"Writhing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel strongly what a horrible side there is to war. The wretched wounded men could not get clear of their dead comrades, however great their struggles, and those near the top of this ghastly pile of writhing humanity vented their rage and disappointment on every British officer who approached by showering upon him abuse of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... writhing on the sofa, ghastly, and grinding in her hand the cursed paper that had poisoned her ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... like plain Hell to Madeleine, or worse. The Hell of the Bible and Dante had a lively accompaniment of writhing flames and was presumably clean. This might be an underground race condemned to a sordid filthy and living death for unimaginable crimes of a previous existence. Even the children looked as if they ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... young she was still living on the place, and was to me a curiosity, the last of her race, I was told. I did not know what this meant, but it gave her words great weight. Once she pictured hell for me, the roaring furnace, the writhing of the damned, and no reason and no reading has ever served to clear my mind of her awful painting. With her as the advocate I could hear the groans of lost souls; and in my childish way I believed that the old ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... of intrusion and absorbed with interest and watched the operations begun on the tenacious turtle and the writhing toe. Neither of the three principals in the action noticed me at all as Martha held the boy and Jacob bent and took hold of the turtle in his hard brown spotted shell. And as the operations for his liberation were ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... with such a son, and such a husband, she must have been possessed of a more than usual share of German imperturbability to sustain her cheerfulness, writhing, as she often was, under the pangs of a long-concealed disorder, of which eventually she died. Even on the occasion of the king's return in time to spend his birthday in England, the queen's temper had been sorely tried. Nothing had ever vexed her more than the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... they would turn and dash madly back to their parapets, leaving the trampled clay of the devil's strip heaped with writhing figures of wounded ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... round him; I happened just then to come up, room was immediately made for me and my hat, and I was asked to give my opinion as to what ought to be done with the culprit. I suggested kicking, and as I walked away, I saw him writhing under the boots of two sturdy executioners, amid the applause of the spectators. "The style is the man," said Buffon; had he lived here now he would rather have said "the hat is the man." An English doctor who goes about in a regulation chimney-pot has already been arrested twenty-seven ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... had partners, even though the list of names in the society papers might have excited some derision. Mrs. Holbein had aimed high and overshot the mark. The result was tragic. And though her vulgar nature, writhing in humiliation, judged others by itself and believed all to be laughing maliciously, there were some ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of tunny, huge red scarpenna, sturgeon, mullet, live whole eels (to prove to me how living they were, a fishmonger one morning allowed one to bite him) and eels in writhing sections, aragosta, or langouste, and all the little Adriatic and lagoon fish—the scampi and shrimps and calimari—spread out in little wet heaps on the leaves of the plane-tree. One sees them here lying dead; one can see them also, alive and swimming about, in the aquarium ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... built Sant' Ambrogio[4] and San Miniato a Monte, who carved the stone nightmares, the ravening lions, the squashed and writhing human figures of the early Lombard and Tuscan churches, were the contemporaries of that Manichean priest of Milan, who, although a saint, had believed in the triumph of the Devil and the wickedness of the Creator. And among his fellow-heretics—those heretics lurking everywhere, and most ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... And writhing, fain And like a lover, he his fill shall take Where no triumphant memory lives to make His obscene ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... her out,—holding her hot, trembling fingers in his cold, nerveless hand, a moody frown on his brow, and his lips writhing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... dull, hollow sound that speaks so eloquently the mortality of man, his whole frame was for an instant convulsed. He bent his body down, as if in pain, his fingers worked while the hands hung lifeless by his side, and there was an expression in his countenance that seemed to announce a writhing of the soul; but it was not unresisted, and it was transient. He stood erect, drew a long breath, and looked around him with an elevated face, that even seemed to smile with a consciousness of having obtained the mastery. The ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... my loved and faithful wife, Must be protected, tyrant, from thy fury! When last I drew my bow, with trembling hand, And thou, with murderous joy, a father forced To level at his child; when, all in vain, Writhing before thee, I implored thy mercy, Then in the agony of my soul I vowed A fearful oath, which met God's ear alone, That when my bow next winged an arrow's flight Its aim should be thy heart. The vow I made Amid the hellish torments ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... you doing?" Jacques asked as he scrambled to his feet. No answer was made to his question, but he saw at once that Ralph was stamping upon the writhing folds of a snake. In a minute ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... to be careful," said Frank, as he kicked aside the still writhing body of the disgusting looking reptile. "There is just a chance that Muley-Hassan, with the cunning of an Arab, may have put several more of those customers in here ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and darker glooms the scene. Through the thicket streaming, Lightnings now are gleaming; Thunders rolling dread, Shake the mountain's head; Nature's war Echoes far, O'er ether borne, That flash The ash Has scath'd and torn! Now it rages; Oaks of ages, Writhing in the furious blast, Wide their leafy honours cast; Their gnarled arms do force to force oppose Deep rooted in the crevic'd rock, The sturdy trunk sustains the shock, Like dauntless hero ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... outcries caused a spasm of frantic writhing in Alwin's fettered body, but Rolf's manner was as ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of the aged noblewoman writhing like a maniac in the dust was so pitiful and touching that it melted Barbara's heart, and induced her to promise to use the first favourable opportunity to intercede with the Emperor in behalf of her son and his child, a little girl of six. From that time she awaited at every new ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his studio was a second Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black, against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,—deeper, because more natural, than Girodet's green ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these broken sentences fell from his lips, he shrunk closer and closer into the corner, and then fell forward, writhing upon the floor. By this time, his wife was bending down over him, and with her assuring voice she soon succeeded ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... to the present day. In one of the ancient histories of the realm, at the head of the chapter devoted to Mary, there is placed, as an appropriate emblem of the character of her reign, the picture of a man writhing helplessly at a stake, with the flames curling around him, and a ferocious-looking soldier standing ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the blood that flecks the ground, Recalling all his grand heroic deeds, Freedom herself is writhing with the wound, And ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... tone caught my ear, and I turned to look at him. An extraordinary change had come over his face. It was writhing with inward merriment. His two eyes were shining like stars. It seemed to me that he was making desperate efforts to restrain ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but I must go," answered the nobleman, writhing under the sarcasm, but never losing the smooth control of his words ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... sputtered in a quick volley; and again, for a space, silence fell. The way again was clear. But in the path, silent and still, or writhing horribly, lay a few of the Things. And the pine-needles and soft moss were ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... may only have just commenced, when his capture is more easily effected, but even should he have penetrated to the very heart of the tree, the deadly needle does not fail in its errand, but brings the culprit out, impaled and writhing on its point. This is the only known way of checking the ravages of this beetle, except destroying its larvae. Some cultivators, however, think pouring salt water or brine on the top of the tree, so as to descend among ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... easy to imagine what would be the quick, convulsive writhing motion with which one would shrink aside and endeavor to get instantaneously away from it, when told that an asp, a centipede or a young rattlesnake was lying on the shoulder, and ready to strike its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dryly. "I don't want to. If I'd held a tomahawk in one hand and her flowing locks in the other, and was just letting a war-whoop outa me, she'd look at me—the way she did look." He snorted in contemptuous amusement, and gave a little, writhing twist of his slim body into his trousers. "I never did like blondes," he added, in a tone of finality, and ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... with our unlucky heroes. No sooner had they escaped the fangs of Mr Webster, than they found themselves writhing in the clutches of a new terror, twice as bad and twice ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... his huge head and delivered a sweeping stroke with his tusk. The great sharp spear of ivory struck the man in the back and was driven clean through the body. The elephant raised his head and swung the man high above the ground. Jack shuddered as he saw the writhing figure impaled on that ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... minute. "So long. It almost seems as though I've grown up with him. Eight years. I've been a mother to him, and a big sister at the same time—and maybe a maiden aunt. He's been a career and a family all rolled in together." She still watched her writhing hands, not raising her eyes ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Cloudlike white figures were running up Khufu's geometric mountain; Arabs expecting money when they should come leaping down, whole or in pieces. And the khaki uniforms of British soldiers mounting or descending for their own stolid amusement, made the Pyramid itself seem to be writhing, so like was the colour of the cloth to that of the stone. No use being angry because the monument was crawling with Tommies! The Pyramids were as much theirs as ours. And probably Napoleon's soldiers spent their moonlit evenings in the same way; a thought which somehow made ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... end, the flag won. It was the flag he had taken his boyish oath to honor; on more than one occasion, he had seen the haughtiest colors on the ocean bow with respect before it; he had seen men, writhing in the agony of death, expend their last breath to defend it. It had wrapped itself about his heart, and meant more to him than home or friends or kindred. So the ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... the extreme. But when the unfortunate creature did by some superhuman effort get the elongated toe of his right elastic-sided boot upon the plank, and Berry found himself unable to do more than haul him half-way to safety, so that for one long hectic moment he hung writhing convulsively, frantically waving his left leg in quest of a footing and alternately calling upon Heaven and frenziedly charging his betrayer not to let go; when, as a result of muscular vibration, his left boot worked loose and fell into the water with ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... and the weak is never in repute,' said Isaac, as he took my money and folded up the rings, his whole manner suddenly changing. 'The Jew is now but a worm, writhing under the heel of the proud Roman. Many a time has he, however, as thou well knowest, turned upon his destroyer, and tasted the sweetness of a brief revenge. Why should I speak of the massacres of Egypt, Cyrene, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... nine o'clock on a certain night. At a quarter to that hour I went to the stable to see that everything was ready, and in the courtyard outside of it found Antonio seated against the water tank groaning and writhing with pains in the back. One looked showed me that he had developed the usual symptoms, so, feeling that no time was to be lost, I saddled the mules ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... as much like a crowded branch as his supple, shining form would admit, the old vengeance overtook him. I exercised my prerogative, and a well-directed missile, in the shape of a stone, brought him looping and writhing to the ground. After I had completed his downfall and quiet had been partially restored, a half-fledged member of the bereaved household came out from his hiding-place, and, jumping upon a decayed branch, chirped vigorously, no doubt ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... huddled together in a rushing body, every one of the border men discharged his piece, without waiting for the command, right in among them. The destruction was fearful and the panic complete. Numbers came to the ground, writhing, dying and dead, while the survivors scattered howling to the woods, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... nesting in holes along the hedge, and the field-mouse in its chamber sheltered by the moss, were at any time likely to have their family affairs most cruelly upset. The wild-bee's sting could not save her honeyed cells and helpless grubs, and the sharp-fanged adder, writhing from the hedgehog's sudden bite, would hurl itself in vain against the prickly ball that instantly ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... he said, "like a crushed snake, writhing with impatience at my incapacity of motion—here I lie, when I ought to have been in Edinburgh, trying every means to save a life that is dearer to me than my own.—How is your sister?—how fares it with her?—condemned to death, I ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ushered into the dining-room, and introduced. Mr. ——— is a young-looking man, dark, with a mustache, rather small, and though he has the manners of a man who has seen the world, it evidently requires an effort in him to speak to anybody; and I could see his whole person slightly writhing itself, as it were, while he addressed me. This is strange in a man of his public position, member for the county, necessarily mixed up with life in many forms, the possessor of sixteen thousand pounds a year, and the representative of an ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "Mr. Fitzpiers, will ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... clinging to the banisters, and writhing and groaning so piteously that the tenants, in alarm, came out upon their landings. Schmucke supported the suffering creature, and told the story of La Cibot's devotion, the tears running down his cheeks as he spoke. Before very long the whole ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... clothing for his bearskin. Against this he fought with all his strength, striking, scratching, and kicking with hands and feet, snapping and biting viciously, and all the time either roaring with fury, or, when they succeeded in pulling the hide a little away from him, groaning, shrieking, and writhing as ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... impossible!" cried the duchess writhing in her chair. "Leaving your child out in the cold ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... convulsive struggles, trying to coil itself round and round the branch, but its folds speedily relaxed, and its head hung down towards the ground, still it clung on by its tail, the folds of its huge body twisting and writhing in a manner truly terrific as seen in the dim light beneath the ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the whole world no more faithful friend than this dog, his companion on all his marches across desert tracts or through the enemy's country, and when he saw him writhing on the ground his rage knew no bounds, and he flew at the youngster with his whip; but Rameri—madly excited by all the events of the night, full of the warlike spirit of his fathers, worked up to the highest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... flooded the room in harsh gray-green light, and stopped the high-pitched, humming whine of his dynamos. A shadow picture writhing on the wall, projected from a lead-glass barrel, disappeared suddenly, the great color filters and other machines lost their semblance of horrible life, and a regretful sigh seemed to come from the metal creatures as they gave up ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... scarcely raised himself from the ground when he fell back with his head shattered. The hatchet which Ivan carried at his girdle had come down upon him like a flash. The terrible animal vainly attempted to rise, rolled writhing in the dust, and breathed out his life with ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... with the slant of the floor giving him added impetus.... Then his muscles tightened convulsively. A wave of pure agony went through his body. He dropped and lay writhing on the floor, while the high-frequency currents of an induction-screen had their way with him. He was doubled into a knot by his muscles responding to the electric stimulus instead of his will. Sheer anguish twisted him. And the room filled with a hearty bellow of laughter. ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a deserter," answered Hamish, writhing, however, as his mother failed not to observe, under some internal feelings, which she resolved to probe to ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... were, of course, well exhausted by the intense exertions of the day. On the field where the battle had been fought, the wounded lay all night mingled with the dead, filling the air with cries and groans, and writhing in their agony. ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... oppressed, he has had leeches; and I remember once half a dozen were put on his side, at his own request. The inflammation was very great; the torture dreadful as they drew it to the surface; and I was called to him, as he sat grasping the arm of a chair, and writhing convulsively. He said to me, "Very, very pain; pain bad, soon kill;" and he seemed half wild with agony. Looking up in my face, he saw me in tears; and instantly assumed his sweetest expression of countenance, saying in a ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... face in his hands, and sank down upon the ground, his soul writhing with the agony ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... then, very swiftly, the blazing orb which was the sun appeared from behind Earth. It was intolerably bright, but it did not brighten the firmament. It swam among all the myriads of myriads of suns, burning luridly and in a terrible silence, with visibly writhing prominences rising from the edge of its disk. Cochrane squinted at it ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... laugh heartily at the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly. He was called upon in his turn, at a large party, and having nothing to aid him in an exercise to which he was new save the example of his predecessors, lifted his glass after much writhing and groaning and gave, "The reflection of the moon in the cawm bosom ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sublimity we may scarcely hope to see approached in modern times, for the mind that created it stood in a light shallop, drifting away from the old landmarks of a worn-out creed into the dark, unknown night of doubt and speculation. But the Prometheus of Lowell is not the god-man writhing in an awful conflict with his slavery but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dwarf, writhing his face grievously, and laughing forsooth: "I know it all: I asked thee to see what wise thou wouldst lie. I was sent forth to look for thee; and I have brought thee loathsome bread with me, such as ye aliens must needs ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... was he that the world looked like a ball. Until then he had not known the earth was round. The seas enveloping the greater part of the globe looked like writhing serpents. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... both men fall, and looked again in spite of herself. They were on the floor writhing, their bodies against each other, clawing, striking, digging, and biting like two ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... toes. She bent her head towards her left shoulder, at first smiling vaguely. She said nothing, but every limb, every glance, every curve, was speaking. Mrs. Baines sat firmly in her own rocking-chair, full of the sensation that she had Sophia, as it were, writhing on the end of a skewer. Constance was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... too, my little ones, Micah and Hosea, Ephraim and Ruth, all named after Thy faithful servants of old, oh let them stand upon Thy right hand this night!' Thus he prayed on in a wild rush of burning, pleading words, writhing prostrate upon the floor in the vehemence of his supplication, while we, poor trembling mites, huddled round our mother's skirts and gazed with terror at the contorted figure seen by the dim light of the simple oil lamp. On a sudden the clang ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... certainly, being lost. Children cried aloud for bread—women moaned, and knelt, and prayed. Their last hope was leaving them. Lee's army was starving and dying. Hour by hour, nearer and nearer came the roar of the gulf of destruction. A sort of stupor descended. The country—prostrate and writhing—tried to rise, but could not. The government knew not where to turn, or what course to pursue. Grant was growing in strength hourly. Lee's little force was dwindling. Sherman was streaming through South Carolina. Grant was reaching out toward Five Forks. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... to toss about on the hard, straw-filled mattress in the stuffy little best room. Tossing, writhing under the bludgeoning of his brother's accusing inflections, a dozen times he said, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... he lay spluttering, writhing, and giving vent to an occasional shriek till there was a hurrying of feet in the mansion; then the meek and jaded traveller moved gently away till his person was hidden in the pines. Standing against a giant bole ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... eloquence. He said little that his audience might not have heard any Sunday in their own churches. His voice was hoarse from overwork, and his manner by no means winning. Yet I saw many notorious ruffians sobbing about him like children: some even throwing themselves on the ground and writhing, like the demoniacs of Scripture. The secret was, he spoke with authority: and the secret again was a certain kingly neglect of trifles—he appeared not to see those signs by which other men judge their neighbours or themselves to be past help. Or take ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... other worlds and cycles, they had a very human awe of things sent from Ghost-land. They met in Lone Sahib's room in shrouded and sepulchral gloom, and their conclave was broken up by clinking among the photo-frames on the mantelpiece. A wee white kitten, nearly blind, was looping and writhing itself between the clock and the candlesticks. That stopped all investigations or doubtings. Here was the Manifestation in the flesh. It was, so far as could be seen, devoid of purpose, but it was a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing down canyons and gorges like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... Camille, whose hand trembled, had some difficulty in detaching the leaves from one another. He succeeded, however, at last, and went on reading and writhing. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... her as a wounded bird to shelter, dropped upon a stool beside her and rested my cheek against her knee, my hand in a grasp that was close and loving, and—or so I fancied—monitory. My heart retorted upon writhing conscience that she was worth sinning for. I added, dogged and desperate, that I would do it again, if she needed to have ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... his head and stooped to enter the cab. The tramp leaned forward, shot up his right arm; there came a flash of steel, and the next instant the tramp lay writhing on the sidewalk, one hand twisted under his back, the other held in the viselike grip of the black-bearded man. Alcorn rushed past me, threw himself on the prostrate tramp, slipped a pair of handcuffs ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... incident of a sort of continuous nightmare: I was half asleep, wholly delirious and every impression was as the half-delusion of a half-waking dream. I was barely half-conscious, yet I had sense enough to lie still, except for writhing and turning over, and to restrain myself from singing ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... breath almost left his body; but the dragon, unable to pierce the helmet, unwound his coils, and soon Enda's hands were free, and before the dragon could attempt to seize him again, he drove his spear through one of its fiery eyes, and, writhing with pain, the hissing dragon darted through a cave behind him. Enda, gaining courage from the dragon's flight, marched on until he came to a door of dull brass set in the rocks. He tried to push it in before him, but he ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... imagination with a sense of the personal qualities of the weather,—power, persistency, fierceness, and roaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to those who looked out of windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw the commotion in all the high tree-tops and the writhing of the low evergreens, and could not summon resolution to go forth and breast and conquer the bluster. The sky was dark with snow, which was not permitted to fall peacefully like a blessed mantle, as it ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stronger man, and having got him into Paris there seemed nothing better to do with him than to let him alone. But that sensitive gorge of Richard's was one of his worst enemies: if he did not mean to hold the snake in the stick, he had better not have cleft the stick. As for John and his writhing, I am only half concerned with them; but let me tell you this. Whatever he did or did not sprang not from hatred of this or that man, but from fear, or from love of his own belly. Every prince of the house of Anjou loved inordinately some member of himself, some ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... played his last card, and the game was lost. Fortune had forsaken him at every turn; not one of his efforts had met with any success, and after all his endeavours he found himself as securely caught as the rat which was even then writhing within a few inches of his feet, in its last vain endeavour to free itself from the trap in ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... these horrors, an army of twenty thousand advanced to meet the duke at the head of three times that number. In the battle that ensued the Burgundians were entirely defeated, and Charles narrowly escaped with his life. Writhing under his disgrace, and vowing revenge, the duke raised a much more numerous army, ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... irresistible attraction for Mr. Wiley. The Viscountess Poldoody had taken a house in his parish for the fine season, and came to his church with her niece; he had called upon her, and now escorted her to the orchard with a fulsome assiduity which was betrayed to those who followed by the uneasy writhing of his back and shoulders. With many complimentary words he invited her to distribute ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... woes of Actual Human Life— If thou could'st see the serpent strife Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone— Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek, Note every pang, and hearken every shriek Of some despairing lost Laocoon, The human nature would thyself subdue To share the human woe before thine eye— Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... he said, "but I have changed the arrangement for supper. Mrs. Ascher," he nodded towards the seat in which she was writhing, "wants to meet the Galleotti family. They're not a family, you know, and of course they're not called Galleotti. The woman is a Mrs. Briggs, and the tallest of the men is her husband. The other two are no relation. I don't know their names, ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... was writhing and pushing onward towards what they call "a position in society," and the servants were pointing at her as lost and ruined. So you see Molly, the housemaid, of a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his thread and laboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... notice of him. Not until he had nearly completed his task was he discovered; then some one raised a shout. The next instant they charged upon him, but his work had been done. With a snap the ropes parted, the cable went writhing and twisting up the track, the unwieldy apparatus ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... mercy! have mercy! he is alive yet!" she shrieked, as writhing and convulsed, the rattlesnake drew his glittering folds out from beneath the stone, and wound himself up, coil after coil, more venomous ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... calming his wife who, I imagine, threatened to tear open the door and jump out. The important thing was that he kept her from doing it, perhaps by bribes of gold and precious stones, and the Aigle moved on, writhing like a wounded snake as she obeyed the hand on the wheel. If the slightest thing should go wrong in the steering-gear, as we read of in other motor-cars each time we picked up a newspaper—but other cars were not ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... echoes with his insane fits of laughter, alternating from a good-humoured chuckle to the frenzied ravings of a despairing maniac. Suddenly ceasing, he would dart down upon some hapless lizard, too early astir for its own safety, and, with his writhing prey in his bill, would fly to some other branch, and after swallowing his captive, burst forth into a yell of self-gratulation even-more fiendish than before. The delicate little "paddy melon," a small species ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... desolation of winter, and reflects the desolation which, she feels, is coming upon herself. The swallows are ready to depart, the water is in stripes, black, spotted white with the wailing wind. The furled leaf of the fig-tree, in front of their house, and the writhing vines, sympathize with her heart ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... think that he, the son of a god, had thus been cast out; and at those times he would writhe with his huge body and lash his tail till the sea spouted up to the sky. And when that happened the men of the North said that a great tempest was raging. But it was only the Serpent-son of Loki writhing in his wrath. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... you ain't worn these three years, nor the weskits, and I thought I might take the shirts, and I—I take my hoath I intended to put back the hopera-glass," roared Morgan, writhing ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of her wits by pretending there was a great snake writhing among the dark-leaved reeds, but almost immediately she discovered it was only a rubber hose, and she laughed with ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... wan blue, wan and pale themselves, and wearing a certain air of fixed calm, the type of an eternal quiet. At the base of the hills lay the city, a dirty mass of bricks and smoke and dust, and at its far edge flowed the Wabash,—deep here, tinted with green, writhing and gurgling and curdling on the banks over shelving ledges of lichen and mud-covered rock. Beyond it yawned the opening to the great West,—the Prairies. Not the dreary deadness here, as farther west. A plain dark russet in hue,—for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... King! I would fain go in to the damsel, that I may see how it is with her; for I hope in Allah to heal her by my healing hand through means of the horse." Then he bade them take care of the horse and the King carried him to the Princess's apartment where her lover found her wringing her hands and writhing and beating herself against the ground, and tearing her garments to tatters as was her wont; but there was no madness of Jinn in her, and she did this but that none might approach her. When the Prince saw her thus, he said to her, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... girl up and carried her back writhing and struggling into the salon. The whole of the pretty room was within view, but in the embrasure of a window something lay dreadfully still and quiet. Celia held her head averted. But it was there, and, though it ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... their right hands something between a monarch's sceptre and a priest's staff. They have goggle eyes and open mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One, painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink; another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea- green devil, an indigo blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend, and a bright pink monster treads under his clawed feet a flesh- coloured demon. I cannot give you any idea of the hideousness of ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... nerves to herself, rasped, as they were to a treacherous tenuity. And as the state of her nerves was owing to Kitty, she held Kitty responsible for the crisis. She writhed as she thought of it. She writhed as she thought of Mr. Lucy. She writhed as she thought of Kitty; and writhing, she rubbed her own venom ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... him by uttering a most discordant sound, which the valet soon perceived to be a failure in the imitation of a groan. The eyes of the hag exhibited terrible signs of displeasure, as she turned round to some object that called her attention, while writhing her uncouth features into a most diabolical grimace. She thundered out an oath which made Roque invoke Santa Maria; but he was not a little scandalized when he discovered that the occasion of the hag's indignation was her frolicsome ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the writhing worm, By the swift, far-flung poison of the germ, By soft and foul brought out of hard ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... 1883 and 1884 showed that even the army, on which the Czar was bestowing every care, was permeated with Nihilism, women having by their arts won over many officers to the revolutionary cause. Poland, also, writhing with discontent under the Czar's stern despotism, was worked on with success by their emissaries; and the ardour of the Poles made the recruits especially dangerous to the authorities, ever fearful of another revolt in that unhappy land. Finally, the Czar was fain to shut himself up in ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... of sand, which threw up such an immense cloud of dust that the Romans could neither see clearly nor speak; and, being driven into a narrow compass, and falling one on another, they were wounded and died no easy nor yet a speedy death, for tortured with violent convulsions and pain, and writhing with the arrows in them, they broke them in the wounds, and, by trying to pull out by force the barbed points, which had pierced through their veins and nerves, they increased the evil by breaking the arrows, and thus ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... question. We were alone—we were both twenty years of age—we were rivals—each was armed. We drew our knives—threw ourselves one upon the other, and Caradec fell from his horse, pierced through the body. To tell you what I felt when I saw him, bleeding and writhing in agony, would be impossible; I spurred my horse, and darted through the forest ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... good translation.' Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain, came next in review; the bard was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and shewing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, 'Is that poetry, Sir?—Is it Pindar?' JOHNSON. 'Why, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Carmena stooped over the writhing monster to thrust the muzzle of a small revolver against the side of its lower jaw. The bullet shattered the jaw and blew it half off. A vigorous kick hurled the now ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... broken whip uplifted. Cornelius ran backward to the steps and rolled clear to the ground. The whip was tossed after him. With a gnashing curse he snatched it up and hurried off, moaning and writhing, into the darkness, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... immediate antagonists hailed from across the Sonora line. Who and what they were mattered little, however. The fact that after hours of repulse in open attack, the foe had all on a sudden carried their castle by a damnable ruse was only too forcibly apparent. Writhing, struggling in miserable effort to free himself from his bonds, poor Harvey's burning eyes were maddened by the picture before him only a couple of hundred yards away. There in the fierce light of the flames now bursting from every window and roaring ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... they brood long on the world as it is. But I do wonder at the superficial optimism which goes on with its little prophecies about human progress, and its rose-coloured pictures of human life, and sees nothing to strike it dumb for ever in men's writhing miseries, blank failures, and hopeless end. Ah! brethren, if it were not for the heavenward look, how could we bear the sight of earth? 'We see not yet all things put under Him.' No! God knows, far enough off from that. Man's folly, man's submission to the creatures ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... was supported by a long, flexible, writhing stem, and its base was composed of many and highly specialized leaves. There were saws and spears and mighty, but sinuous tendrils; there were slender shoots which seemed to possess some sense of perception; there was the massive tractor base composed of extensible leaves which by their ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... seem not only to show struggle with the elements, but agony in that struggle. The agony may be that of torture in the tempest, or of some fabled creatures fleeing and pursued, stretching out their long arms in terror, and fixed in that writhing fear. They are creatures of the sea quite as much as of the land, and they give to this lovely coast a ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... he said, "King is worse. With his hands clasped on his stomach, he sits writhing with anguish. Listen, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... amongst those that haunted Pomeroy Castle and its lonely surroundings, and cries and groans were occasionally heard in the village below from the shrieking shade of the guilty Eleanor, who murdered her uncle. At midnight she was said to fly from the fairies, who followed her with writhing serpents, their tongues glistening with poisonous venom and their pestiferous breath turning black everything with which they came in contact, and thus her soul was tortured as a punishment for her horrible deeds. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... he knew its great head would be. A jar, which thrilled his sword arm to the shoulder, told him that his stroke had got home, and the next instant he was violently hurled a fathom away as the snake's severed head fell to the ground, and the enormous body, writhing in a thousand terrific convolutions, churned the blue waters of the basin into diamond-tinted spray. For full ten minutes the amazed trio stood gazing in breathless astonishment at the amazing twistings and writhings of the decapitated body, and then George, taking ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... man threw up his hands, fell backward, and disappeared. After a second's hesitation, both lads ran to the wall, climbed up, and looked over. In an unmistakable fit, the man was writhing on the ground. Johnny and Albert ran quickly across lots and into Rev. Paul Brighton's study. After learning that the boys had found a man in a fit, Johnny's father hailed two passing neighbors, and the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... unnatural energy and set at naught every true interest of earth and heaven. Again and again he would have shrieked its anguish, but the first note of his voice rebuked him to silence as if he had espied himself in a glass. He fell on his face voiceless, writhing, and promised himself, nay, pledged creation and its Creator, that on the day of his return to the walks of men he would drink the cup of madness and would drink it thenceforth till ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... darkness deep", that in the accompaniment to this air the monotony of dazed grief is just varied now and again with a little writhing passage. Whether Handel meant this or no, the interpretation put upon the passage fits the feeling ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... high the price he fix'd in secrecy: "'Were you suspected, my unhappy friend,' Began the boy, 'where would your sorrows end? In all the palace there is not a page The Caliph would not torture in his rage: I think I see thee now impaled alive, Writhing in pangs—but come, my friend! revive; Had some beheld you, all your purse contains Could not have saved you from terrific pains; I scorn such meanness; and, if not in debt, Would not an asper on ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... footsteps of death are the moments. "Arise!"—At the word, with a bound, to their feet spring the vigilant Frenchmen; And the dark, dismal forests resound to the crack and the roar of their rifles; And seven writhing forms on the ground clutch the earth. From the pine-tops the screech owl Screams and flaps his wide wings in affright, and plunges away through the shadows; And swift on the wings of the night flee the dim, phantom forms of the spirit. Like cabris ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... This is a part of the horrors of slavery which, I believe, no one has ever attempted to delineate. I wonder not at it; it mocks all power of language. Who can describe the anguish of that mind which feels itself impaled upon the iron of arbitrary power—its living, writhing, helpless victim! every human susceptibility tortured, its sympathies torn, and stung, and bleeding—always feeling the death weapon in its heart, and yet not so deep as to kill that humanity which is made the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... away from the little group, and their own horses were excited, those who had looked breathless on at the struggle could not tell how he had managed it, but when they expected to see the groom writhing under the weight of the demoness, there he was with his knee upon her head—while Liftore was gathering himself up from the ground, only just beyond the reach of her ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... sheer. The bank of white choyas caught him, held him upon their steel spikes. How long did the dazed Gale sit there watching Rojas wrestling and writhing in convulsive frenzy? The bandit now seemed mad ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... killing her protector. There was a wild scream of pain from the wounded beast, more pistol shots, fierce yells from the excited hunters, the rush of feet and then the terrified and almost frantic girl staggered and fell against the rocky wall. Her wide gray eyes were fastened upon the writhing lion and the smoking pistol was tightly clutched in ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... who looked upon this revolting picture will never get rid of its remembrance, and will regret the day when their eyes fell upon it. I should share the offence of the painter if I ventured to describe it. Ribera was fond of depicting just such odious and frightful subjects. "Saint Lawrence writhing on his gridiron, Saint Sebastian full of arrows, were equally a source of delight to him. Even in subjects which had no such elements of horror he finds the materials for the delectation of his ferocious pencil; he makes up for the defect by rendering ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... illa), when, according to the sentiments of the Middle Ages, the doomed were subjected to every variety of physical suffering, and when this agony of pain, rather than agony of remorse, was expressed in tortured limbs and in faces writhing with demoniacal despair. Such was the variety of tortures which he expressed, showing an unexampled richness in imaginative powers, that people came to see it from the remotest parts of Italy. It made a great sensation, like the appearance of an immortal poem, and was magnificently rewarded; for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... about me the cries of conflict, and knowing that I could expect no help, I made at the brute: then as it stooped and reached out one of its bunches of tentacles, I sprang back, and slashed at them, and immediately I followed this up by a thrust in the stomach, and at that it collapsed into a writhing white ball, that rolled this way and that, and so, in its agony, coming to the edge of the cliff, it fell over, and I was left, sick and near helpless with the hateful stench of ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... the irresistible attraction which St. Francis exercised is to be found in his matchless simplicity, in his sublime self-surrender. He removed mountains because he believed intensely in the infinite power of mere goodness. While from the writhing millions all over Europe—the millions ignorant, neglected, plague-stricken, despairing—an inarticulate wail was going up to God, St. Francis made it articulate. Then he boldly proclaimed: "God has heard your cry! It meant this and that. I am sent to you with the good God's ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... show what he can do, in a second the dwarf changes himself into a horrible dragon, with slimy scales and a writhing tail, and eyes and jaws that look as wicked as the dwarf himself, and twice as savage. The Fire God pretends to be dreadfully frightened, and when the dwarf comes back to his own shape again he says: 'That was very good, but that does not seem so hard, after all. Now, the way for ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... escape. If the sledge had gone down Meares and I must have been badly injured, if not killed outright. The dogs are wonderful, but have had a terrible shaking—three of them are passing blood and have more or less serious internal injuries. Many were held up by a thin thong round the stomach, writhing madly to get free. One dog better placed in its harness stretched its legs full before and behind and just managed to claw either side of the gap—it had continued attempts to climb throughout, giving vent to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... them with my ardent wings of flame; I will kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back; Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame. Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight; Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold; With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night, They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold. Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas; ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... than her mother and had always dominated her. She knew also that if she complained, Sora Nanna would raise such a scream as would bring half Subiaco running to the house. The girl's animal instinct was to die alone, and quietly. So she made no sound, and lay upon her bed writhing in pain and holding her sides with all her might, but with close-set teeth ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... sheets, in the tail of the comet, and hence we find that the clays of one region are of one color, while those of another are of a different hue. Again, we shall see that the legends represent the monster as "winding," undulating, writhing, twisting, fold over fold, precisely as the telescopes show us the comets ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... she thought best, and that, in this, she was accountable to no one but her lord and husband. "See, oh, pray see," exclaimed Bertalda, in an angry yet uneasy tone, "how the poor beautiful water is curling and writhing at being shut out from the bright sunshine and from the cheerful sight of the human face, for whose mirror it was created!" The water in the fountain was indeed wonderfully agitated and hissing; it seemed as if something within were struggling ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... ringing out the full morning carol. The child was lying on his bed; he brightened up a little, then shut his eyes wearily, and stopped writhing. For little Nobby it that moment ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... I envisage that! Come with me, Your Excellency, and look on it: Zeno the Great is there, writhing impotently in the grasp of his captors and, at such intervals as his voice can be heard, hoarsely importuning me to make all clear. The gendarmes are there. The troopers are there in full panoply of lethal equipment and carnage-dealing implements of war. The mayor is ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... forecast a final day of grace, and paint it in the most glorious colors. There appears to be nothing to mitigate their joy. But all the while they profess to believe in eternal torment. Their creed says that uncounted myriads of our fellow creatures are writhing in eternal fire, and that their torment will go on forever and ever, without any hope of mitigation. Surely, the very thought of such suffering would cast a pall of unspeakable gloom over the most glorious ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... from the chair and my innocent little cousin was installed in my place. As I now recall she made no protest. The barber ran his clippers conscientiously and painstakingly over her tender young scalp, while I stood admiringly by and watched the long yellow curls fall writhing upon the floor at my feet. It seemed to me that a great and manifest improvement was produced in her general appearance. Instead of being hampered by those silly curls dangling down all round her face, she now had a round, slick, smooth dome decorated with a stiff yellowish stubble, and the ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... fingered through his notes, frowning, a doubt gnawing through his mind into certainty. He took up a dozen of the stories, analyzed them carefully, word for word, sentence by sentence. Then he sat back, his body tired, eyes closed in concentration, an incredible idea twisting and writhing and solidifying ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... Lord Henry tells us how Sir John leapt to snatch a weapon from the armoured walls; how Sakr-el-Bahr barked out a single word in Arabic, and how at that word a half-dozen of his supple blackamoors sprang upon the knight like greyhounds upon a hare and bore him writhing to the ground. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Bucky had finished with the fellow and flung him a limp, writhing huddle of welts to the ground, three surprises awaited him. The first was that it was not a woman he had rescued at all, but a boy, and, as the flickering firelight played on his face, the ranger came to an unexpected recognition. The slim lad facing him was no other than Frank Hardman, whom ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... is a tale of the great French Revolution of 1793, and the two cities in question are London and Paris,—London as it lay comparatively at peace in the days when George III. was king, and Paris running blood and writhing in the fierce fire of anarchy and mob rule. A powerful book, unquestionably. No doubt there is in its heat and glare a reflection from Carlyle's "French Revolution," a book for which Dickens had ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... writhing and twisting upon the table, and noted its peculiar markings of black and yellow. Its eyes were bright and searching. I had read of the fascination which a snake's gaze exercises over its prey, and now I experienced it—a fatal fascination. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... disheartening influence of the indomitable Shade of Care. But the truth is that Kirkwood's brain comprehended little that his eyes perceived; his thoughts were with his heart, and that was half a world away and sick with pity for another and a fairer city, stricken in the flower of her loveliness, writhing in Promethean agony upon her ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... unmoving; it would hold automatically to the direction and speed that had been established. The hand of the master-pilot found it quickly. They were in dangerous territory now—a vast void under a ceiling of black, star-specked space. No writhing, darting wraith-forms caught the rays of the distant sun. Their ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... paced the floor with her tinkling feet, writhing and undulating like some beautiful cobra, while the players worked themselves up to yet higher ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... our wounds disdain; Dismounted now, our horses slain, Yet we advance—more courage show, Though stricken, seek to overthrow The victor-knights who tread in mud The writhing slaves who bite the heel, While on caparisons of steel The ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of the living mass, through which a wide lane was cut; while a yell, the like of which I could not have imagined, burst from the miserable survivors as they fled to the woods. Amongst the heaps of dead that lay on the sand just where they had fallen, I could distinguish mutilated forms writhing in agony; while ever and anon one and another rose convulsively from out the mass, endeavoured to stagger towards the wood, and ere they had taken a few steps, fell and wallowed on the bloody sand. My blood curdled ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne |
