"Humped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he approached the rest of us, while waiting at a water-tank for a freight, should have unhesitatingly classified him as a "gay-cat." Gay-cat is the synonym for tenderfoot in Hobo Land. This gay-cat was well along in years—somewhere around forty-five, I should judge. His shoulders were humped a trifle, and his face ...
— The Road • Jack London
... wall; saw some one lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... set to its limpid depths with the heavenly gems, glittered and darkled with its million diamond incrustations. The humped-up lump of Clinch's Dump crouched like some huge and feeding night-beast on the bank, ringed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... this trim, nervous mare better than any other thing in the world. When he rode, perched like a monkey, with his thin legs held close to her sides, and his short, humped back doubled over, and his head with its long hair bobbing about as though his neck were loose-coupled somehow, he was eternally caressing her mighty withers, or feeling for the play of each iron ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... two before a mirror, tidying herself up, feeling as she did so a little thrill of anticipation. And then she stuck her head through the kitchen door and announced that she was leaving. "Don't burn the whole place up, Maida," she cautioned with a laugh as she caught sight of her sitting, humped forward in a kitchen chair, fat elbows resting on a table, placidly viewing a vast clutter of dishes that had not yet ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... very idle. For days together she would sit doing nothing. Then she was so ugly and ill-shaped that not one of the youths of the village would have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was long and thin, her nose excessively large and humped, her teeth crooked and projecting, her chin almost as sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer. Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite much laughter ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... lock on the Lady May's cage. He woke her gently and took her into his arms. She humped her back luxuriously, stretched her claws, started to purr, thought better of it, and licked him on the wrist instead. He did not have the pin-set on, so their minds were closed to each other, but in the ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... Canidae have been tamed, and that their blood, in some cases mingled together, flows in the veins of our domestic breeds. In regard to sheep and goats I can form no decided opinion. From facts communicated to me by Mr. Blyth, on the habits, voice, constitution and structure of the humped Indian cattle, it is almost certain that they are descended from a different aboriginal stock from our European cattle; and some competent judges believe that these latter have had two or three wild progenitors, whether or not these deserve to be called species. This conclusion, as well as ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... gaily ornamented ruth or family bullock-cart, with a broidered canopy of two domes, like a double-humped camel, which had just been drawn into the par. Eight men made its retinue, and two of the eight were armed with rusty sabres—sure signs that they followed a person of distinction, for the common folk do not bear arms. An increasing cackle of complaints, orders, and jests, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... is no better land, I swear, in all the wide world round — I smelt the bush a month before we touched King George's Sound! And now I've come to settle down, the top of my desire Is just to meet a mate o' mine called 'Dunn of Nevertire'. Was raised at Nevertire — The town of Nevertire; He humped his bluey by the name of 'Dunn ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... arrival of no less a person than Marshal Jeff Calkins. His shoulders were humped and his short legs bowed from continual riding, and his head was slung far forward on a gaunt neck; so that when he turned his head from one to another in speaking it was with a peculiar pendulum motion. The marshal had a reputation which was strong over three hundred miles ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... silence, out of the unknown east. It was the multitudinous beat of their horses' hoofs which caused that low throbbing in his ears. Some were so close to him as he looked down upon them that he could see clearly their thin wiry horses, and the strange humped figures of the swarthy riders, sitting forward on the withers, shapeless bundles, their short legs hanging stirrupless, their bodies balanced as firmly as though they were part of the beast. In those nearest he could see the ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... junks are lying in ranks at anchor; there are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships from Osaka. And there is a most romantic little breakwater built of hewn stone, with a stone lantern perched at the end of it; and there is a pretty humped bridge connecting it with a tiny island on which I see a shrine of Benten, the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... legs of a man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably longer or shorter than usual, we say he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to her curiosity. He sat opposite to her in the cab, so that when he leaned forward to speak, with his hat pushed impatiently back, his big insistent face was thrust forward close to hers, and his great shoulders humped ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... perch, diving under a table, between the rounds of a chair, over a gas-fixture, behind and through any openings he could find. Should some bird in the room disapprove of this behavior, and scold, as the finch was quite apt to do, the mocking-bird instantly alighted beside him, humped his back till he looked deformed, sidled two or three steps towards him, stopped, and stared at his critic; then two or three steps more, stopping again, and in every way acting more like a mischievous monster than a bird, till the astonished ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Linda explained, wiping her eyes, "because it is such a distressed-looking cat, Meg. It's so dirty and so little and so—so mad!" she finished as the cat humped up its back and spit at Twaddles who tried ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... She sat humped on the log, her beautiful hair shining in the light of the warm sky. She had thrown off her hat and the linen duster, and was in her blue gingham gown against the sky and leaves. But she sat stiffly, her feet carefully covered, her hands ill at ease, her eyes rather piteous in their hope somehow ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... Ahead lay a barren stretch of beach, humped with sand dunes. It was skirted beyond by ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... whitewashed walls of a farmhouse; or in the farther distance lingered upon the burnt-brick buildings of an outlying village. Beyond the river, in the broad meadow beneath the turret-clad mound, half-naked, sunburnt boys drove home the small humped cows to the milking, scaring away, as they went, the troops of white horses that pastured in the same field, clapping their hands and crying out at the little black foals that ran and frisked by the side of their ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... evilly under his pale brows, rode that night between Hampton and Judith down to the ranch-house. He maintained a stubborn silence after the first outburst of rage. His hands tied behind his back, a rope run round his waist and down on each side through a cinch-ring, he sat idly humped ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... Ministers, whose functions are particular and peculiar—since Confederation. To Ottawa, Sir Thomas is little short of a miracle. The frame of mind on both sides of politics regarding Sir Thomas is not unlike that of the farmer who saw a two-humped camel for the first time. "Hell," said Ottawa, "they ain't no such animal!" Now it calls Sir Thomas White 'great'—and even ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... They seemed to beg of him the answer to a terrible question. It was always the same question. It had been asked of Pharaoh. They asked it of Leopold. For hours, squatting on the iron deck-plates, humped on their naked haunches, crowding close together, they muttered apparently interminable criticisms of Everett. Their eyes never left him. He resented this unceasing scrutiny. It got upon his nerves. He was sure they ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... out at full length and spinning round and round like a wagon wheel upon its nave. They revolve with great rapidity, using their humped shoulders as a pivot, and their legs as levers. They sometimes continue this motion for half-an-hour at a time. No doubt they do this, as has been said, to scratch themselves; for, notwithstanding their thick hides and hair, they are much annoyed by insect-parasites. They do it, too, for amusement, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... have not been observed, owing to the difficulty of finding many of the species in their stations of natural repose. Caterpillars are also similarly protected. Many exactly resemble in tint the leaves they feed upon; others are like little brown twigs, and many are so strangely marked or humped, that when motionless they can hardly be taken to be living creatures at all. Mr. Andrew Murray has remarked how closely the larva of the peacock moth (Saturnia pavonia-minor) harmonizes in its ground colour ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... typical London doss house. There were forty beds in the room with mine, all of them occupied. All hands were snoring, and the fellow in the next cot was going it with the cut-out wide open, breaking all records. Most of the beds sagged like a hammock. Mine humped up in the middle ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... down there at the foot of the tree I see a quail. He's humped over and seems to be trying to make ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... country seat of Lord and Lady Spence; Belzoni, a giant of six feet five, the centre of a group of eager auditors of the Egyptian marvels; Hallam, affable and unpretending, and a copious talker; Gifford, a small, shriveled, deformed man of sixty, with something of a humped back, eyes that diverge, and a large mouth, reclining on a sofa, propped up by cushions, with none of the petulance that you would expect from his Review, but a mild, simple, unassuming man,—he it is who prunes the contributions and takes the sting out of them (one would ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... glad you are here! I'm glad to have another girl! Girls understand. I wish I hadn't opened those horrid old parcels. It's just as I said—presents are disappointing. Now I feel thoroughly humped and dumpy! It's so stupid, too, for I know quite well that I've every sane reason to be pleased. How exasperating it is that one's head and one's heart so ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he had a personal interest in the proceedings, might have assured himself of ample time to reach the coast before the formalities could be completed and the ship put forth to sea. Had he presently humped himself to his feet with a sluggish effort, abandoned his field-glasses in favor of a pair of large greenish-brown goggles, and set out on a trail straight down the mountains, staggering a bit at the start, a second supposititious observer of the first supposititious ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... nearly afloat. Then we crawled back, and lay by listening outside that store. We were figuring how we were to break it in when two men came along. They went in and came out with a bag or two, and as they left the door open we figured they were coming back for more. We humped out a moderate load, and had just got it down to the boat when we saw those men, or two others, in the haze. I was for lying by, but ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... that infernal court, that infernal torture chamber, they were just finishing the case of the child. This solicitor chap—chap with a humped back and a head as big as a house—was just finishing fawning round a doctor man in the box, putting it up to him that there was nothing to suggest deliberate suffocation of the baby. Oxalic acid poisoning—was ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Thomas—who seemed to have become crystallized, as it were, in age and decrepitude, and advanced no further in either—was pottering around the garden, eying askant, like an old robin, the new plough furrows. Pauper women humped their calico backs over the green slopes of the fields, searching for dandelion greens, but not digging, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... after beautiful, silent Kwala Kangsa, for there are large shops with gaudy sign-boards, stalls in the streets, tribal halls, buffalo-carts with buffaloes yoked singly, for the spread of their huge horns is so great that they cannot be yoked in pairs; trains of carts with cinnamon-colored, humped bullocks yoked in pairs standing at shop doors, gharries with fiery Sumatra ponies dashing about, crowds of Chinese coolies, busy and half-naked, filling the air with the din of their ceaseless industry, and all the epitomized stir of a world ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the works in the morning, he found Mills humped on a box beside the fireplace in the old cabin, reading "The Man Who Couldn't Die." At noon he was gone somewhere. Over the noon meal in the split-cedar mess-house, the other bolt cutters spoke derisively of the man ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a rock and stopped with myself there in the snow. This time the demon of Jagasstai only played a joke but one that did not satisfy him. He began to show more and more anger. With furious gusts of wind he almost dragged us and our bags from the camels and nearly knocked over our humped steeds, blinded us with frozen snow and prevented us from breathing. Through long hours we dragged slowly on in the deep snow, often falling over the edge of the rocks. At last we entered a small valley where the wind whistled and roared ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Haynerd was a composite picture of doubt and fear, as he sat humped up in his chair. Hitt was serious to the point of gloom, reflecting in a measure ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of the ocean!" when, lo! just as she had wished it, the queerest little man came walking out of the water to where she stood. He was the funniest looking little man, I'll be bound, you ever saw. He was not more than three feet high, and he had a hump-back—so humped that it looked almost like a wide horn coming out of his back. And he was dressed entirely in green; just as green as sea-weed, and to tell the truth, his clothes were made of sea-weed when you came to look at them closely; all woven of green sea-weed, and on the hump, his coat, which ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... hitched low his head. Red apples rolled before him; Eve's apples; seek-no-furthers. He tasted one, I another; it tasted of the ground. Fairy land not yet, thought I, flinging my bridle to a humped old tree, that crooked out an arm to catch it. For the way now lay where path was none, and none might go but by himself, and only go by daring. Through blackberry brakes that tried to pluck me back, though I but strained ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... where camels, with their heads out straight, and their feet bent under in front, are sitting in hundreds. They used to be here in thousands, but since the opening of the Transcaspian railway some years ago now, the number of these humped beasts of burden has sensibly diminished. Just compare one of these beasts with a goods truck or ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... afternoon is gray. At times an arrow of sunlight breaks through the shields of clouds, and kisses the brown earth with a quivering spot of light. Across the sloping, unkept lawn, about midway between the house and the whitewashed gate leading from the yard, a rabbit hops, aimlessly, his back humped up, and his white tail showing plainly amid his sombre surroundings. I can see the muscles about his nostrils twitching, as he stops now and again to nibble at a withered tuft of grass. A lonely jay flits from one tree to another; a cardinal speeds by my window, a line of color across a dark background; ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... path through the tangle of trees, but I could go around, and I did. On a dead spruce wedged in among the living ones I saw the object of her solicitude; a lovely sight it was! Two young bluejays huddled close together on a twig. They were "humped up," with heads drawn down into their shoulders, and breast feathers fluffed out like snowy-white floss silk, completely covering their feet and the perch. No wonder that poor little mother was anxious, for a more beautiful pair I never ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... come out into space. We were wondering how to hide!" That is a quick-talking one, as small as a child. He looks as if he might have descended from a bat—gray silken fur on his pointed face, big night-seeing eyes, and big sensitive ears, with a humped shape on the back of his air suit which might be folded wings. "We were trying to conceal where we had built, so that humans would not guess we were near ...
— The Carnivore • G. A. Morris
... each weary back is humped, And bowed each jetty pate; For Fishy, though he looks so small, Is not ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer
... fallen, how changed," from the youth who had climbed the hill as the sun went down! A mere contempt to himself, the self that contemned was a coward with the self it contemned! There lay the shapeless black of a buffalo, humped upon the grass: he made a wide circuit, and swept on like a shadow driven in the wind. For the wind had arisen, and added to his terror: it blew from behind him. He reached the brow of the valley, and shot down the steep descent like a falling star. Instantly the whole upper country behind ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... uncomfortable, Senor Don Gregorio," was his constantly recurring formula. "Keeps me from sleeping and's very troublesome when I want to turn over, as I often do on account of the pains in my poor humped shoulders. Now, why need you put it on? Surely you're not afraid of me trying to get away? Ha, ha! that would be turning one's back upon best friends. Cascaras! I fare too well here to think of changing quarters. Above all, going into the Acordada; where I'd have to go sure, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... gathered that he was pointing out to him that, on this occasion only, the visit being for the purposes of parley and not of attack, pistols might be looked on as non-essentials. Whatever his arguments, they were successful, for, finally, humped as to the back and muttering, Buck moved ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... the low-hanging skirt of wood The guard, remiss, had given a chance For a sudden sally into the cover— But foiled the intent, nor fired a shot, Though the issue was a deadly trance; For, hurled 'gainst an oak that humped low over, Mosby's man fell, pale as ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... We humped our saddles and swags ourselves; a stiffish load too, but the night was cool, and we did our best. It was no use growling. It had to be done, and the sooner the better. It seemed a long time—following father step by step—before we came to the place where I thought the cattle ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... souls skipped for the verandas of weather-board shanties out of which other souls popped to see the runaway. They saw a weird horseman, or rather, something like a camel (for Harry rode low, like Tod Sloan with his long back humped—for effect)—apparently fleeing for its life in a veil of dust, along the long white road, and some forty rods behind, an unaccountable tilted coach careered in its own separate cloud of dust. And from it came the shouts and yells. Men ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... figure had suddenly materialized beside the figure of a Jap. Another figure—a gnome, a wraith! The unholy light from the pit painted it an unearthly greenish hue, and accentuated the haggardness of face, and the gleaming eyes, the humped body, its crookedness magnified by the crouched attitude. It looked like some demon come floating up on the wicked light from the "deep place." It crouched to leap, to strike, and a bared knife gleamed in an upraised ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... power of storing up water, and bringing it back into its mouth for several days after it has drunk it. This enables it to make long journeys, without needing a brook by the way. Its feet, too, are just fitted for the sandy wastes which it has to tread. The one-humped camel is found in Africa, and the two-humped, or Bactrian camel, in Asia. The Llama of South America is like the camel in some respects, but, as you know, is very much smaller; I knew one which had a disagreeable habit of spitting at those who came to call upon him, and I ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... my inferences from Mallinson's face, for when he turned round and strolled back to his wicket, he was wearing a broad smile. Through my field glasses I could see that he was licking his lower lip with his tongue. His shoulders were humped and his whole expression one of barely controlled glee. (I always see that picture framed in a circle; a bioscopic presentation.) He could hardly refrain from dancing. Then little Beale, who was Mallinson's partner, came up and spoke to him, and I saw Mallinson hug himself with delight ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... confusion had gone out of the sky, leaving wedges of apple-green and plates of pale yellow; and by ten the lanterns on the boat were making twisted colours upon the waves, elongated or squat, as the waves stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... to paint with feverish industry, did not look at her again, but tossed an adieu over his humped shoulder when she hurried away. Then he gazed reproachfully, almost vindictively, at the uplifted eyes of the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... wild bovine animals the horns are both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in the cow-banteng (Bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and inclined much backwards. In the domestic races of cattle, both of the humped and humpless types, the horns are short and thick in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow and ox; and in the Indian buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow. In the wild gaour (B. gaurus) the horns ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... less than two feet square—contrived within an ornamental shallow basin of porcelain or other material, and placed in the alcove of a guest-room by way of decoration. You may see there a tiny pond; a streamlet crossed by humped bridges of Chinese pattern; dwarf trees forming a grove, and shading the model of a Shinto temple; imitations in baked clay of stone lanterns,—perhaps even the appearance of a hamlet of thatched cottages. If the toko-niwa be not too small, you may see real fish swimming ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... so as to bring his head below the line of the heads of the men in front of him. Capt. Keech saw his posture and came up to him and said, "Stand up! What are you crouching for?" The fellow replied, "I'm not crouching." Keech replied, "Yes, you are!" and he hit him across his humped-up back a sharp rap that made him grunt, and said, "Stand up like a man!" In battle the tendency is almost universal for the men to work out of a good line into clumps. The men of natural daring will rather crowd to the front, and those cast in more ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke the magic carpet quivered responsively under my feet, and an undulation went all round the fringe as though a sudden wind were shaking it. It humped up in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with a shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw me on my back and billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea. Quicker than I can write it lapped ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... men in the moonlight That by their shadows stand; Three hobble humped on crutches, And ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... writing becoming more and more ragged as the letter proceeded. Her feet were twined in the rounds of her chair, her arms were spread out all over the top of the big desk with a great display of elbows, and she was ungracefully humped as to back; for when Arethusa wrote, her whole ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... my ever-present sense of humor struggling to the surface. "Not—not on that day when you came into the room where I sat in the chair by the window, with a flowered quilt humped about my shoulders! And a fever-sore twisting my mouth! And my complexion the color of cheese, and my hair plastered back from my forehead, and my eyes ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... amiably disposed to take his time as was Pete himself, shied suddenly. Through habit, Pete jabbed him with the spur, to straighten him back in the road again. Pete had barely time to mutter an audible "I thought so!" when Blue Smoke humped himself. Pete slackened to the first wild lunge, grabbed off his hat and swung it as Blue Smoke struck at the air with his fore feet, as though trying to climb an invisible ladder. Pete swayed back as the horse came down in a mighty leap forward, and hooking his spurs ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... breath away. Every little while the bubbles would shoot across from my side, and watching sharply I would see Keeonekh slide out upon the lower shelf of ice on the other side and crouch there in the gloom, with back humped against the ice above him, eating his catch. The fish they caught were all small evidently, for after a few minutes he would throw himself flat on the ice, slide down the incline into the water, making no splash or disturbance as he entered, and the string of bubbles ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... seemed worse than ever. He was flat on his side, with his spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now relief was in sight—so thought the men. With a tin dipper they tried to pour some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer, who had so little appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining strength to blow it out in their faces. Several ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the leaves forthwith crawled a dwarf bowed of leg, mighty of shoulder, humped of back, and with arms very long and thick and hairy. In one great fist he grasped a ponderous club shod with iron spikes, and now, resting his hands on this and his chin on his hands, he scowled at the ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... nonchalantly for our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with the quadrumana; and between times squatted humped over on the rail, watching us ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... evident that there were more hunchbacks in that country than in any other; for as soon as the children were approaching the forbidden height, their parents would suspend heavy weights from their shoulders, so that their backs became rounded and eventually humped. ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... Worth nodded, sat there humped in a brown study while the waiter poured our coffee. The minute the man left us alone, he ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... this mornin' tellin' Sam to go an' look after you, or write a note, or somethin'! Why can't you come round oftener? I've no patience with you! You just sit at 'ome an' get humped, an' what's the good o' that, I should like to know? I thought you'd took offence with me, an' so I told Sam. Do you want to know how baby is? Why don't you ask, then, as you ought to do the first thing? He's a good deal better than he deserves ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... furrows for the sunflower seed Jay came along and leaned over the fence. "Jack," he drawled, "you look like a kangaroo all humped over making that furrow. Why don't ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... in both hands and pushed open the swing-doors with her side, thus making her ingress to the dining-room in a sort of crab-fashion. Mrs. Paynter was gone. Mr. Queed sat alone in the dining-room. His book lay open on the table and he was humped over it, hand in ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... one they shot," was Washburn's laconic observation. He looked the animal over admiringly and slapped him so vigorously under the belly that the horse grunted and humped ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... team when Caroline humped her back and kicked viciously at Yellowjacket, who plunged straight down off the trail without waiting to see whether Caroline's aim was exact. He slid into a juniper thicket and sat down looking ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the lady's head (the boys called her by a less complimentary name), and she shot into the air with her back humped till she shaped like an inverted U with its extremities narrowed and almost touching. There was no seesaw bucking about her. It was stiff-legged, with her four feet bunched together and her great fiddle-head lost in their midst. And at the first jump Tresler shot a foot out ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe. Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread through a small needle. Surely no rich man need have any fear about entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that particular thread through the eye of that ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... had not been sent up to Babylon empty-handed. Beautiful horses, huge elephants and comical monkeys; rhinoceroses and buffaloes adorned with housings and tassels; double-humped Bactrian camels with gold collars on their shaggy necks; waggon-loads of rare woods and ivory, woven goods of exquisite texture, casks of ingots and gold-dust, gold and silver vessels, rare plants for the royal gardens, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... then, and blistered the tongue, and humped the back, and broken the legs, and eviscerated the stomach, of every person who dares to think, or even dream of harming it! May the heaviest curses of time fall upon his scoundrelly soul! May his juleps curdle in his ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and more I shirked and skulked; the humped men from the north, the pale men with thin, clenched minds, the intent, hard-breathing students I found against me, fell at last from keen rivalry to moral contempt. Even a girl got above me upon one of the lists. Then indeed I made it a point of honour ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... however, to the edge of the thicket, to a point where she could see the fire. A man sat humped over the glowing embers, whereon sizzled a piece of meat. His head was bent forward, as if he were listening. Suddenly he looked up, and she gasped—for the firelight showed the features of Roaring ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and Stella was hard about her dinner preparations. Contract or no contract, money or no money, men must eat. That fact loomed biggest on her daily schedule, left her no room to think overlong of other things. Her huff over, she felt rather sorry for Charlie, a feeling accentuated by sight of him humped on a log in the sun, too engrossed in his perplexities to be where he normally was at that hour, in the thick of the logging, working harder than ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Portuguese half-bloods; men that called upon Mohammed, men that called upon Confucius, upon Krishna, upon Christ, upon Gotama the Buddha, upon Rama and Sita, upon Brahma, upon Zoroaster; strange carriages shaded by red domes that compressed a whole dream of the East in small, and drawn by humped oxen, alternating with palanquins, with stylish turnouts of the latest mode, with cavaliers upon Arabian horses; half-naked workmen, crouched in uncomfortable workshops and ornamenting sandal-wood boxes; dusky ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Robinette. Besides, Ba'tiste already was in the buggy, striving to cover his feelings by a stream of badinage directed toward Golemar, the wolf-dog, and waiting for Houston to take his place beside him. A moment more and they were driving away, Ba'tiste humped over the reins as usual, Houston striving to put from him the agony of the new accusation. Finally, the trapper cocked his head and spoke, rather to the horse and ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... that compels his mother to study braces and to fear that he will develop consumption. Yet you can study the world's health records and never find a line to prove that any man with "occupation or profession—novel reading" is recorded as dying of consumption. The humped-over attitude promotes compression of the lungs, telescoping of the diaphragm, atrophy of the abdominal abracadabra and other things (see Physiological Slush, p. 179, ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... Burnit, and, leaving instructions for his chauffeur to call for him at twelve, made his way down the long aisles of white-piled counters and into the dusty little office where old Johnson, thin as a rail and with a face like whittled chalk, humped over his desk exactly as he had sat for the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... up from the crowd and out on the flat beyond the Texan, a horse, head down and back humped like an angry cat, was leaping into the air and striking the ground stiff-legged in a vain effort to shake the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... was massive, and an angry red, sprinkled with long, wiry hairs. It fastened his flat-backed head to a body that was like a gorilla's, thick and wide and humped. And his arms gave an added touch of the animal, for they were so long that his great palms reached to his knees; and so sprung out at the shoulder, and so curved in at the wrist, that when they met at the fingers they formed ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... found Blake in his shirtsleeves, humped over a small desk. He was intently absorbed in comparing the figures of two field books and in ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... shores of the Black Sea, by the Goths, in the third or fourth century, and the buffalo first appeared in Italy about A.D. 600, though it is unknown whence or by whom he was introduced. [Footnote: Erdkunde, viii., Asien, 1ste Abtheuung, pp. 660,758. Hehn, Kuttonpflanzen, p. 845.] The Arabian single-humped camel, or dromedary, has been carried to the Canary Islands, partially introduced into Australia, Greece, Spain, and even Tuscany, experimented upon to little purpose in Venezuela, and finally imported by the American Government ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... early April of 1852 I was humped in a chair upon one side of the open entrance reading a book—Mr. Kimball seated on the other side reading a newspaper—when there came down the street a tall, greasy-looking person, who as he approached said: "Kimball, I have another letter here ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... said Baby. "When him asks for somefin, her says 'proo-proo-oo,' and that means 'yes,' and if her means 'no,' her humps up her back and s'akes her tail. When him asked Minet if her would like to hurt the calanies, her humped up her back never so high, and sook and sook her tail, ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... "I've humped that old swag for years," continued the bushman; "I've carried that old swag thousands of miles—as that old dog knows—an' no one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog, neither; and do you think I'm going to be ashamed of that old swag, for a cabby or anyone ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... She humped herself close up to me. She had run out the way she was, with nothing on her but her kilt; and she was all wet with the dews and the sea on the black beach, and shook straight on with cold and the terror of the ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heedless, lazy, shiftless, dishonest, ignorant, good-for-nothing D. keeps about him a herd of sick, disconsolated racks-of-bones, to wander over his arid and desolate fields in search of food and drink in summer, or with backs humped up, hover together for shelter under the lea of a wheat-straw stack, their only food in winter, and using a kit of dairying tools, the very best article of which is an old, water-soaked, dirty wooden pail, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... be unprovided of an offensive weapon) a vessel full of ordure in his left. Thus completely armed, he advanced with a slow and heavy pace where the Modern chiefs were holding a consult upon the sum of things, who, as he came onwards, laughed to behold his crooked leg and humped shoulder, which his boot and armour, vainly endeavouring to hide, were forced to comply with and expose. The generals made use of him for his talent of railing, which, kept within government, proved frequently of great service to their cause, but, at other times, did more mischief than good; ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... and the limp leaves Waited for rain, while the black clouds Gathered far distant, over Himavant. The jungle crouched, humped in silence. Then spoke the thunder 400 DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... sinking legs straightened. His powerless arms were braced. Astonished, he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonla, with a world of love burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of love. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... which such strange members might be applied. Upon one point they were agreed. There was no doubt in any little head among them that Aunt Hannah had at some time sold herself to Satan, and that he had placed this deformity upon her as a mark of ownership. Then she had a humped back, poor woman, the result of the cruel weight of many weary years; and she leaned upon an old-fashioned staff with a curved and crutch-like handle; and her bleared eyes were bent forever on the ground; and her thin lips twitched convulsively, and she muttered to herself ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... arm, the handsome couple pass across the room, the cynosure of all eyes. Luderic Hetherington, the rising and gifted night-watchman at the Lone Star slaughter house, and Mabel Grubb, the daughter of the millionaire owner of the Humped-backed Camel saloon, are standing under the ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... arriving in a motor car at the stage door, when they could have a good look at him getting out of the car and going into the theater. At these tidings Mrs. Makebelieve roused for a moment from her strange apathy. Since tea-time she had sat (not as usual upright and gesticulating, but humped up and flaccid) staring at a blob of condensed milk on the outside of the tin. She said she thought she would go out and see the great actor, although what all the women saw in him to go mad about she did not know, but in another moment she settled back to her humped-up ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Galleria. He saw before him an old woman about whom he had often wondered. Always at night, and often in the afternoon, she walked in the Galleria. She was invariably alone. The first time he had seen her he had noticed her because she had a slightly humped back. Her hair was snow white, and was drawn away from her long, pale face and carefully arranged under a modest bonnet. She carried a small umbrella and a tiny bag. Glancing at her casually, he had ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the number who are taking part. These must come forth into the center of the ring and go through their paces as indicated by the showman. He may thus display the growling and clawing bear, the hopping and croaking frog, the leaping kangaroo, the roaring and ramping lion, the humped camel, the stubborn and braying donkey, the screaming and wing-flapping eagle, the hooking and mooing cow, the neighing and ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... cold was intense, and we huddled about the camp-fire for warmth. Around each of the porters' camp-fires the humped-up natives crouched and dreamed of the warm valleys far below in the darkness. I suppose the cold made them irritable, for just as we were preparing to turn in there suddenly came a succession of screams from one of the groups—screams of a boy in ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... almost slender,—such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on that statue.]—Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,—spray of the dry ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... the same fashioned clothes as this woman, and doubtless Leah had become pink-eyed through the tears of vexation she had shed over the ancestral humped quadruped she had ridden; and most certainly Lot's wife, Ruth, Solomon's wives and appendages, Jezebel, and every other woman mentioned in the Bible once watched just such a dawn rise across just such ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... the back of the seat and stared round-eyed into the gloom. He never forgot that lumpy shadow which was the herd, traveling fast in dust that obscured the nearest stars. The shadow humped here and there as the cattle crowded forward at a shuffling half trot, the click—awash of their shambling feet treading close on one another. The rapping tattoo of wide-spread horns clashing against wide-spread horns filled him with a formless ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... He doubled and redoubled the robe that had covered him, and humped it in the hollow between his right arm and his side. Resting the butt of the rifle on the fur, he fired again, and a bird fell. He clutched it greedily and found that he had shot most of the meat out of it. The large-caliber bullet had ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... we consider the rapidity with which it may be taken down and transported. In half an hour a whole village may vanish, emigrating northward in summer, and southward in winter. Many a Kirghiz cavalcade was overtaken on the road, with long tent-ribs and felts tied upon the backs of two-humped camels, for the Bactrian dromedary has not been able to endure the severities of these Northern climates. The men would always be mounted on the camels' or horses' backs, while the women would ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... soon came scudding down out of the darkness of the upstairs to dress tumultuously at the kitchen stove. They humped and shivered, holding up their bare feet from the cold floor, like chickens in new fallen snow. They were irritable, and snarled and snapped and struck like cats and dogs. Mrs. Markham stood it for ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... were alone, and when we saw Jim coming she got into a state of excitement, and made me vow and declare that I would not leave her. I couldn't possibly refuse, for she isn't allowed to be excited, but I twisted my chair as far away as I dared, humped up my shoulders and buried myself in my book. Jim knew I would do my best for him, but it's disgusting how difficult it is to fix your attention on one thing, and close your ears to something still more interesting. I honestly did try, and the jargon that ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a good-bye from the window, and humped upon a seat beside Jasper, Laz was silent for some time, and then he inquired if ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... to hear the more or less familiar words, for he realised almost at once that neither Priscilla nor Jimmy Kinsella understood them. He felt a warm affection for Miss Rutherford rise in his heart when she told Jimmy, who sat humped up over his oar, to keep his back flat. Jimmy merely smiled in reply. He had known since he was two years old that the flatness or roundness of the rower's back has nothing whatever to do with the progress of a boat in Rosnacree Bay. A few minutes ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... expression of covert triumph on her face. Emma had never liked him. He had been conscious of the fact, but it had not disturbed him. He had no more thought of this middle-aged, harsh-featured New Jersey farmer's daughter than he had of one of the dining-chairs. Gordon sat humped upon himself, as he sat nowadays, a marked stoop of age was becoming visible in his broad shoulders, and he ate perfunctorily without a word. James, after a number of futile attempts to talk to Clemency, subsided himself into bewildered silence, and ate with very little ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... the herd was slow and sullen. The smaller cattle sheltered in the lee of the larger, moving compactly, as if the density of the herd radiated a heat of its own. The saddle horses, southern bred and unacclimated, humped their backs and curled their heads to the knee, indicating, with the closing day, a falling temperature. Suddenly, and as clear as the crack of a rifle, the voice of Dell Wells ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... Fire stood quivering. The girl's hat swept through the air in front of its eyes. The horse woke to galvanized action. The back humped. It shot into the air with a writhing twist of the body. All four feet struck the ground together, straight and stiff ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... Mrs. Gelbraith's, Penrod sat patiently humped upon a gilt chair during the lengthy exchange of greetings between his mother. and Mrs. Gelbraith. That is one of the things a boy must learn to bear: when his mother meets a compeer there is always a long and dreary ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... already told how Tom Denison, the South Sea Island supercargo, took a berth ashore as overseer of a Queensland duck farm, which was mortgaged to a bank of which his brother was manager, and how he resigned the post in great despondency, and humped his swag to Cooktown. ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... bed he gathered the waste-basket into his arms and commenced to dig in it like a sportive terrier. After a messy minute or two he successfully excavated the crumpled little gray tissue circular and smoothed it out carefully on his humped-up knees. The expression in his eyes all the time was quite a curious mixture of mischief ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with a native,—a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of cornstalks in the open air during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Mateo, Burlingame, and Milbrae, but just outside of San Bruno the long line of straining cars came to a sudden halt. We climbed out to find out the cause of the stop. Ahead we saw several hundred yards of track buckled and humped like much crumpled ribbon. We had gone as far as possible ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson |
