pit-vipers. In the southern portion of our country there are two species of a colubrine genus closely related to the dreaded cobra of the East, one of them being called the coral-snake or harlequin snake, and the other, which occurs in the southwest, is known as ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... and repelled. She was interested, even while she shuddered; it was as though she had been made the object of the sudden, if venomous, admiration of a king-cobra. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the noise is hushed,—a pause! Satyavan lets the weapon drop— Too well Savitri knows the cause, He feels not well, the work must stop. A pain is in his head,—a pain As if he felt the cobra's fangs, He tries to look around,—in vain, A mist before his vision hangs; The trees whirl dizzily around In a fantastic fashion wild; His throat and chest seem iron-bound, He ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... a poison in the system as asserted, Wallie had a notion that his bite would have been as fatal as a cobra's. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... long rows on the shore and bore coconuts in their top branches. Men red as copper galloped over the immense green prairies and threw their arrows at the buffaloes, who turned against them with their sharp horns. An enormous cobra which had crept up the stem of a tall palm tree threw itself on to a little llama that was grazing at the foot. Knaps! it was all ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W'zy.t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see BUSIRIS). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the Delta, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-east of the Delta, now Tell Nebesheh. The former city ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of Morro Castle, Havana, as the devilish Weyler sailed away from the beautiful "Queen of the Antilles," and wondered that the cruel, infernal, tyrannical wretch was not ignominiously slaughtered by some of the victims of his starvation reign. A rattlesnake-cobra-tarantula ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... paced the floor with her tinkling feet, writhing and undulating like some beautiful cobra, while the players worked themselves up to yet higher ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... has hair of pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess Jahuran, p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, Sonahri Rani, p. 54, Jahur Rani, p. 93, Prince Dima-ahmad and Princess Atasa, Notes, p. 253. Also, Hira Bai, the cobra's daughter in Old Deccan Days, p. 35. So many princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them, Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs rings if it falls to the ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... waste of sand hardly distinguishable in the gloom until his eyes became accustomed to it, and beyond this the white line of the surf, whiter than either sky or sand. This writhed and twisted like a cobra in pain. To the north burned Barnegat Light, only the star of its lamp visible. To the south stretched alternate bands of sand, sky, and surf, their dividing lines lost in the night. Along this beach, now stopping to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... one of my grooms, a robust woman, and the mother of a large family, all living within my grounds, was bitten by a poisonous serpent, most probably a cobra, or coluber maja, and quickly felt the deadly effects of its venom. When the woman's powers were rapidly sinking, the servants came to my wife, to request that the civil surgeon of the station might be called in to save her life. He immediately attended, and exerted his utmost ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... charmer, garuda, hawadiga[3], or whatever else they call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous glare which you see ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... brought in a king cobra (naia bungarus) which he had shot, and as life was not yet extinct I got a good photograph of it. This serpent was about three metres long, but these very poisonous snakes, called ular tadong by the Malays, attain ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... listened quietly, brooding, his elbows upon the table, his inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly in a cobra's head, gleamed from a ring upon his little ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... body at my feet, I wrote a note to Josephine," he finished. "I told her what I had done, and again I swore my innocence. I wrote her that some day she might hear from me, but not under my right name, as the law would always be watching for me. It was ironic that on that human cobra's desk there lay an open Bible, open at the Book of Peter, and involuntarily I wrote the words to Josephine—PETER GOD. She has kept my secret, while the law has hunted for ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... is the blackest of them all. The blackest of all the black horde, the very worst of the whole evil troop; insinuating, sly and crafty, it creeps around with a serpent's stealth, and carries beneath its tongue the deadly poison of ten thousand adders. The venom can be extracted from the cobra's fangs, but no power on earth can tame the tongue of an unprincipled gossip. Some lies you can kill, but the lie of gossip is imperishable. You may clip its wings, but its flight is unhindered; you may cut off its head, but two will grow out in its place; you may ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... Semitic as a Jew moneylender in Brick Lane, London. Her husband, Thothmes II., has a weak and poor-spirited countenance—decidedly an accomplished performer on the second violin. The mother wears on her head a snake, no doubt a cobra-di-capello, the symbol of her sovereignty. Thothmes is clad in a loin-cloth. And a god, with a sleepy expression and a very fish-like head, appears in this group of personages to offer the key of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... virus to his brain about as quickly as it would have carried a cobra's venom. They probably could have made such protein-poisons, too; but they had never used them against men, no doubt because something that could spread and ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... said, "I'm rather glad you're not a common thief. You've lots of pluck—plenty. You're as clever as a cobra. It isn't every poisonous snake that ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... rejecting the story as, at least, improbable. Yet it is clear that the stories of the New World may have had an actual basis of fact; for the Heloderma horridum has been, beyond doubt, proved to be poisonous in as high a degree as a cobra or a rattlesnake. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... of that reptile, she would have trembled all the more. She saw before her one of the most venomous of serpents, the black naja, or "spitting-snake"—the cobra of Africa—far more dangerous than its congener the cobra de capello of India, because far more active in its movements, and equally fatal in ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Khamsn, the Great Gaster became querulous; hunger was now the chief complaint, and even the bon ordinaire had lost much of its attraction. A harmless snake was killed and bottled; its silver robe was beautifully banded with a line, pink as the circles of the "cobra coral," which ran along the whole length of the back. It proved to be a new species; and Dr. Gunther named ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... schoolmarm! What puzzles me is the need for new steps, to be learned from expensive teachers, when it's so easy to slide down hill in this part of New York. But here endeth the sermon, for I recognize the amiable Pinkie at that other table, where she is studying your face with the malevolence of a cobra." ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Cantidad, tiene El alcalde mayor de salario trecientos pesos librados en las penas de camara y si no alcancare en la Real caxa cobra por comission del goueror y de los oficiales Reales los tributos qe pertenecen a su magd en aquella ysla. qe seran poco mas de dos mil hombres, en el Rio de haraut y Rio de ajuy y Rio de panay y los quintos del oro que se labra ques casi nada esta esta uilla, apartada ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... myself, in person, had painful experience of the awful effects of snake's poison. I have received a dose of the cobra's poison into my system; luckily a minute dose, or I should not have survived it. The accident happened in a very curious way. I was poisoned by the snake but not bitten by him. I got the poison second-hand. Anxious to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... The cobra not an aggressive snake. Unless hurt or provoked will probably never bite. Illustrations in support ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... post-office. To the city-bred Applebys there would have been cheer and excitement in this mild activity, after their farm-house weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure of the Crimson Cobra'—six reels—that sounds snappy." But his exuberance died in a sigh. A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign, light-encircled, tea-pot shaped, hung out from a great elm. Without ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... correct, and selected breeding to that end should be conducted only under adequate scientific safeguards. A Lathrodectus mactans with fangs large enough to penetrate the skin of the hand, and a double or triple supply of venom, would be, perhaps, more deadly than a cobra. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sprang to his side and dragged him back. A yellow-and-brown streak glided from the purple rustling stems to the bank, stretched its neck to the water, drank, and lay still—a big cobra with ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... do. 'Phobia' would be more exact. I'm afraid of fools, and the chance that I have one working for me, here, affects me like having a cobra crawling around my bedroom in the dark. I want you to locate any who might be in a gang of new men I've had to hire, so that I can get rid ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper
... heard of such reptiles in different parts of Africa, but hitherto I had always put them down as fabulous creatures transformed into and worshipped as local gods. Also this particular specimen was, I presume, of a new variety, since, according to Ragnall, it both struck like the cobra or the adder, and crushed like the boa-constrictor. It is possible, however, that he was mistaken on this point; I do not know, since I had no time, or indeed inclination, to examine its head for the poison fangs, and when next I passed that way ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Elixir,' said Sing; 'salt is merely necessary for the results. You, as a scientific man, know that the poison which kills so quickly from the fang of a cobra and the ordinary white of an egg can hardly be distinguished by the chemist. He finds them both ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... snakes of Australia have an unpleasant habit of coming around the houses, and this is particularly the case with the tiger snake, which in this respect seems to possess the same characteristics as his relative the 'cobra,' of India. Our host told us a story which he said he knew to be a true one, the incident having occurred in a family with which he was acquainted. There was an invalid daughter in the family, and one afternoon, when she was sleeping ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... moment arrows were flying to right and left; and the answering volley was far more deadly than the effects of firing up hill. The Indians stood their ground, fitting their arrows with swift dexterity, encouraged by Anastacio, who glided from point to point like a hungry cobra, discharging two arrows to every man's one. His only hope was to keep the Californians at long range until losses compelled the latter to retreat: at close quarters arrows would be ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... beasts must live, do they not support us? But 'Everything in its place' is my own motto; the motto of my wife—'All over the place.' Her serpents have shortened my life, word of honour!— they wander where they will. I never lay my head beside those curl rags of hers without anticipating a cobra-decapello under the bolster. It is not everybody's money. Lucrece has no objection to them; well, it is very courageous—very fortunate, since snakes are her profession—but I, I was not brought up to snakes; I am not at my ease in ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... dark place with a much-worn tile floor and a charcoal range of two pockets faced and covered with blue and white tiles; an immense hood above yawning like the flat open jaws of a gigantic cobra, which might not only consume all the smoke and smells but gobble up the little tile-covered range itself ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... having asphalte laid down in the printing-room, to keep away white ants. The room had been emptied to do this, and Stahl went in to inspect the work after the men had gone to their breakfast at eleven o'clock. He saw a large cobra at the end of the room, and hit it with a stick he had in his hand; but the stick broke in two, and the cobra reared itself up with inflated hood. Another minute must have seen Stahl a prey to the monster; ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... the hair, and tie up a large bunch with a black string. Put round the neck a cobra-capella, and dress him in the garments by making nine folds round the waist. He stands on a rock eating men's flesh. The persons that were possessed with devils ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... did not. I could see her eyes glitter with their keen, searching glance under her crape veil, as if she were measuring Alured all over when the child walked into church with me; and, indeed, when he went to the Zoological Gardens some time later, and saw the cobra di ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most wonderful antidote to the poison of a snake's fangs. In his exhibitions he would allow a cobra to bite a dog or a rabbit, and, in a short time after he had applied his nostrum the animal would thoroughly revive; he advertised his desire to perform upon humanity, but, of course, he could find no one would be fool enough to ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... upon and addled by the Department. But I knew the house and walked boldly in. A lion walked out of one door as I came in at another. We did this two or three times—and found it amusing. A large cobra in the hall rose up, bowed as I passed, and ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... deprecating. Budding conversationalists were temporarily frost-bitten, and the watery helpings of fish were eaten in a constrained silence. But with the inevitable roast beef a Scot of unshakeable manner, decorated with a yellow forehead-lock as erect as a striking cobra, turned to follow up what he apparently conceived to ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... moist; his lips dry; his delicate nostrils were indrawn in harmony with the concentrating lines of his brow, and the next moment, as if in response to an insinuating pass of the merchant's hand of cobra-like undulation, the rigid poise recoiled, he settled more easily upon the divan, and with eyes still fascinated by the entrancing bauble he listened, with anomalous impassiveness, to the ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Those cobra species are man-haters. They love to attack and do damage. They go out of their way to bite people. They crawl into huts and bungalows, especially during the monsoon rains, and they infest thatch roofs. But ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Trapped by a Cobra Saved by a Bear Raghu Dacoit Girl as Kali-Ma The Deputy Magistrate All for Nothing A Punjabee Dacoit A Child's Experience Two Chinese ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... composed of the bruised leaves, the juice of the leaves and lemon juice. The fresh root also may be employed. The Hindoo physicians state that the root decoction in milk is aphrodisiac; the root is also regarded as an antidote for the bite of the "cobra da cabelho," but its virtue is purely imaginary. Of late years the plant has been used in Europe under the name of ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... person scratches me with a poisoned dagger so gently that I do not feel the scratch, he has achieved a painless vivisection; but if I presently die in torment I am not likely to consider that his humility is amply vindicated by his gentleness. A cobra's bite hurts so little that the creature is almost, legally speaking, a vivisector who inflicts no pain. By giving his victims chloroform before biting them he could comply with the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... black cobra sits up, and puffs his hood, and hisses, giving warning to his prey, ere he strikes: so I, Shatrunjaya[6] the lute-player, son of a king, do send this my menace to thee, Narasinha, the lover of a queen too good for so vile ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... the way? Or, shall we join the company at the half-way stopping place? Well, it's a matter of your eyes, how you use them. If the knife holds your eyes, you'll never get past it. That knife is like the deadly serpent's glittering eye. If the cobra's eye can get your eye, you are held fast in ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... has met with a terrible retribution; thou art a slave to the lust and fury of a monster more dreadful than the venomous and deadly cobra di ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... taro goes to the chiefs, who divide as they please among their immediate adherents; but certain fish, turtles—which abound in Kuria,—and the whole produce of the coco-palm, belong exclusively to Tembinok'. 'A' cobra berong me,' observed his majesty with a wave of his hand; and he counts and sells it by the houseful. 'You got copra, king?' I have heard a trader ask. 'I got two, three outches,' his majesty replied: 'I think three.' Hence the commercial importance of Apemama, the trade of three islands ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a royal Egyptian chair of state, the property of Jesse Haworth, Esq., was placed on view at the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition. It is made of dark wood, apparently rosewood; the legs being shaped like bull's legs, having silver hoofs, and a solid gold cobra snake twining round each leg. The arm-pieces are of lightwood with cobra snakes carved upon the flat in low relief, each snake covered with hundreds of small silver annulets, to represent the markings of the reptile. This chair, dated ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Bholat will learn of the massacre, and will learn too, that not quite all were killed. He will come hotfoot to find the four we could not find. For these British are as cobras; slay the he cobra and the she one comes to seek revenge. Slay the she one and beware! Her husband will track thee down, and strike thee. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... get used to almost anything, Grand Master," I said. "I found a cobra under my pillow when I rolled out of the sack this morning. A coral snake fell out of the folds of my towel when I went to take a shower. Somebody stashed a bushmaster here in my locker to meet me when I dressed for surgery. I'm getting ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ground-rattlesnake; the third is the Ancistrodon, or moccasin, one of the species of which is a water-snake; and the fourth is the Elaps, or harlequin snake. There is some dispute over the exact degree of the toxic qualities of the venom of the Heloderma suspectum, or Gila monster. In India the cobra is the most deadly snake. It grows to the length of 5 1/2 feet, and is most active at night. The Ophiophagus, or hooded cobra, is one of the largest of venomous snakes, sometimes attaining a length of 15 feet; ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... you got the whole of Noah's Ark to pick from—lions, tigers, ants, hippopotamuses, cobra ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... Iban, tells us that he has been helped by a python ever since he was a youth, when a man came to him in a dream and said, "Sometimes I become a python and sometimes a cobra, and I will always help you." It has certainly helped him very much, but he does not know whether it has helped his children; nevertheless he has forbidden them to kill it. He does not like to speak of it, but he does so at ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the Colonel, my brother," the Squire replied. "He brought him over from India with him. The man had been some years in his service, and was very attached to him, and had saved his life more than once, he told me. On one occasion he caught a cobra by the neck as it was about to strike my brother's hand as he sat at table; he carried it out into the compound, as George called it, but which means, he told me, garden, and there let it escape. Another time he caught a Thug, which means a sort of robber who kills his victims by strangling ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... snake-catching, but found the sport too dangerous; when the animal flees, the tail is caught by the left hand and the right is slipped up to the neck, a delicate process, as a few inches too far or not far enough would be followed by certain death in catching a Cobra. At last certain of my messmates killed one of the captives and the snake-charmer would have no ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... fellows, at the sound of approaching footsteps, it half raises its head and hisses. Often have I come to a sudden pull-up on foot and on horseback, on hearing their dreaded warning! There is also the cobra-capello, nearly as dangerous, several black snakes, and the boem-slang, or tree-snake, less deadly, one of which I once shot seven feet long. The Cape is also infested by scorpions, whose sting is little less virulent than a snake-bite; and by the spider called the tarantula, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... day, green as a gourd in June, The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; 165 And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, Until the golden eye of the bright flower, Through the dark lashes of those veined lids, ...disencumbered of their silent sleep, 170 Gazed like a star into the morning light. Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw The pulses With which the purple velvet flower was fed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a wounded cobra, before it was able to ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of course, that this beast of prey devoured the pretty little widow and all her substance with less hesitation or remorse than a cobra might have felt in swallowing a ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth |
