Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this
straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.
He enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night, and when Tom started out on his parade next morning, he found the old deformed Negro bell ringer
straddling along in his wake tricked out in a flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his fancy Eastern graces as well as he could.
Jammes yelled these words in a tone of unspeakable terror; and her finger pointed, among the crowd of dandies, to a face so pallid, so lugubrious and so ugly, with two such deep black cavities under the
straddling eyebrows, that the death's head in question immediately scored a huge success.
Jukes,
straddling his long legs like a pair of compasses, put on an air of superiority.
It was a sort of vault on the ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post bedstead in it,
straddling over the whole place, putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fire-place and another into the doorway, and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely Righteous manner.
He was lying on his side and as he looked down his body, he saw that a great lion stood
straddling him--a great lion who growled hideously at something which Tarzan could not see.
Nevertheless,
straddling from headland to headland, as his custom was, Talus attempted to strike a blow at the vessel, and, overreaching himself, tumbled at full length into the sea, which splashed high over his gigantic shape, as when an iceberg turns a somerset.