"Writhed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon a rock, with my bristling head swung high, breathing through wide nostrils all the savour of the world. For I had come marvellously from decrepitude to strength. I had writhed from the bonds of age and was young again. I smelled the turf and knew for the first time how sweet that smelled. And like lightning my moving nose sniffed all things to my heart and separated ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... writhed in their chairs as much as their tight bandings would permit. How simple they had been to trust the mercy of a desperate man. And they knew Blatch Turrentine. In days past, they had been on the inside, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... wilderness feeding lions with confetti. On a cedar near by, were several parrots and a pale owl, and from a low-swinging branch a great speckled snake stooped downward to embrace Molly's waist in a dry fold, and with his head writhed forward to lick her chin. It was a pleasing piece; Don Cesare was ravished. The seed planted in him at Foligno germinated, produced a bud, before long a triumphant flower. Not only would he come to Nona, and that soon, but the Holy Father ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the discountenanced moon withdrew hastily into the immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless firmament, yet failed therein to find complete concealment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, now to port, now to starboard, as the Assyrian twisted and writhed on ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... cruel hand. During the persecution of the Jansenists in 1782 a deacon, named Paris, died and was canonised by the popular voice. Miracles were said to have been wrought at his sepulchre in the cemetery of St. Medard; fanatics flung themselves down on the tomb and writhed in horrible convulsions. So great was the excitement and disorder that the Archbishop of Paris denounced the miracles as the work of Satan, and the Government ordered the cemetery to be closed. The next morning a profane inscription was found over the entrance ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... believe her, Captain Lingard," shouted Willems from the doorway, where he appeared with swollen eyelids and bared breast. He stood for a while, his hands grasping the lintels on each side of the door, and writhed about, glaring wildly, as if he had been crucified there. Then he made a sudden rush head foremost down the plankway that responded with hollow, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... looked down upon her squalid rags; her rough features writhed with a scornful smile. "That's a lie!" she muttered. "What could the likes of me do for anybody, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... him Joe knocked up the hand, and, instead of striking, he grasped the hooked nose with all the powerful grip of his fingers. Girty uttered a frightful curse; he writhed with pain, but could not free himself from the vise-like clutch. He drew his tomahawk and with a scream aimed a vicious blow at Joe. He missed his aim, however, for Silvertip had intervened and turned the course of the keen hatchet. But the weapon struck Joe a glancing blow, inflicting ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... breast so severely that its blood, pouring into the sea in torrents, made all the waves red. Then the dragon turned and flew away, and having mounted up to a great height, again swooped down upon the boar and fastened its claws in the beast's back. The boar struggled, and raged, and writhed, but all in vain. It was at the mercy of its foe, and so merciless was the dragon that it never loosened its grip till it had torn the boar limb from limb and bone from bone, and scattered it piecemeal upon the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... fearlessness of that strange other self, Shirley drew a little vial from his breast pocket and drank the contents. Evidently he knew his Mansfield well. Slowly he began to act out the change in his appearance which corresponded with the assumption of control by the evil within. His body writhed, went through contortions which were horrible yet fascinating. It was almost as though a new fearful being was created within sight of the onlookers. Not only was the face altered, but the man's stature seemed to shrink, to lose actual inches. I ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... fear and excitement, hearing the angry roaring of the Great Red Enemy behind them, feeling his hot breath scorching them as it writhed and twisted through the trees in reddish-black billows. Some of his millions of angry, red searching eyes flew or drifted past them, but they never stopped for a moment. And now they had left the trees behind them and were running over clear ground, ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... had fallen. My head swam. Visions of Clark, Ward, Untermyer, Utah, and others I had seen on the rack writhed fearfully across the stage of memory. Here I was loaded with Butte, Montana, and other stocks which I had felt as certain were to go into the first section as one can feel in regard to a thing which seems in one's own control. On my public and private assurances as the accredited agent ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... continued to look, something else seemed to take form above that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of radiance and rapidly coalesced into strange geometric features, without definite line or detail. A colossal face, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staring down with ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... wielding his heavy weapon like a flail; then in the darkness Tric-Trac shot at me, so close that the powder-flame scorched my leg. He dropped his rifle to spring for my throat, knocking me flat, and, crouching on me, strove to strangle me; and I heard him whining with eagerness while I twisted and writhed to free my windpipe ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... seemed to feel Medusa's dream and to be made more restless by it. They twined themselves into tumultuous knots, writhed fiercely and uplifted a hundred hissing heads without opening ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... fresh and poignant recollection the circumstances under which that girl had given her promise to him so recently: she had stood over a mother who had abased herself before them, had cast herself down and had writhed and screamed and implored her to consent; and the mother was driven to do this by the lash of his threats. He had stood there and demanded, and the woman on the floor had confessed her frailty, owned to her misdeeds, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... she went on tiptoe to her own room and locked herself in. Until well nigh daylight a far-seeing God gazed tenderly into the upturned faces of two women whose souls writhed in an ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen—who foreknew ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... feelings; then, one by one, he could distinguish the faintest sounds. First there was the ticking of the clock in the dining-room which seemed to grow louder every second. Then he heard another snore, an old man's snore, short, labored and hard, his father beyond doubt; and he writhed at the idea, as if it had but this moment sprung upon him, that these two men, sleeping under the same roof—father and son—were nothing to each other! Not a tie, not the very slightest, bound them together, and they ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... if a sudden pang of his wound had seized upon Damian; for, repeating the words "My. uncle!" he writhed himself round, and averted his face from Eveline; then again composing himself, replied, "Alas! knew my uncle how ill I have obeyed his precepts, instead of sheltering me within this house, he would command me to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... and poured it on the wound. The injured man became livid, ground his teeth and writhed a little, but ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was bitter and terrible, indeed. Her proud, passionate nature writhed under the truth that she had given her heart, unsought, to a Northern officer,—to one who had from the first made it clear that his love had been bestowed on another. She felt that she could not blame him. His frankness ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... gentleman of weight. His red face grew almost apoplectic, and the big body writhed in the chair. His tones were surcharged with a bitterness that he tried in vain to conceal. Morton regarded these signs of feeling with an amusement that he had no reluctance in displaying. On the contrary, he laughed aloud in his ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... used both his arms, and the whistling thongs made the bark of the plane-trees fly. The blood was scattered like rain upon the foliage, and red masses writhed with howls at the foot of the trees. Those who were under the iron tore their faces with their nails. The wooden screws could be heard creaking; dull knockings resounded; sometimes a sharp cry would suddenly pierce the air. In the direction of the kitchens, men ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... ground—luckily, the earth was hard, giving him a solid take-off, and he got a splendid spring. As he arose In air, al! the training and practicing for form stayed with him, and instinctively he turned, writhed, and kicked— ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... after they were quite done with me, but something of this left me when finally I sat leaning back against the wagon body and looked about me. There were straight, motionless figures lying under the blankets in the shade, and under other blankets were men who writhed and moaned. Belknap passed about the place, graver and apparently years older than at the beginning of this, his first experience in the field. He put out burial parties at once. A few of the Sioux, ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... thunder rolled along the sky. The leaves all tossed about in a strong wind and their soft rustles grew into a roar, and the branches and the whole tree caught it up and called out so loud as they writhed and twisted about that Flax was almost deafened, ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... rested a huge black snake; a bird, two thirds grown, was slowly disappearing between his expanded jaws. As they seemed unconscious of my presence, I quietly observed the proceedings. By slow degrees he compassed the bird about with his elastic mouth; his head flattened, his neck writhed and swelled, and two or three undulatory movements of his glistening body finished the work. Then, with marvellous ease, he cautiously raised himself up, his tongue flaming from his mouth the while, curved over the nest, and, with wavy, subtle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. In moments of agony, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... made his way round to the back. All the sheds and buildings were burned; he turned with a shudder from where Bob's beloved Kelpie had died at his post chained in helplessness. The metal parts of the buggy, writhed into knots and tangles, lay in the ashes of the big ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... writhed afresh at the thought of his father's obstinacy. True, Rachael had a hobble in her leg, but as he had discovered years later when a humble tutor in her family, she was an amiable creature, and as ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory; When, insupportably advancing, Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; While timid looks of fury glancing, 55 Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her lore In the low huts of them that toil and groan! 60 And, conquering by her happiness alone, Shall France compel the nations to be free, Till Love and Joy look round, and ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the battle writhed on without regard for his feelings or theories, though its efforts became gradually feebler, and he hoped that by and by the decent part of both armies would settle into lethargy, leaving the night to the skirmishers, who never sleep ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... things in the same way, I will relate one:—Mr. Piozzi's valet was dressing my hair at Paris one morning, while some man sate at an opposite window of the same inn, singing and playing upon the violoncello: I had not observed the circumstance, but my perrucchiere's distress was evident; he writhed and twisted about like a man pinched with the cholic, and pulled a hundred queer faces: at last—What is the matter, Ercolani, said I, are you not well? Mistress, replies the fellow, if that beast don't leave off soon, I shall run mad with rage, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 1500; he bore the stamp of the Renaissance, and should have carried an image of the Virgin round his neck, or stuck in his hat, like Louis XI. In mere time he was a lost soul that had strayed by chance to the twentieth century, and forgotten where it came from. He writhed and cursed at his ignorance, much as Adams did at his own, but in the opposite sense. St. Gaudens was a child of Benvenuto Cellini, smothered in an American cradle. Adams was a quintessence of Boston, devoured ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... tumult of emotions, he drank in the blasphemous flatteries of the rabble, and assumed to himself the power and the dignity of the Most High God. Yet in the very ecstasy of those sensations, his countenance became ghastly, his lips writhed, his eyes beheld with unutterable dismay the omen of his dissolution—the visible phantom of an avenging Nemesis.[14] He staggered from his throne, crying aloud in the extremity of his anguish; a sudden corruption had seized upon his body—he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... beings do. So the mother bird, after a few moments, fell off the twig upon which she had paused for rest, and lay, a pretty little dead thing down in the grass among the dandelions. Then, of course, her children gasped and writhed and clamored in the nest, and at last, almost ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... He writhed spirally but slowly up its rough trunk, which seemed from eighteen to twenty inches in circumference. When the rocks ceased flying he would halt, evidently not half-liking his task, to wave his bluntly triangular head in the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the party had received injuries from the fire. Some of them, already blinded, writhed in agony on the ground and dipped their faces in the cool puddles formed by the flowing beer. Old Onucz had not a hair of his head left, but for all that he was still sitting on a heap of ducats, which ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... the first pangs of honest remorse. A worse man would have accommodated himself more speedily to the altered conditions when he found that he had pursued a phantasm. To do this erring man justice, he writhed under it. A better man would have fled from it. If, at the outset, if when the first step in the descent had been taken, he had seen clearly that villainy lay that way, he would not have gone further. But now he had ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... without another struggle. I knew that he would take every penny I possessed, and that there was nothing else on which to raise any money. I was still nearly ninety miles from London, and already ready for another meal. I butted my head into his stomach, I struck out madly with my fists, I writhed and kicked, until, raising his right arm, he brought down his fist on my head, and after that I knew nothing for ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... hand struck a yellowish line of algae and a score or two of little jelly-like insects writhed into the grass below. One of these things touched the swimmer's arm and gave the boy a stinging sensation. He knocked it ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... outside and the low room was already in darkness, but the picture shone with a wondrous splendour before Rosa's eyes. She writhed on the floor, her delicate body trembled with pain and ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... brass nose seemed to elongate, the open mouth opened still wider, and uttered a roar which made everybody start. The eyes rolled wildly; the arms and legs uncurled themselves, writhed about, and seemed to lengthen with each twist; the knocker expanded into a figure in yellow livery, six feet high; the screws by which it was fixed to the door unloosed themselves, and JENKINS GRUFFANUFF once more trod the threshold ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... imperfectly protected, by the undecided will of inert and feeble natures. She turned her head now to the wall, and now towards the room, in order to avoid the attentions which the farmer tried to press on her, and her body writhed a little under the coverlet, as she was weakened by the fatigue of the struggle, while he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... could only tighten his pale lips, and smooth her hair with his thin white hand, as she writhed on the ground at his side. For he could but think she was right. They were good shots, the Sark men, and it needs but one bullet to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... boy about the house, and positively writhed under the irrelevant and irrepressible questions, the unnecessary noises and boisterous high spirits which nothing would subdue; his son's society was to him simply an abominable nuisance, and he pined for a release from it from the day the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... in whom wisdom and wit are so ingrained that age only increases his subtile spirit, and greatly enhances the power of his cheerful temperament, always had the talismanic faculty of breaking up that thoughtfully sad face into mirthful waves; and I remember how Hawthorne writhed with hilarious delight over Professor L——'s account of a butcher who remarked that "Idees had got afloat in the public mind with respect to sassingers." I once told him of a young woman who brought in a manuscript, and said, as she ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... thus to speak to him? What was it which made him see Griswold's glance in the eyes looking so earnestly to his own? Surely there was something more than mere chance in all this. Nina would save him. She had grasped his conscience, and she stirred it with no gentle hand, until the awakened man writhed in agony, such as the drowning are said to feel when slowly restored to life, and bowing his head ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... contemptuously. "Is that all you have to say to me after hurting my arm? What a bear you are!" She shrugged her shoulders and put her hands coquettishly into the pockets of her apron. That was how she pitied him! His face turned paler and paler—he writhed under it. ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the decision would shortly reach him, he became impatient, went into France, and placed himself at the disposition of the Provisional Government. But thenceforth he was a soured and dispirited man. The ci-devant aide-de-camp of an Emperor writhed under the harrow of Gambetta ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... like kindling fires among the ruins, his fury rose—fury at himself, at Buddy, at Barbara—and in the heat of those scorching flames he writhed. She had loved him. He'd swear to that. He had swayed her, overpowered her; he had lacked only the courage to trust his instinct. Coward's luck! It served him right. He had held her in his arms and had let her slip through; her lips had been ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... tiger couch, and writhed there for some moments, burying her clenched fists in the creature's deep fur. Then she opened wide her arms, and drew Paul to her in ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... thoughts were terribly interrupted. The Colonel, raving like a madman, appeared upon the crest of the nearest slope, with an Arab hanging on to each of his wrists. His face was purple with rage and excitement, and he tugged and bent and writhed in his furious efforts to get free. "You cursed murderers!" he shrieked, and then, seeing the others in front of him, "Belmont," he ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... realization that it was hopeless. The drowsy opiate of surrender began to spread its peace through his soul. His torment was the remorse of proving a traitor to his dead uncle's glory. The feather-dustery that had been a monument was about to topple into the weeds. Eddie writhed at that and at his feeling of disloyalty to the employees, who would be turned out wageless in a small town that was staggering under ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Jefferson, but for the sake of the country he supported him when he could do so consistently with his principles. More than once the President found in him an invaluable ally; and as often, perhaps, he writhed as on a hot gridiron. Hamilton came forth in the pamphlet upon extreme occasions only, but he was still the first political philosopher and writer of his time, and the Federalists would have demanded his pen upon these occasions had he been ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Popova writhed in spirit when he was called "Christian," but he covered his wrath and remained in the nobleman's service and waited for his revenge. And now he was sacrificing the innocent Kalora in order to punish the father. He said to himself: ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... and, acting as a key log, held in check the whole drive. Then began a wild scene, which once beheld can never be forgotten. Stopped in their mad career, the logs presented the spectacle of unrestrained passion. The mighty, heaving, twisting mass groaned, pressed and writhed for freedom, but with the awful grip of death the sturdy key log held firm. Steadily the jam increased in size, and whiter threw the foam, as one by one those giant logs swept crashing down, to be wedged amidst their companions as if driven by the ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... riband of polished steel; or, again, when the cupola of St. Paul's and the Clock Tower at Westminster pierced upwards through a level of fog, as though hung in the mid-air; or when mists, shredded by a south wind, swirled and writhed about the rooftops until the city itself seemed to take fantastic shapes and melt to a substance no more solid ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... He strained and writhed to free himself from the encircling arms. But the arms were bands of steel, clamping tighter and tighter about him. Slowly MacNair worked his hand downward to the other's wrist. There was a lightning-like jerk, and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... were more distant now; their glow came to him from far above, and, as his falling body turned again and again in air, he saw that below him was nothing but a vast emptiness filled with luminous vapors that swirled and writhed. ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... Crack! the whip descended, leaving red whelts each time. The mulatto girl writhed, but did not cry quits. Beads of perspiration glistened on the jailer's face. The girl shook off his lax grip on her arms ... the sheriff's son was holding her legs. We were crowded against the bars, angry and silent. We admired the girl's hopeless pluck. We saw she was ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... what Browning did with his "lasso" style. It was suitably adapted to his purposes, and the public behaved somewhat like the buffalo. They writhed, kicked, struggled, plunged, and the greater the uproar, the more evident it was that they were caught. Shortly before his death, Professor F.J. Child, a scholar of international fame, told me angrily that Wagner was no musician at all; that he was ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... source of all her thoughts and actions. Von Ibn's haughty stare pierced it to the very centre; she knew exactly what he was thinking, and the injustice of appearances goaded her to distraction. She did not stop to consider whether his own re-appearance was or was not an unworthy trick; she only writhed painfully under the lash of his vast displeasure. The American continued to probe her face with his eyes, but for that she cared not a whit; her only care was for those other eyes, those two great dark-circled, ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... Almighty, King of Hosts—my Blessed Redeemer," she began, "you know how I have suffered an' why I never could put no grave-rock over my husband's remains; you know how I have writhed an' twisted under that scourge, but I kin bear that now, an' more an' more of it, but I jest cayn't have my pore little baby go through the same, an' wuss. It don't look like it's fair—no way a body kin look at it, for shorely one affliction of that sort in a family is enough, in all ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... small, dark man with a shaggy, speckled beard and quick, twinkling eyes. He was at work upon a tangled length of tarred rope, pulling and twisting with much energy and deftness to straighten out the coil, so that it leaped and writhed in his hands ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... smitten with an arrow upon the top of the crest where the foremost hairs of horses grow upon the skull; and there is the most deadly spot. So the horse leapt up in anguish and the arrow sank into his brain, and he brought confusion on the steeds as he writhed upon the dart. While the old man leapt forth and with his sword began to hew the traces, came Hector's fleet horses through the tumult, bearing a bold charioteer, even Hecktor. And now had the old man lost his life, but that Diomedes of the loud war-cry ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... the nature and courage of the beast. On three legs only the huge cat writhed across the clearing, having spied the girl; and now, with a fierce scream of anger, it crouched to spring upon Ruth. She seemed devoted to the panther's revenge, for she was smitten with that terror ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... come to himself, arose in the young man's mind. Then, then, there returned the remembrance of a female—lovely, it is true, but more elderly—certainly considerably older—and with f——. Oh, horror and remorse! He writhed with anguish, as a certain recollection crossed him. An immense gulf of time gaped between him and the past. How long was it since he had heard that those pearls were artificial,—that those golden locks were only pinchbeck? A long, long time ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had only smiled, it wouldn't have been so bad, it would have shown that she understood. "But through it all," he writhed to recollect, "she was as solemn as a mourner. I suppose she was shocked—perhaps she was frightened—very likely she took me for a tramp. I wonder she didn't crown my beatitude by giving me her lira. These foreigners do so lack ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... green screen? I, too, Doctor Theodore Plonnies, assisted at the trial as high-sheriff, Anton Petersdorf was protonotarius to the criminal court, and Johann Caude, the notarius, conducted the protocollum. Besides, when I look back and think of her shrieks, and how the dry withered limbs writhed and cracked upon the wheel, till the black blood poured forth from her nails and teeth, my head swims and the sight leaves my eyes—therefore, away with it! This only will I notice, that her advocate, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Mr. Bill Hen writhed upon the hook. "There—there's truth in what you say," he admitted, at length, after seeking counsel in vain from his red bandanna. "There's truth in what you say, I aint denyin' that. But what I look at, you see, is my duty. You may have your idees of duty, and I may have mine; and ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... a very ugly and extremely familiar young girl, who was helping Simonne into her coat, positively writhed with laughter. The three pushed each other and babbled little ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... spectre, 'Time hath bound Thy body with the fibre of his hours.' Then rose a multitude of mocking sounds, And some mouths spat at me and cried 'thou fool', And some, 'thou liest', and some, 'he dreams': and then Some hands uplifted certain bowls they bore To lips that writhed but drank with eagerness. And some played curious viols, shaped like hearts And stringed with loves, to light and ribald tunes, And other hands slit throats with knives, And others patted all the painted cheeks In ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... They writhed and struggled in their efforts to stop, to pretend they weren't crying, that it was really nothing but just tears,—odd ones left over from last time, which was years and years ago,—"But really years and years ago," sobbed Anna-Rose, anxiously explaining,—"the ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... watching the other keenly, so as to take the vantage of him in the grip. Then like a flash they leaped together, and a great shout went up, for William had gotten the better hold of the two. For a short time they strained and struggled and writhed, and then stout William gave his most cunning trip and throw, but the stranger met it with greater skill than his, and so the trip came to nought. Then, of a sudden, with a twist and a wrench, the stranger loosed himself, and he of the scar found himself locked in a pair of ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... of his mouth I fired, and the wolf writhed in agony on the snow. In an instant half a dozen wolves darted forward, and, seizing their comrade, carried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... and he poured out a continuous stream of blasphemous ribaldry such as would have shocked the ears of a revolutionist of the year '89 or of a petroleuse of the nineteenth century. It seemed as though the spring once opened would never dry. His eyes flashed, his fingers writhed convulsively on the table, and his voice rang out, ironical and cutting, with strange intonations that roused strange feelings in his hearers. It was the old subject, but he found something new ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... drifted by, winter followed summer, summer followed winter. But it was four years before the Tenas Tyee found the centre of the great salt-chuck oluk and plunged his hunting-knife into its evil heart. In its death-agony it writhed through the Narrows, leaving a trail of blackness on the waters. Its huge body began to shrink, to shrivel; it became dwarfed and withered, until nothing but the bones of its back remained, and they, sea-bleached and lifeless, ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... with the Old Testament as I be with the New, but," he continued, resolutely, "if it would be any favor to the company—as near as I calkalate, this ere Antynias heered that the Lord was a goin' by, and, as near as I calkalate, he clim' up in a tree to see him pass." The captain writhed fearfully, but did not flinch, "And, as near as I calkalate, he got on to a rotten limb, and it let him down. That is," he remarked, with concluding agony, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the girls did not mind it, indeed thought it rather amusing, even when directed against themselves, and enjoyed it hugely when someone else was the victim of the sally. Ingred, however, proud and sensitive, writhed under the attacks of Miss Strong's sharp tongue, and would often have preferred a punishment to a witticism. As a matter of fact, the mistress rarely gave punishments, and was proud of her ability to control her form without resorting to them. She was short ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... around him. For a brief space, while collecting his thoughts, he saw everything as it was. Then, as if at the stroke of a wand, horrible deformity appeared to fall upon the whole scene; the thousand trees below him writhed as if in multitudinous agony; and, where the thick moonlight touched house or road, or left patches of white on river and pool, there the earth seemed smitten as with leprosy. Silverthorn, reaching his room ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... everything so carefully, and it lay in the province of his trade. So he called to ask her if she, too, would like to go bounding about like a girl of eighteen. She said, "With all my heart, as the youth has come out of it so well." So the smith made a great fire, and thrust the old woman into it, and she writhed about this way and that, and uttered terrible cries of murder. "Sit still; why art thou screaming and jumping about so?" cried he, and as he spoke he blew the bellows again until all her rags were burnt. The old woman cried without ceasing, and the smith thought to himself, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... rare one; but Swift possessed it. When Swift was buried the Dublin poor came in crowds and wept by the grave of the broadest and most free-handed of their benefactors. Swift deserved the public tribute; but he might have writhed and kicked in his grave at the thought of receiving it. There is in G. B. S. something of the same inhumane humanity. Irish history has offered a third instance of this particular type of educated and Protestant Irishman, sincere, unsympathetic, aggressive, alone. I mean Parnell; and with ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... what was known by courtesy as Rear Ninth Street. "Rear Ninth Street" has a sound of exclusive aristocracy, and the name was a matter of some pride to the dwellers in the narrow, unpaved alley that writhed its watery way between two rows of tumble-down cottages, Joe's family consisted of his father, whose vocation was plumbing, and whose avocation was driving either in the ambulance or the patrol wagon; his mother, who had discharged her entire debt to society when she bestowed nine healthy young citizens ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... I writhed and twisted desperately, but that muscular coil held me firmly as a band of steel, tight against the huge ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... it fell and writhed on the ground in a dying state, while a loud cheer burst from the ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... visit him for a few days. Lemm, who was escorting him to the street, immediately accepted, and shook his hand warmly; but when he was left alone, in the cool, damp air of the day which was just beginning to dawn, he glanced around him, screwed up his eyes, writhed, and went softly to his tiny chamber, like a guilty creature: "Ich bin wohl nicht klug" (I'm not in my right mind),—he muttered, as he lay down on his hard, short bed. He tried to assert that he was ill when, a few days later, Lavretzky ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the cloud struck, its violet-grey center showed, and the forepart of this was luminous. It struck the town with the fury of a tornado of flame. Whirls of fire writhed spirally about it. The mountain had belched death, death in many forms: death by fire, death by poisonous gases, death by a super-furnace heat, but, principally, death by a sudden suffocation, the fiery and flaming cloud having ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... perfected history of separate spirits, and of their finally accomplished affections!—think you, I say, all this was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... upheaval occurred in the canoe, coil upon coil the vast length of the serpent's body leaped into view, and plunged over the side, there was a violent rustling and crackling of branches for a few seconds as the monster snake writhed its irresistible way through the neighbouring bushes; and then it was gone. And as the last sounds of its hurried retreat died away, Dick Chichester sank helplessly to the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... felt every failure keenly; yet he had not sufficient judgment and self-command to hold his tongue. His animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to try to do the one thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and vexation; yet the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a most irritating semi-serious remonstrance, in questionable taste. Erica writhed under it. A flippant canvassing of her most private and sacred thoughts was hard to bear, but she held her ground, and, being not without a touch of her father's dignity, Mr. Masterman presently beat a retreat, not feeling quite so well satisfied with ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... writhed in his chair. There was perfect quiet in the room. Everybody sat fascinated—paralyzed, I may say. Such fearful treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was unheard of, undreamed of, impossible to believe—the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... as he had entered the doors of the enclosure, he took a piece of red-hot steel in the tongs, and plunged it into the yawning throat of the viper, which he laid dead. Then he flung his spear full into the gaping mouth of the snake as it wound and writhed forward, and destroyed it. And when he demanded the gage which was attached to victory by the terms of the covenant, Siward answered that he would accept that man only for his daughter's husband of whom she made a free and decided choice. None but the girl's mother was ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... grew more accustomed to that atmosphere of fraud and falsehood. The sense of shame never left her; for there is a pride that thrives amidst poverty and degradation, and of such pride Diana Paget possessed no small share. She writhed under the consciousness that she was the daughter of a man who had forfeited all right to the esteem of his fellowmen. She valued the good opinion of others, and would fain have been beloved and admired, trusted and respected; for she was ambitious: and the though that she might ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... afraid not," said Mr. Beaver making another cryptic dot. Then he smiled. Harrington writhed and the rest of the class, except ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... pondered heavily, he, too, writhed beneath this avalanche of pain; perhaps remorse and the consciousness of the anguish he had entailed upon them both tore and lacerated him. He had gone away at last, out of her life, back to the home and the ties that were hateful to ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... The lieutenant writhed in the negro's grasp and with a kick caught Tom on the right shin. Immediately Tom released his bold and sought his brass knuckles. Before he could strike, however, Lieutenant Blum had ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... glance of friendly curiosity, as does a kind physician who waits to be told of symptoms before prescribing. Upon Solon she bent a more knowing look, as upon one whose frailties have already been revealed. She gave us chairs and she talked. Little Roscoe Potts writhed near by upon an ottoman and betrayed that he, too, could talk when circumstances were kindly. The detail of their personalities, salient in that first moment, was that Heaven had denied them ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... interruption coming at such a moment jarred every ganglion in his body. The clicking noise of the drumsticks maddened him. And the gleaming whiteness of Mr. Williams' friendly and benignant smile was the last straw. His dignity writhed beneath this abominable infliction. People at other tables were laughing. At him. A loathing for the Flower Garden flowed over Bruce Carmyle, and with it a feeling of suspicion and disapproval of everyone connected with the establishment. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... could towards the landing-place, where the handkerchief lay; but, alas! before she reached the handkerchief, she fell, rolling down a whole flight of stairs, and when her fall was at last stopped by the landing-place, she did not cry out; she writhed, as if she was in ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... or waking, fled from the great creature in its agony. In the darkness he seemed some monster, which in dreadful silence, writhed and fought down a slow road to death. He was hardly conscious of his own behavior, poor innocent, crushed by the sins of others. He lived, and every moment was a dying. He gasped as with the last breath, yet each breath came back with new torture. He shivered to ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... have seized some poignard lying there? why not have sprung upon her, have slain her? Then silence had been simply secure. Then I could have smiled in their frustrated faces, one keen, deep smile, and died. I was dissolved in pain, writhed with prolonged strokes that thrilled me from head to foot, pierced as with acute stabs, my heart seemed to forge thunderbolts to break upon my brain,—but this agony had been spared me. They unbound me, fed me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... his shirt-collar and pushed back his hat. Far across the mesa a dust devil spun up and writhed away toward the distant hills. As the horses slowed to cross a sandy draw, Bartley turned and glanced back. The ranch buildings—a dot of white in a clump of green—shimmered vaguely ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... mouthful of life-sustaining food. Spasms and trances alternated with alarming frequency since Miss Fancher was first attacked. First her limbs only became rigid and disturbed at the caprice of her strange malady; but as time passed her whole frame writhed as if in great pain, requiring to be held by main force in order to remain in the bed. She could swallow nothing, and lay utterly helpless ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... comforted. As a general thing he writhed under sympathy, but, strangely enough, he found it very sweet to hear her speaking words of pity on his behalf, and to feel her soft eyes bent upon him with gentle concern. Probably no young woman quite understands the deep devotion ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... figures had been used with the English embassador as reasons for admitting Texas as a slave State, the old man called on Calhoun, and showed him the industriously collected proofs of the falsity of this census. He says: 'He writhed like a trodden rattlesnake, but said the census was full of mistakes; but one part balanced another,—it was not worth while to correct them.' His whole life was an incessant warfare with the rapidly advancing spirit ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... There was only one cry through all the town: "Ow! ow! ow!" For even the strongest and most courageous were in horrible agonies. They twisted, they writhed, they lay down, they got up. Always the inexorable colic. The dogs were not happier than their masters; even ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... me or dash me to pieces with his tail," said Otter; but as yet the Snake had no such mind—indeed, in its agony it seemed to have forgotten the presence of its foe. It writhed upon the floor of the cave, lashing the rock with its tail, and gasping horribly the while. Then suddenly it started forward past him, and the tough hide rope about Otter's middle ran out like the line from the bow of a whale-boat when the harpoon has gone ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... attacked the beast exactly in the same manner the gallant fellow himself had done. He struck his bayonet into his head; the tiger rose at him, he fired, and this time the ball took effect, and in the head. The animal staggered backwards, and we all poured in our fire; he still kicked and writhed, when the gentlemen with the hogspears advanced and fixed him, while some natives finished him by beating him on the head with hedge stakes. The brave artillery-man was after all but slightly hurt; he claimed the skin, which was very cheerfully given to him; there was, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... thrashed and churned up the mud at its flying heels. It made the muskeg look like a gargantuan cake-batter, in which it seemed to float as dignified and imperturbable as a schooner in a canal-lock. But the man at the wheel kept his temper, and reversed, and writhed forward, and reversed again. He even waved at me, in a grim sort of gaiety, as he rested his engine and then went back to the struggle. He kept engaging and releasing his clutch until he was able to impart a slight ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... box several times, ringing his small bell, and at one point laid a crucifix upon each of their chests. Their faces writhed and I ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... Normandye. Also this same yere the ix day of Jule, the duke of Burgoyn with a ryal power leyde a sege to the town of Calys, and contynued unto the xxix day of the same monthe; and that day, blessyd be Almighty God, his male writhed, for a strong bastyll that he hadde mad upon the water syde was taken and distroied, and alle that were withinne sclayn unto the noumbre of v^{c} men oughttake iij persones, that is for to sey, a knyght, a prest, a frere, the whiche knyght ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... flood in at a frightfully accelerating rate, they turned into something else. Things no Terran science has ever even imagined; things at the formation of which all neighboring space actually warped, and in that warping seethed and writhed and shuddered. The very sub-ether screamed and shrieked in protest as it, too, yielded in starkly impossible fashions to that ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... queer in his ways for a week or more, and one day had been found upon a cliff overhanging the water, with his arms stiffly out, his chin towards the sky. His eyes had been shut, his mouth open, his nostrils splayed out. He had writhed and twisted about, talking in a strange tongue. They were some time bringing him to his senses, and had no thanks from him for doing it; but they had fetched him home and put him to bed. He had lain there with his head covered up until the news of the whale was brought in. That caused him ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... The two voyagers sat down and watched. After a time they began to shiver. The soft blackness of the summer night passed away, and grey mists writhed over the sea. Soon lights of early dawn went changing across the sky, and the twin beacons on the highlands grew dim and sparkling faintly, as if a monster were dying. The dawn penetrated the marrow of the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... whiplash curled round the legs of the trader, and he writhed. They caught his short sword and twitched it from his hand, to send it flying among the gathering crowd, and then the man lay down and howled for mercy. But the thralls of the crowd were only too pleased with the sport, and ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... see what effect he had produced. Romayne was in no state of mind to do justice to Winterfield or to any one. His pride was mortally wounded; his high sense of honor and delicacy writhed under ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... with lightning swiftness, like a porcupine's. There was a tearing screech from the rash flesh-eater, and he was plucked back sidewise, all four feet in air, deeply impaled on three of those gigantic spines. While he clawed and writhed, struggling to twist himself free, his companion sprang hardily to the rescue. She hurled herself with all her weight and strength full upon the stegosaur's now unprotected flank. So tremendous was the impact that, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... engaged Gunnar to revenge her wrong. By charms and prayers the two brothers set on Guttorm, their half-brother, to take vengeance, and the hero was pierced through with a sword while he lay in Gudrun's white arms. Though Sigurd turned and writhed in agony, he had strength left to hurl Gram after the treacherous Guttorm as he fled. The keen blade cut him asunder, and his head rolled out of the room. Brynhildr's love returned; and when Sigurd, who expired of his wound, was ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... ghastly metamorphoses in the little chamber. And the figures on the carpet and the figures on the curtain writhed in horrible contortions of glee, as if they rejoiced over a calamity which had ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... caught, then! The crackling intermittent shocks of electric fluid passed through his body in fiery sequence. His limbs writhed. He mouthed horribly, and croaking gasps came from between ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... on his knees, his voice choked by sobs, his eyes fixed upon the three crosses of Calvary, where writhed the gaunt pallid bodies of the crucified. Albine placed herself in front of the paintings in order that he might ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... will hang him of course. He has caused too much blood to be shed not to have to give some of his own." Cecilia writhed as if in extreme pain. Her beauty, her grace, her youth all seemed to leave her in a moment, and she stood faded and old before ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... filling a tin can, which had a long spout to be poked down a cow's throat, with a vile, greasy mixture out of a black bottle, at the directions of a shirt-sleeved little man and a red-headed farmer in blue overalls, while a wisp of a boy writhed in and out and around and under a pathetic old Jersey cow, who was being rescued from the jaws of death. Now I wonder just what I would have done to escape such an experience? Slated myself for Belgian widowhood, perhaps, ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in the corner of the studio gathered arms and legs into a series of acute angles, and writhed; a lady ornamented with cheek-bones well sketched in, covered her eyes with one hand as though locked ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... the poor woman as she writhed in agony. "I'll tell! I will, gentlemens—I will—I will! Oh, my God! don't! don't!" she cried, as she leaped wildly about, tearing the one garment away in her efforts to avoid the blows which fell thick and fast on every part of her person, now fully exposed ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Alma writhed internally, but outwardly remained subordinate; she examined the other girl's dress, and decided in a superficial consciousness that she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... volcano with its crater Kilaeua, and watched in awe and wonder the great sea of flame that surged hideously and writhed like a chain of ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... read, the older members winced and writhed. Peyton Randolph cursed him under his breath. This audacious youth in buckskin shirt and leather breeches was assuming the leadership of the House. His audacity was unprecedented! Here are Numbers Five, Six and Seven of the Resolutions—these give the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... to the full burden of care and sorrow which sheer weakness and weariness the day before had in part laid down; to a quicker sense of the state of things than she had had yet. The blasting evil that had fallen upon them,—Fleda writhed on her bed when she thought of it. The sternest, cruellest, most inflexible, grasp of distress. Poverty may be borne, death may be sweetened, even to the survivors; but disgrace—Fleda hid her head, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state which was continually widening Rosamond's alienation from him. After the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... her. He had bent to release Scooter, but like a streak of light he straightened himself. He saw—before any one else had time to realize—- the hideous thing that writhed in momentary entanglement in the folds of Tessa's cloak, and then suddenly reared itself upon her lap as she sat frozen stiff ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... give him an account of what they had been reading; he listened with the indifference of a person who had already seen the book, and when she urged him to read up to them, he said he would go on where they were. When it was criticised, he defended it, or writhed under it as if the attack was personal. When accused of being the author, he denied it with vehemence, and Miss Randall said to him, "If you had simply denied it I might have believed you, but when you come to swearing, I am sure that you are ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... awesome. There, right under us as it seemed, for the pillar bent inwards, lay the vast crater of the volcano, and in the centre of it a wide lake of fire that broke into bubbles and flowers of sudden flame or spouted, writhed and twisted like an ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... round the steamer. An engine on deck began to work. The Queen could hear it snorting and clanking. The boat crossed the ship's bows, passing under the length of hose which drooped in a long curve into the water. Suddenly the hose swelled, writhed, twisted. It seemed to be alive. It looked like some huge sea snake, wriggling from the ship into the water, swimming through the water towards the gloomy mouth of the cave. Kalliope stopped rowing and stared open-mouthed. The Queen realized almost at once ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... disagreeable, and we are uncomfortable in the thought of it. Swedenborg relates that certain wicked persons were allowed to enter heaven on a certain occasion; but they immediately became almost lifeless, and, from the torment and pain in their head and body, prostrated themselves on the ground, and writhed like worms; but, being taken and carried into hell, became comparatively comfortable. What can be more terrible than the idea thus conveyed of our aversion to goodness, which makes heaven intolerable, and the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Milly on the arm, and gave my hand such a shake that I should have writhed if I had worn any rings. For once, instead of lingering, he had the air of being glad to escape from us, but on an impulse I followed him to the door and called him back just as he had ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... could stand, and his rifle flew to his shoulder. There was a flash and a crash, and the Indian fell to the ground, over which he writhed in agony. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... bitterly, her emaciated face for the second was convulsed with rage, and her sore lips writhed on the verge of unconsidered speech. But only a splutter of gasping, unintelligible sounds issued forth, and then, by a terrible ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... uttered cries of pain. Steeds also, in golden trappings, struck with arrows, fell down, or became weak, or ran in all directions. Others, struck with arrows and lances or dragged down, fell on the Earth and writhed in agony, making diverse kinds of motion. Men also, struck down, fell on the Earth, uttering diverse cries of pain, O sire; others, beholding their relatives and sires and grandsires, and others seeing retreating foes, shouted to one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... a giant's hands, the tree-tops above us swayed to and fro; then the shrubbery along the paths seemed full of wild terror and writhed in ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... said. "I will tell you soon." He was not willing to leave Rome—that was the truth of the matter. He thought of nothing, day or night, but of how he might see Hedwig, and his heart writhed in his breast when it seemed more and more impossible. He dared not risk compromising her by another serenade, as he felt sure that it had been some servant of the count who had betrayed him to the baroness. At last he hit upon a plan. The funeral of the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... proud lady carried herself before the world; but secretly she writhed. A wife abandoned is a woman insulted, and the wives—that are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to feel Medusa's dream, and to be made more restless by it. They twined themselves into tumultuous knots, writhed fiercely, and uplifted a hundred hissing ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... countless eddies of smoke roll up mingled with soot, and one ever springs up quickly after another, rising aloft from beneath in wavering wreaths; so at that time did that monster roll his countless coils covered with hard dry scales. And as he writhed, the maiden came before his eyes, with sweet voice calling to her aid sleep, highest of gods, to charm the monster; and she cried to the queen of the underworld, the night-wanderer, to be propitious to her enterprise. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... a new tune, and sang in a low tone. The boy seemed to have a fit, and writhed as though he were in convulsions, finally dropping down into the basket very slowly. Mrs. Blossom was sure the basket was not big enough to contain him, and wondered what had become of him. Then the performers threw themselves ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... sullen. The woods above the beach were choral with bird-voices. They were hateful to me. The sea song of the tumbling waves was hideous. I cursed the yellow sunset light glaring on their snowy crests. A tiny hand was laid upon my arm. I writhed under its deadly if delicious touch. But I could not put it away, nor keep from turning to the sweet face beside me, to mark once more its mute appeal—now more than mere appeal; it was supplication that was in her eyes. ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie |
