"Forked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shades below! There lances and glances each long-pronged fork,[A] As through the wild flames it is quick at work, Till the red blood squirts and seethes and sings, As through the red flame each squirtlet springs, The flames lap round her like forked levin; The priests send up their prayers to heaven; But what these prayers are to do when there, It is likely they could not themselves declare Yet all this while, in her agony, She made no murmur, she uttered no cry, As if she would show by a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... in the peculiar Californian pitcher-plant (Darlingtonia), a genus of the same natural family, which captures insects in great variety, enticing them by a sweetish secretion over the whole inside of the inflated hood and that of a curious forked appendage, resembling a fish-tail, which overhangs the orifice. This orifice is so concealed that it can be seen and approached only from below, as if—the casual observer might infer—to escape visitation. But dead ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... sharp stem and stern, was decked from end to end, low forward and much raised aft, and had a long deck cabin: the steering apparatus consisted of one or two large stout oars, each supported on a forked post and managed by a steersman. It had one mast, sometimes composed of a single tree, sometimes formed of a group of smaller masts planted at a slight distance from each other, but united at the top by strong ligatures and strengthened at intervals by crosspieces ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... that to you, sirrah?' he exclaimed, and the forked lightning ran out of his eye right down my backbone. It aches ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... thrusting their forked tongues into his nose and ears, and when he grabbed frantically to tear them ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... not understand the natives' words, but their actions were easy enough to read, and all followed their example, the doctor and I getting up into the same tree, one which forked very low down, and we were just in safety when we heard a cry, and saw that Jack Penny was in difficulties. He too had climbed part of the way into a tree, when he had slipped, and in spite of all his efforts he could not at ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... lie down under the trees and begin to sing a particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to them, and she sang to them, and they writhed ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... that her two daughters, aged sixteen and seventeen, had been lost from the party for two days. They were in the cart with the curate who had stopped to water his horse, thus losing his place in line. When they had reached the spot where the road forked, which direction had he taken? What had become of them? She pinned her name and route on the refectory wall, begging me to give it to them if they ever inquired for her. To my knowledge they ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... ridge a half-mile above the junction of the brooks. George built a big fire—much bigger than usual. At the back he placed the largest green log he could find. Just in front of the fire, and at each side, he fixed a forked stake, and on these rested a cross pole. From the centre of the pole he suspended a piece of stout twine, which reached nearly to the ground, and tied the lower ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front, and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten by Polar bears? ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... by delicate buskins of black leather, decked with the silver sigma, in its old crescent shape, the proud initial of the high term senator. A golden bracelet, fashioned like a large serpent, exquisitely carved with horrent scales and forked tail, was twined about the wrist of his right arm, with a huge carbuncle set in the head, and two rare diamonds for eyes. A dozen rings gemmed with the clearest brilliants sparkled upon his white and tapering ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... favour of the hunchback of Notre Dame. He had but stood at the window, and at once had been elected. The square nose, the horseshoe shaped mouth, the one eye, overhung by a bushy red eyebrow, the forked chin, and the strange expression of amazement, malice, and melancholy—who had seen such ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... :forked: /adj./ [Unix; prob. influenced by a mainstream expletive] Terminally slow, or dead. Originated when one system was slowed to a snail's pace by an inadvertent ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... from it; how can he ask those for money who have none? It is like forcing blood out of a stone. He is not the man to do it. Silvestro lives at hand; he hears the rattle of the hail that burns the grapes up to a cinder—the terrible din of the thunder before the forked lightning strikes the cattle; he sees with his own eyes the griping want of bread in the savage winter-time; his own eyes behold the little lambs, dead of hunger, lying by the road-side. Worse still, he sees other lambs—human lambs ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... were sacrificed in his efforts to capture or to kill this fierce wild beast. Sometimes the animal was caught in a trap which was nothing less than a hut of logs with a single entrance. In the roof of the hut heavy beams would be placed on a forked stick. The bait—a young lamb or kid—would be tied beneath the beams. The moment the bait was touched, down would come the ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... and dark; and the intrepid traveller had to lie down to sleep in the open air, without even a tree to shelter him. A heavy shower of hail was falling,—each hailstone about the size of an egg. The dark air was occasionally illuminated by forked lightning, of the most appalling aspect; and the thunder was deafening. By various sounds, heard in the intervals of the peals, it seemed evident that the vicinity was pervaded by wolves, tigers, elephants, wild-boars, and serpents. A peculiar motion, perceptible under horse-cloth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... had been watching the fight with amazement, was still standing motionless when the stag bounded up to him, and before he had time to escape forked him up with its great antlers, and set off at full gallop over hedges and ditches, hill and dale, through wood and water. The tailor could do nothing but hold on tight with both hands to the stag's horns and resign himself to his fate. ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... one glass of forked lightning, poor Duncan was in a terrible state of excitement when the cemetery was approached. He kept his head averted, and clutched the reins so nervously that the vehicle was in imminent ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... there is more than one woman we see in society smiling about from house to house, pleasant and sentimental and formosa superne enough; but I fancy a fish's tail is flapping under her fine flounces, and a forked fin at ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and axes sounded ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Though here is a great symbol, that of the ancients—the serpent—being wisdom. This one is of different significance. See how its long body has taken up space. The tail is three-forked and downward, the head being turned around, sharpened like a shepherd's crook, lower than the body. Deception—intrigue—house of sickness—see the crosses and losses? The one tossing such a cup has been assailed in various ways. Look now well to the above ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... his contest with the devil. Wherefore the faithful ought not to cross themselves when the thunder peals, lest the evil one should take refuge from the heavenly weapons behind the protecting cross. The Bulgarians say that forked lightning is the lance of Ilya who is chasing the Lamia fiend: summer lightning is due to the sheen of that lance, or to the fire issuing from the nostrils of his celestial steeds. The white clouds of summer are ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... centre of this set, as Robert Shallow was the butt of it. The latter had few personal attractions. According to Falstaff's portrait of him, he looked like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring. When he was naked he was for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: he was so forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were invincible: he was the very genius of famine; and a certain section of his friends called him mandrake: he came ever in the rearward ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... already got two forked twigs as a support for his spit, and, taking the ramrod from the gun, thrust it through the meat. He had ceased putting on fresh wood the moment he saw the others come from the forest. The fire soon sank down to a mass of glowing embers, over which he put the meat, ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... landscape seems black and ominous; before him, the sleeping city spreads its panorama, broken and sombre, beneath heavy clouds; the fretted towers on the massive prison frown dimly through the mist to the right, from which a low marshy expanse dwindles into the dark horizon. And ever and anon the forked lightning courses its way through the heavens, now tinging the sombre scene with mellow light, then ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... they were nearly half a mile in front when we had last seen them. They rode side by side, and Alexander seemed to have plenty to say, for he talked incessantly in his pleasant, easy voice, and Hermione listened to him. They came to a place where the road forked to the right and left. Neither of them were very familiar with the forest, and, without stopping to think, they followed the lane which looked the straighter and broader of the two, but which in reality led by winding ways to a distant part of the woods. When John Carvel ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... longer than the small flower itself, nodding from leaf-axils. Perianth bill-shaped, of 6 spreading segments; stamens 6, 2-horned; style spreading into 3 branches, stigmatic on inner side. Stem: 1 to 2 1/2 ft. high, simple or forked. Leaves: Thin, alternate, green on both sides, many nerved, tapering at end, rounded at base, where they are seated on stem. Fruit: A round, red, many-seeded berry. Preferred Habitat - Moist woods. Flowering Season - May-July. Distribution - North America east and west, southward ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... and fry to a crisp. Fill the oven one-third or one-half full of branch water, then take the stale corn bread, the more moldy the better, rub into fine crumbs, mix and bring the whole to a boil, gently stirring with a forked stick. When cold, eat with fingers and to prevent waste or to avoid carrying it on the march, eat the four days' rations at one sitting. This dish will aid in getting clear of all gestion of meat, and prevent bread from getting old. A pot of "cush" is a dish "fit for a king," ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... rapid. Our friends were waiting for us. Soon we saw above the valley that lay before us, clouds of smoke and the white puffs of bursting shells. As yet we could distinguish little of the sound of battle, but those small fleecy clouds which appeared so suddenly, flashing forked lightning, told us of work ahead. It was five o'clock when the Sixth corps arrived on the battle-field, having made an unprecedented march of thirty-four miles! We halted in reserve, not to rest, but to wait a few moments until our place should be assigned us ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... pigskin? Surely a male biped need not dwell In a prejudiced pedantic prig's skin, Not to like that prospect passing well. CARLYLE, who scoffed at Man, had deemed it caddish To picture Woman as "a mere forked radish." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... almost north as did all the little water-courses hereabouts, and for a long while I followed it, until at last, to my great relief, it divided; and I followed the branch that ran northeast. Again this branch forked; I took the eastern course until, on the right bank, I saw long, naked beds of rock stretching into low ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... he has the forked tongue of the serpent, and like all the pale-faces, he is the enemy of ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... they went slowly. Some young men were sent far ahead to scout. The second day, they came back to the main body, and said they had found a camping place just deserted, and that there the trail forked. The poor man then went ahead, and at the forks he found a willow twig stuck in the ground, pointing to the left hand trail. When the others came up, he said to them: "Take care of my horse now, and travel slowly. I will go ahead on foot and find ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... making for the pass, the other making for the right, where Pilot Peak loomed close at hand. There was some reason why the trail forked, and as we surveyed we caught the glint ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... who was lying down drives his muzzle forward, and draws in his ears through his skull, as the snail doth his horns. And his tongue, which erst was united and fit for speech, cleaves itself, and the forked one of the other closes up; and the smoke stops. The soul that had become a brute fled hissing along the valley, and behind him the other speaking spits. Then he turned upon him his new shoulders, and said to the other,[2] "I will ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... hotel. He is a portly man of forty-five, but rather soldierly than fat. His hair, pompadour, is reddish blond, beginning to turn gray, like his mustache and large full beard; the latter somewhat "Henry IV." and slightly forked at bottom. His dress produces the effect rather of carelessness than of extreme fashion. He wears a travelling-suit of gray, neat enough but not freshly pressed, the trousers showing no crease, the coat cut in "walking-coat style," ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson
... Muddha Arran is literally "the bread stick," a term in opposition to the scowdher. It is a forked stick with three legs, that stands opposite the fire, and supports the cake, which is placed on the edge until it is gradually baked. The Scowdher is, for the most part, ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... hell yawned for him, he was ready and eager to meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, nooses, and forked iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in through the bars upon the floor of his cage. He snarled and struck at the curling ropes, and for ten minutes was a grand and impossible wild creature, lacking in nothing save the wit and the patience ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... with a forked stick, with one prong for the beam and the other for the scratcher; and the plow boy and his sleepy ox had no choice of prongs to hitch to. It was all the same to Adam whether "Buck" was yoked to the beam or the scratcher. But some noble Cincinnatus dreamed of the burnished plowshare; ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... As they descended And now were in mid-air, there came the sound Of the bell striking midnight, and forthwith In a moment, like a serpent winged with fire, There rose from wall to wall a sheet of flame, Which in one instant mounted to the roof With forked red tongues. Then every casement teemed With strange armed men, who leapt into the flames And perished. Those who, maimed and burnt, escaped, Ere they could gain their feet, a little band Of citizens, who sprang ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... was almost as difficult as finding water. They had to be imported from some remote section of the West. The witches, as we called them, went over various parts of the reservation, probing, poking, with their forked sticks. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... "make up the half-dozen!" They all formerly did business in a ship called the "Morning Star," and whenever the ex-pirate number five is in pecuniary distress, he bawls out into the ear of ci-devant pirate number six, the words "Morning Star!" and a purse of hush-money is forked out in a trice. In this manner Gipsy George accumulates, by the end of the piece, a large property; for six or eight purses, all ready filled for each occasion, thus pass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... all over with thongs made of the hide of some animal and place it reclining on the back at full length, either in the branches of some tree or on a scaffold made for the purpose. These scaffolds are about eight feet high and made by planting four forked sticks firmly in the ground, one at each corner and then placing others across on top, so as to form a floor on which the body is securely fastened. Sometimes more than one body is placed on the same scaffold, though generally a separate one is made for each occasion. These Indians ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... trees were immediately felled, and in a short time Fernando, looking out from the covered wagon, perceived a clear space of ground of but few rods in circumference. Stakes, forked at the top, were driven into the ground, on which the father placed logs, and the chinks between these were stopped with clay. An enclosure was thus hastily thrown up to protect the family from the weather, and the wife and children were removed to this improvised ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... hungry, roaring waves, buffeted by winds. In the inky east two vast clouds, sailing contrary ways, met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder muttered. Again in the south, the clouds replied, and the forked stream of fire running along the black sky, shewed us the appalling piles of clouds, now met and obliterated by the heaving waves. Great God! And we alone—we three— alone—alone—sole dwellers on the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... grazing deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... day of September, the priests made an altar, supported by the paddles of the canoes laid on forked sticks. Dollier said mass; La Salle and his followers received the sacrament, as did also those of his late colleagues; and thus they parted,—the Sulpitians and their party descending the Grand River ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... room was lit up by a vivid forked flash and the crash of the thunder came instantly. The storm was immediately overhead. Peg closed her eyes, as she did when a child, while her ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... of the carrefour, the serpent catcher showed them two vipers in a low flat box. They darted their forked tongues against the wire netting, and the large green snake, which he took out of a bag, curled round his arm, seeking to escape. In questioning him they learnt that the snakes were on their way to the laboratory ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... at Simon Basset's, Squire Eben Merritt's wife came across lots to the Edwardses' house. A little red shawl over her shoulders stood out triangularly to the gusts of spring wind; a forked end of red ribbon on her bonnet fluttered sharply. Abigail Merritt moved with nervous impetus across the fields, like an erratic thread of separate purpose through an even web. All the red of the spring landscape was in the swift ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... observations of Uranus in 1889-90 with the potent instrument on Mount Hamilton. Shadings, it is true, were almost always, though faintly, seen; but they appeared under an anomalous, possibly an illusory aspect. They consisted, not of parallel, but of forked bands.[1131] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... arch, whose extremes bore W. 20 degrees S., and N. 50 degrees E.; altitude of upper limb of arch 20 degrees, of the lower 8 degrees. The beams crossed the zenith, and converged towards S. 15 degrees E. The extremity of the largest was forked, and extended to 25 degrees above the horizon in the S.E. by S. quarter. The extremity of the centre one bore S. 50 degrees E., and was 45 degrees above the horizon. The western beams approached nearest the southern horizon. All ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... slept beneath the canoe, which was turned half over, with its upper gunwale resting on a couple of short, but stout, forked sticks; and, acting upon Donald's insistent advice, they kept watch by turn, two hours at a time, during the night. Even "Tummas" was so thoroughly impressed with a sense of responsibility, that his two hours of watchfulness were passed in a nervous tremble and ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... to represent nouns."—Jamieson's Rhet., p 83. "The speculative relied no farther on their own judgment, but to choose a leader, whom they implicitly followed."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. xxv. "Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."—Beaut. of Shak., p. 266. "A Parenthesis is a clause introduced into the body of a sentence obliquely, and which may be omitted without injuring the grammatical construction."—Murray's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hunters that are employed by European traders shoot the elephant with enormous guns, or rifles, which are generally rested upon a forked stick driven into the ground. In this manner they approach to about 50 yards' distance, and fire, if possible simultaneously, two shots behind the shoulder. If these shots are well placed, the elephant, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... coiled the great, slimy folds of a hideous monster of that prehistoric deep—a mighty serpent of the sea, with fanged jaws, and darting forked tongue, with bulging eyes, and bony protuberances upon head and snout that formed short, ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... manner. Some, and those of the largest size, are rigged, so as to tack about. These have a short but pretty stout mast, which steps on a kind of roller that is fixed to the deck near the fore-part. It is made to lean or incline very much forward; the head is forked; on the two points of which the yard rests, as on two pivots, by means of two strong cleats of wood secured to each side of the yard, at about one-third its length from the tack or heel, which, when under sail, is confined down between ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... killed yet," replied Louis, as he moved forward from the waist with the forked stick in his hand. "He is handsome, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... leader in an orange tree more desirable than the much-forked tree so commonly seen! Can a single-leader tree be made from the nursery trees which have already formed their heads, by cutting off the heads below so that only a straight stick without any ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... The captain forked out a quantity of crisp bacon upon a tin plate and filled a big granite cup with fragrant coffee, for Charlie West, and from his saddle-bags brought out a bag of hardtack. Helping himself also, both fell to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... swept past the cove that the sailors had hoped to enter, and bore down with terrible speed toward the rocky coast beyond. The sails had been furled, but the wind and the water needed no aid. The rain came, a blinding deluge; the forked bolts seemed to have set the air on fire; the crash of the thunder and the roar of the wind and the water ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... he went to the forest and cut two forked poles, which he took to the hill and placed upright, and he balanced the sword of Angus across the top. Then he rose lightly over and came down safely over it. 'Is there any man among you who can do that?' asked he of the men who had ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... men whose blindness was responsible for the possibility of mutiny were only made blinder by the evidence of coming trouble. With a dozen courses open to them, any one of which might have saved the situation, they deliberately chose a thirteenth—two-forked toboggan-slide into destruction. To prove their misjudged confidence in the native army, they actually disbanded the irregulars led by Byng the Brigadier—removed the European soldiers wherever possible from ammunition-magazine guard-duty, replacing them with native companies—and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Hercules; yet the Judge who seems cruel to the wicked criminal may seem the embodiment of gentleness and kindness to his obedient children. Man determines what God shall be to him. Each paints his own picture of Deity. Macbeth sees him with forked lightnings without and volcanic fires within. The pure in heart see him as the face of all-clasping Love. Give him thy heart and he will give thee love, effulgent love, like the affection of mother or lover or friend, only dearer than either. Give him thy ways, and he will overarch ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... dry Texas northers; and fantastic yarns about them, along with a cowboy's story of a herd of Longhorns drifting to death in front of one of them, come home to me and illuminate those northers like forked lightning playing along the top of black clouds ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... had passed the numerous logs that lay across the path, when yet one more appeared between me and the standing trees. It had been one of the tallest victims of the tornado; and now lay transversely to the line of the track, which cut it about midway. On nearing this obstacle, I saw that the trace forked into two—one going around the tops of the decaying branches, while the other took the direction of the roots; which, with the soil still adhering to them, formed a rounded buttress-like wall of full ten feet in diameter. ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... make you remember the Witch-hazel; its forked twig was used—nay, still is used—as a magic rod to show where there is running water underground; that is, where it is possible to find water by sinking a well. Its nuts are explosive, and go off with a snap, shooting the seeds that are inside, ten or twenty feet away, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... road forked; one branch narrowed to a grassy cattle path and presently ended at a pair of bars. Inside the bars was a stone barn; beside the barn a house of the century before last—a low, square stone house, half stripped of its ancient stucco skin, ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... mental self-possession as soon as she was on a level with a meaning she had not yet inspected; but she had to submit to his lead, distinctly perceiving where its drift divided to the forked currents of what might be in his mind and what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a moment's hesitation, for the whistling wind burst, ever and anon, like thunder-claps among the trees, and, tearing them from their roots, hurled them with violence to the ground. Rain cut across the land in sheets, and lightning played like forked serpents in the air; while, high above the roar of the hissing tempest, the thunder crashed, and burst, and rolled in ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... keep away from her. You see I needed money awful bad fer baby. He don't take to livin' awful good. He cries a lot an' I bed to hev thin's fer 'im, so I threatened him ef he didn't do sompin' I'd go tell her; an' he up an' forked over, but not till I promised. But now they say the papers is tellin' he's to marry her to-night, an' I gotta stop it somehow. I got my rights an' baby's to look after, promise er no promise, Ken I ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... his discovery, he led them back along the scent for a hundred yards or so up the field, where it suddenly forked off behind some gorse-bushes, and made straight for the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... though with a hand contemptuous in its strength, forbearing only by reason of its own whimsy. Now and again the cohorts of the clouds just hinted at parting, letting through a pale radiance from the western sky, where lingered the departing day. This light, as did the illuminating glare of the forked flames above, disclosed the while helmets of the trooping waters, rushing on with thunderous unison of tread; and the rattling thunder-shocks, intermittent, though coming steadily nearer, served but to emphasize these foot strokes of the waves. The heavens above and the waters under the earth—these ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... interminable time which measured three hours on her watch, she came to an abrupt descent into a creek bed, down the middle of which the creek itself was flowing swiftly. Here the road forked, a rough, little-used trail keeping on up the creek, the better travelled road crossing and climbing the farther bank. Lorraine scarcely hesitated before she chose the main ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... straight at the old gentleman's excited face, and seeing nothing but it in all the bright infinity of sunshine. Were they, indeed, about to find the treasure chest? He felt the sun very hot upon his shoulders, and he heard the harsh, insistent jarring of a tern that hovered and circled with forked tail and sharp white wings in the sunlight just above their heads; but all the time he stood staring into the good old ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... with comfits. Some cried; some swore; and the tropes and figures of Billingsgate were used without reserve in all their native zest and flavour; nor were those flowers of rhetoric unattended with significant gesticulation. Some snapped their fingers; some forked them out; some clapped their hands, and some their back-sides; at length, they fairly proceeded to pulling caps, and every thing seemed to presage a general battle; when Holder ordered his horns to sound a charge, with a view ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the Almighty Father, offended that any mortal should rise to the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian lake." —AEneid, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... saw people on business. What did she want to do to him? He was prepared by this time for a scene of jealousy, since he was sure he had learned to read her character justly in feeling that if she had the appearance of a cold woman a forked flame in her was liable on occasion to break out. She was very still, but from time to time she would fire off a pistol. As soon as he had closed the door she said without ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... guest, and there was nothing to amuse the boys. Time dragged so heavily that Phil begged Stuart to bring his little rubber-gun—gumbo-shooter he called it. It was a wide rubber band fastened at each end to the tips of a forked stick shaped like a big Y. They used buckshot to shoot with, nipping up a shot in the middle of the band with thumb and finger, and drawing it back as far as ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... to be a dark night, and, seeing that there was no serious risk after all, he prolonged his journey with her so far as to the junction at which the branch line to Warborne forked off. Here it was necessary to wait a few minutes, before either he could go back or she could go on. They wandered outside the station doorway into the gloom of the road, and there agreed ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... is ready; the baptized Jews have forged arms and woven ropes; the masses clamor for immediate orders. Speak but the word now, and the electric sparks will fly, the millions flash into forked lightnings, kindle into flame, and consume ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop him is to turn them three times round when they're baking and touch them each time with a forked hazel twig." ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of the hill the road forked into two branches, that which led to the right continuing parallel with the loch, whilst the other diverged over the hill towards Auchtermuchty, a town some fifteen miles distant. The stout pony unhesitatingly took ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... multiplicity of short legs. The legs on the rear portions of the bodies terminated in sucker-like disks on which they stood on the surface of the planet. The upper part of the body was raised from the ground and the legs terminated in forked appendages like hands. Stiff, coarse hair, brown in color, protruded from between brilliant green scales, edged with crimson. The heads were huge and misshapen and consisted mostly of eyes with a multitude of facets and huge jaws which worked incessantly as though the slugs were continually ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... man, with reddish gold hair and long forked beard, dressed in purple with gold adornments; and his shield is bronze edged with gold; he bears ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... beards! spade-shaped, hammer-shaped, dagger-shaped, triangular, square, peaked, round, hemispherical, and forked. But chief among them all, was old Ushant's, the ancient Captain of the Forecastle. Of a Gothic venerableness, it fell upon his breast ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... gone a long time. The shallow river, full of rapids and shoals, curved and forked and steadily shrank. But although Sacagawea eagerly peered, and murmured to ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... range an object so picturesque. I forthwith strapped on my knapsack, buckled my belt, and strode out for the Koenigs-See, which lay not far beyond. I walked briskly for a mile or two, stimulated by the abounding oxygen of the highland air, but presently found myself where the road forked and there was nothing to indicate which was my right path. The solitude seemed complete, but as I stood hesitating, I was relieved by the appearance of a pedestrian who emerged from a by-way. As I framed an inquiry ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... exposure. We must therefore regard it as a mere after-thought, that a little softens the rudeness, but adds nothing to the weight, of that exquisite woman's reason aforesaid. And so exit Clotilda and enter Bertram, who "stands without looking at her," that is, with his lower limbs forked, his arms akimbo, his side to the lady's front, the whole figure resembling an inverted Y. He is soon however roused from the state surly to the state frantick, and then follow raving, yelling, cursing, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... These were launched across the stream with the assistance of two people, and a rope on the further side; the roots of the trees were firmly fastened with ropes to the roots of the trees on each side of the river. Along the upper side of these trees they planted a range of upright forked sticks, cut correctly to the lengths on the sounding pole. These upright forks supported two other trees tied as the first, but which were not, like the first, permitted to sink into the water, but were kept about a foot above the surface ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... with several ropes, and was supported on forked poles, varying in length, to correspond with the inequalities of the ground, and was so contrived as to enclose any space, by crossing hills, valleys or streams, and encircling woods, or whatever might present itself; smaller nets for stopping ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... yellow-brown pointed dome rising above the blurred horizon. It was the Mahdi's Tomb, standing in the very heart of Omdurman. From the high ground the field-glass disclosed rows and rows of mud houses, making a dark patch on the brown of the plain. To the left the river, steel-grey in the morning light, forked into two channels, and on the tongue of land between them the gleam of a white building showed among the trees. Before us were the ruins of Khartoum and the confluence of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... side rise, snow-born, the bright St. Vrain, and the Big and Little Thompson. By sunlight or moonlight its splintered grey crest is the one object which, in spite of wapiti and bighorn, skunk and grizzly, unfailingly arrests the eyes. From it come all storms of snow and wind, and the forked lightnings play round its head like a glory. It is one of the noblest of mountains, but in one's imagination it grows to be much more than a mountain. It becomes invested with a personality. In its caverns and abysses one comes to fancy that it generates and chains the strong winds, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... water. In this he was disappointed; so taking a sparing pull at his water-bottle, he crawled under one of them, seeking its shade. There was a slight rustle, and a snake rose on its tail, and darted at him with its forked tongue, but, just ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... mine, each camel being loaded with two pieces, and the negroes break these down into smaller pieces, for the convenience of carrying them on their heads, and muster a large number of footmen for this yearly traffic. These porters have each a long forked stick in their hands; and, when tired, they rest their loads on these sticks. They proceed in this manner till they arrive on the banks of a certain water, but whether fresh or salt my informer could not say, yet I am of opinion that it must be a river, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... act as my escort on my tour of the French lines. He proved to be a charming companion. He was a magnificent figure of a man six feet three inches in height at least, an officer of dragoons, and he wore the red and white brassard, embroidered in gold with a design of forked lightning, which is the prerogative of the staff. A military car with a driver and an orderly in shaggy furs awaited us outside on the Place de la Concorde. It was a sumptuous car, upholstered in green corded silk, with nickel fittings, and displaying on ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... once; they had taken the brightness out of his childhood; from between them had sprung the visions that had clung about him and made night horrible. Adder-like thoughts had lifted their heads, had shot out forked tongues at him, asking mockingly strange, trivial questions that he could ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... a huge black specimen with bright yellow stripes. Bland's frenzied yell seemed not to have excited it at all, for now the sleek fellow had arched its body neatly and was calmly licking its sides with a long forked tongue. After a moment it halted the operation long enough to rub its jaw against a bar of its cage, and gave vent ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... night of her stormy mind the forked-lightning inspiration of what the real revenge would be. To take his letter—write him another back, and yet others, fool him to the top of his bent, and presently tell him, tossing at his feet a sheaf of billets. "And serve you glad—and no more than your deservings! Who put ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to feed a thousand Todos Santos; and raised, too, with tools like that," he continued, pointing to a primitive plow that lay on the wayside, formed by a single forked root. A passing ox-cart, whose creaking wheels were made of a solid circle of wood, apparently sawn from an ordinary log, again plunged him into cogitation. Here and there little areas of the rudest cultivation broke into a luxuriousness of orange, lime, and fig trees. The joyous ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... chicken, made the little seven-year-old girls take their five-year-old brothers up in their arms for protection, and finally we climbed a long hill. At the top stretched an endless plain. The road forked; presently it branched; anon it grew into twigs of white dust on the gray levels of the background. The local physician of Eagle Pass was of our party, and he was said to know where a certain tank was to be found, some thirty ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... one moment there would be an immense illumination, and the opaque cloud would become vivid gold. Again, across its blackness a dozen fiery rills of light would burn their way in zigzag channels, and not infrequently a forked bolt would blaze earthward. Accompanying these vivid and central effects were constant illuminations of sheet lightning all round the horizon, and the night promised to be a carnival of thunder-showers throughout the land. The extreme heat continued, and was rendered far more oppressive ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... contest of the elements, nature appearing to condense the heat within its narrowest possible limits, as if purposely to increase its fierceness. The effects were awful; for entire buildings would seem to dissolve at their touch, as the forked flames enveloped ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 'Will that forked tongue cease hissing!' he shouted, in the agony of a strong man convulsed both to render and conceal the terrible, shameful, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inert, watched the snaky mass, squirming in hideous folds almost on the recumbent body. Then, aroused to the horror of their nearness, he seized a torch and made at the slimy heap. The fire conquered them. They slid off the ground, with forked tongues darting out in impotent malice. But others, squirming through the water, wriggled up; and the boy, maddened by the danger, stood his ground, torch in hand, defending ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the mazy windings of the wall, Bill Brown sat in the forked top of a tree and studied out the ground-plan of the city. He was imprinting landmarks in his memory for future reference, and trying—with a brain that ached from the apparent hopelessness of the task—to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... to find two trees standing about seven feet apart with convenient branches down low enough to support the horizontal top cross pole when laid in the crotches. Lacking the proper trees, the second method is to get two strong, straight, forked poles of green wood and drive them down into the ground deep enough to make them stand firm and upright by themselves the required distance apart. The third way is to reinforce the uprights by shorter forked stakes driven firmly into the ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... from perdition, and I will go on to denounce the same meanness and hypocrisy with a hundred-fold more stress and vehemency in words across which no slime has ever trailed, and through which no infernal fires have shot their forked tongues,—words pure, innocent, all-impressive, God-honored, Anglo-Saxon,—in which Milton sang, and Bunyan ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... animal of this species, which I have heard the natives of this part of the coast describe, often exceeding 30 feet in length, and of an enormous size; it is variegated with spots, and the head is covered with scales; the tongue is fleshy and forked, but its bite is not poisonous; it is to be found in the recesses of caves and thickets, from whence it suddenly darts upon its victim, whether man or beast: it frequently chooses a tree, from which it reconnoitres the passing objects, supporting itself by the tail, which it twists round ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... old trail which he followed a long way till it forked. Right in the fork of the trail, he saw a young bird. Its feathers were not half grown and of course it could not fly. Little Luke knew that it must have fallen out of the nest by accident. So he ran after the frightened little bird and picked it up very ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... prospect of the fashionable throng which was to invade his shabby precincts. When, however, Mrs Thornton made up her mind to carry out a plan, she was not easily damped; and aided by Mollie and the younger members of her brood, she weeded, and forked, and clipped at the over-grown garden, until it really began to ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... from the phial over the letters, and they glowed the colour of blood and flashed with a report, and it was as if a fiery forked-tongue had darted before them and spake the words written, and they were, 'This is the crown of him who bath achieved his aim and resteth here.' Thereupon, she stuck the needle in the door, and he pulled the thread, and the door drew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... every boy and girl knows about the nuts and blossoms, the twigs and the hedges, the roots and the leaf of the common hazel bush, and everybody has heard of the witch hazel. In old days they made use of the forked branches of the hazel as a divining rod. With this, they believed that they could divine, or find out the presence of treasures of gold and silver, deep down in the earth, and hidden from ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... the dairyman pulled up and looked around. It was a spot at which the highway forked; the left arm, the more important, led on through Sherton Abbas and Melchester to London; the right to Idmouth and the coast. Nothing was visible on the white track to London; but on the other there appeared the back of ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... in the Aru Islands and some parts of New Guinea, but are snared in a very ingenious manner. A large climbing Arum bears a red reticulated fruit, of which the birds are very fond. The hunters fasten this fruit on a stout forked stick, and provide themselves with a fine but strong cord. They then seep out some tree in the forest on which these birds are accustomed to perch, and climbing up it fasten the stick to a branch and arrange the cord in a noose ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... move. Mechanically her eyes took in the little hut, crude, but rainproof at least—branches heaped across two forked limbs for a roof; the trunk of a big tree for the rear wall; branches thrust upright into the ground for the sides—the whole a little triangular shaped affair. The fire blazed in front just within shelter at the entrance; and ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel with military precautions; for the least you had to apprehend was to awake next morning without money or baggage, or necessary raiment, a lone forked radish in a bed; and if the worst befell, you would instantly and mysteriously disappear from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the tears run red! A lying man and a pitiless Shall be lord of me, a heart full-flown With scorn of righteousness: O heart of a beast where law is none, Where all things change so that lust be fed, The oath and the deed, the right and the wrong, Even the hate of the forked tongue: Even the hate turns and is cold, False as the love ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... not been long kindled, and crackled as it blazed. You could easily have told the strong red flame to be that of the shell-bark hickory—the best firewood—though dry sticks of some lighter wood had been used to kindle it. On each side of the fire a forked stick was stuck into the ground, with the forks at the top; and on these rested a fresh cut sapling, placed horizontally to serve as a crane. A two-gallon camp-kettle of sheet-iron was suspended upon it and over the fire, and the water in the kettle was just beginning ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... carts came in steady lines, creaking under endless loads, from those fields which, two years later, lay scorched with drought, and over which famine brooded. The peasant girls tossed the grain, with forked boughs, to the threshing-machine, tended by other girls. The village boys had a fine frolic dragging the straw away in bundles laid artfully on the ends of two long poles fastened shaft-wise to the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... a piece of bread on a forked stick and held it out to the blaze. He did the same with the other half of the sandwich. Then they partook of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... and dark—all alight with the joy of life; sparkling with fun and mischief; blazing forked lightnings at some offence, fancied as often as not; big with entreaty that none could refuse; more rarely—in those days—deep with sober thought; but always—shining, sparkling, blazing, entreating—the most wonderful and fascinating eyes in the world to the boy ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham |
