"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some months, the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law. The Missouri compromise was abrogated, and the question of the extension of slavery to the territories was adrift again, never to be got rid of except through the abolition of slavery itself by war. The demands of the South had now come fully abreast with the proposal of Douglas: that slavery should have permission to enter all the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... effectually," said Griffith, dropping the glass from his eye; "and I know not but our wisest course would be to haul in to the land, and, cutting everything light adrift, endeavor to pass the broadside ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... she says, in the Church of England, yet she never thinks of what she could have faith in, and resolutely without inquiring into the question determines riot to be a Roman Catholic, so that really, you see, she is allowing her mind to run adrift and yet perfectly powerless. ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... under the convoy of thirteen men-of-war, which so closely pursued him that he was obliged to abandon most of his prizes. He burned four of the frigates, and putting their crews on board the fifth, turned her adrift, which, with thirty-five of the merchant-ships, were retaken. A fast galley brought this news to Admiral Benbow, who immediately steered in pursuit of the French squadron. The "Weymouth" was ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... love embraces mankind. Forward, leap up and be free! Trusting in your own strength, guided by your own will, go boldly forth into the open sunshine of life! Be free, be free!—Still, be not like a slave who is no sooner cut adrift and left to himself than he falls a slave again to his own senses. No; but striving unceasingly and of your own free will, in the sweat of your brow, to reach the high goal, to work out to its fulfilment and fruition everything that is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with as strong a credulity as Mr. Boltay, that there was not one word of truth in the tragic monologue above described. Mrs. Meyer had not fallen out with her daughters; they had not turned her adrift; there was no need for her to leap into the Danube. The matter stood simply thus: Abellino, since his late rebuffs, had, full of passionate frenzy, plunged deeper and deeper into his unsuccessful enterprise. He had just demanded from Monsieur Griffard the last hundred thousand florins of the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... writing his memoirs, and the pleasantest part of his life began. The Temple suited him perfectly, its Bohemianism was congenial to him, the library was convenient, and as no man likes to wholly cut himself adrift from his profession, the vicinity of the law courts, and a modicum of legal conversation in the evening, sufficed to maintain in his absent-minded head the illusion that he was practising at the bar. His chambers were bare and dreary, unadorned with spoils from India or China. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... fading of the hills into night clouds, interested in her thoughts vaguely—her thoughts adrift and faded somewhat as the spectacle before her. She wondered if her lodger would be satisfied with her mother's cooking; she hoped so. He was a well-spoken man, but she could not hope to change mother. As the image of the lodger floated out of her mind Hender's ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... occasional; provisional. unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative; unascertained, unconfirmed; undemonstrated; untold, uncounted. in a state of uncertainty, in a cloud, in a maze; bushed, off the track; ignorant.&c. 491; afraid to say; out of one's reckoning, astray, adrift; at sea, at fault, at a loss, at one's wit's end, at a nonplus; puzzled &c. v.; lost, abroad, dsorient; distracted, distraught. Adv. pendente lite[Lat]; sub spe rati[Lat]. Phr. Heaven knows; who can tell? who shall decide when doctors disagree? ambiguas ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... dear, my dear, I am so glad you are come!" It was the voice of a great relief that came from the figure on the bed; the voice of one who had waited long, of a traveller who sees his haven, a castaway adrift who ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... deepest gloom, the canoe was taken out into the main current of the Columbia, and fire was set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. In an instant the contents of the canoe were in a blaze, and it was set adrift in the current. Down the river it floated, lighting the night with leaping flames. On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in silence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief borne from them forever. Promontory and dusky fir, gleaming ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... down to the boats every time the clock strikes, to see if they are all right. If they should get adrift, you know, our ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... He permitted Alixe to sue him for absolute divorce—and, to give her every chance to marry Ruthven, he refused to defend the suit. That sort of chivalry is very picturesque, no doubt, but it cost him his career—set him adrift at thirty-five, a man branded as having been divorced from his wife for cause, with no profession left him, no business, not much money—a man in the prime of life and hope and ambition, clean in thought and deed; an upright, just, generous, sensitive man, whose whole career has been blasted ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... all illustrative of the corruption which had crept within the fold of the church, and which was making even holy things abhorrent to the hearts of men. He listened, and his heart was hot as he heard; he caught the fire of Garret's enthusiasm, and would then and there have cast adrift from his former life, thrown over Oxford and his studies there—and flung himself heart and soul into the movement now at work in the great, throbbing city, where, for the first ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... shore. Captain Gallop buried the corpse as reverently as possible in the sea, and then took the pinnace in tow, with the three savages barricaded in the cabin. Night came on, dark and stormy; the wind increased to a tempest, and it was necessary to cut the pinnace adrift. She was never ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... thought but in all human relations, in love, friendship, faith in man, faith in God, faith in beauty; and while it was this profound dissatisfaction with less than the perfect form of every art, passion, thought, or circumstance, that set him adrift in life, making him seem untrue to duty, conviction, and himself, it was this also that formed in him the double existence of the poet and the philosopher, each supplementing and interpenetrating the other. The poet and the philosopher ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... my long day was over, I rubbed down; exquisite agony; water spreads the poison of these weeds; I got it all over my hands, on my chest, in my eyes, and presently, while eating an orange, A LA Raratonga, burned my lip and eye with orange juice. Now, all day, our three small pigs had been adrift, to the mortal peril of our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back verandah, behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly I got together as many boys as I could - three, and got the pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the other boats to come alongside, which they quickly did. The stores and the people not required for pulling were at once taken on board. The boats then came off to the rafts, when we all got into them and towed the rafts up to the ship. The stores were at once hoisted up, when the rafts were cast adrift, while our larger boats were allowed to tow astern, as they could not be taken on board. The American captain, who was bound to the coast of Japan in search of whales, agreed to land us ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... have friends and relatives, they are almost constantly beyond the reach of their good influences; consider that after the rigorous discipline, hardships, dangers, and privations of a voyage, they are set adrift in a foreign port, and exposed to a thousand enticements, which, under the circumstances, would be hard even for virtue itself to withstand, unless virtue went about on crutches; consider that by their very vocation they are shunned by the better classes of people, and cut off from ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... various and somewhat conflicting editions. "Some hundred years ago," says Mr. Wilson, "a few of the M'Leods landed in Eigg from Skye, where, having greatly misconducted themselves, the Eiggites strapped them to their own boats, which they sent adrift into the ocean. They were, however, rescued by some clansmen; and, soon after, a strong body of the M'Leods set sail from Skye, to revenge themselves on Eigg. The natives of the latter island feeling they were not of sufficient force to offer resistance, went and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... "The Gull adrift!" exclaimed Frank. "That explains it then. Our rowboat was washed away by the tide. The Gull pulled her anchor ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... Little, throwing an arm around the neck of each of his friends, and drawing their heads together near his mouth. "At night, when everything is quiet, one of us will just unbit the cable, and let it run out. Then another shall sing out that the vessel is going adrift. That will make a row. Then we will try to do something. You, Herman, and I, will offer to carry a line to another vessel—the ship, for instance. Carboy—who don't know any more about a vessel than a kitten does of the ten commandments—will ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... corruption and other economic crimes; and (c) keep afloat the large state-owned enterprises many of which had been shielded from competition by subsides and had been losing the ability to pay full wages and pensions. From 80 to 120 million surplus rural workers are adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time low-paying jobs. Popular resistance, changes in central policy, and loss of authority by rural cadres have weakened China's population control program, which is essential to maintaining growth ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... been seen the day before gracefully riding safely at their moorings, decked out in all their pride and glory and lined up alongside the Strand, three and four abreast from the Pepper Box to the Eden Gardens, one alone was left, all the others having been violently torn adrift and swept clean away to the four winds of heaven. Besides these were all the country traders moored to the south of the Pepper Box known as Coolie Bazar, extending as far as Tackta Ghat, which shared ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... to New York City in 1866, where he wrote his first book for boys, Ragged Dick, which had a wonderful sale. This was followed by Fame and Fortune, and many others, of which the best-known titles are: Andy Grant's Pluck, Adrift in New York, Ben's Nugget, Charlie Codman's Cruise, Chester Rand, Five Hundred Dollars, Grit, Helping Himself, The Young Adventurer, The Young Explorer, The Young Miner, The Young Musician, The Store Boy, The Tin Box, Walter Sherwood's Probation, ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... the world's historic sacrifice; Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise; Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake And wander yet; all, weary men who brake Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise: Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew; Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all, In Masefield's eyes you lodge; and to the wall I turn you,—hand a-tremble,—lest you make Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too. Wherein the sad world's ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... truth she had no impulse to speak to him? But a deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and the silence between them became intolerable to him; it was as if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... happy! I have found thee, Have secured thee 'midst millions, And of all this multitude thou art mine! Let the wild chaos return; Let it cast adrift the atoms! Forever our hearts fly to meet ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hole and the smoke will find its way out presently. The barge will drift down to the weir before it brings up, there is not enough stream out for there to be any risk of her upsetting, else we daren't have turned her adrift." ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... paymaster, "Hester had hardly disappeared when both myself and my man were seized by the Indians of our crew, and for a moment I thought they were about to put us to death. Then they hit on another plan with regard to me, which was to set me adrift, naked as I was, in my tub. What they did with poor Tummas I have ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... leave, lieutenant, it's a young child that I found in a boat adrift, half dead with hunger and cold. A woman, quite dead, and bathed in her own blood, still held it in her arms. I had all the trouble in the world to get the boat away from the place where I found it, for those dogs of Spaniards ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... Jocelyn, hotly. "Papa has given the best in him to help them, and look how they send him adrift when—when he makes ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... on the fine performance of his troops. But what did I then see?.... The extreme rapidity of the movements had deranged the accessories added to the turn-out of both the colonel and Captain B***; the false tail of the colonel's horse had come adrift, the centre part, made of a pad of tow, was hanging down nearly to the ground and the hairs were spread over the horse's crupper in a sort of peacock's tail. As for Captain B***'s calves, they had slipped round to the front, and could be seen as large lumps on his shins, which produced a ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... the newcomers, adrift here and there in the straw. Their weariness was alleviated. They set about writing and card-playing. That evening I dated my letter to Marie "at the Front," with a flourish of pride. I understood ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... quietly, and adapted herself to his moods, never boring him with an over-display of interest, never chilling him with an absence of it. Her plan was to make herself necessary to him, and in part she succeeded. Thorne, lonely and cut adrift, came more and more frequently to his aunt's house and exhibited more and more decidedly his preference for his cousin's society. The thin end of the wedge was in, and but for the move to Virginia, and its ill-starred consequences, the inevitable ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... broke upon the prima donna, Hepworth Closs was sitting quietly in the pit, where he found himself, as if by accident. They had reached town only in time for a late dinner, when the ladies, being greatly fatigued, proclaimed their intention of retiring early, which was, in fact, casting him adrift for the evening. Being thus let loose upon the world, he very naturally brought up at the opera, and was seated so near the stage that his eyes more than once caught those of Olympia, who gave him one of those quick glances of recognition, which seemed ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... inheritance, one can only reply that beauty is almost always dumb. Male beauty in association with female beauty breeds in the onlooker a sense of fear. Often have I seen them—Helen and Jimmy—and likened them to ships adrift, and feared for my own little craft. Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance? As she passed him his cup there was that quiver in her flanks. Bowley saw what was up-asked Jimmy to breakfast. Helen must have confided in Rose. For my own part, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... And so you know my mind. Take it or leave it or let it alone. It's all a won to I. Thos and I gives all this here good advice for nothink at all, what do I get by it? Give me but the wide world and one and 20, with 5 farthins ten fingurs and a tongue, and a turn me adrift to morrow; I'de a work my way: I'de a fear nether wind nor weather. For why? I'de a give any man a peck of sweet words for a pint of honey. What! Shall I let the lock rustee for a want of a little oilin? Haven't I a told ee often and often, that a ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... snow kept sleepily falling, pausing, and falling again; it seemed perpetually beginning to snow and perpetually leaving off; and the darkness was intense. Time and again we walked into trees; time and again found ourselves adrift among garden borders or stuck like a ram in the thicket. Rowley had possessed himself of the matches, and he was neither to be terrified nor softened. 'No, I will not, Mr. Anne, sir,' he would reply. 'You know he tell me to ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know," Enfield answered, slowly. "I wasn't taking as much interest in her movements just then as I had been. I cut adrift about the time she took Harlow in tow; I suppose she thought I was jealous, and perhaps I was. I don't know how they managed it, but he left very suddenly, and she was sick ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... suggested, "that it's plain enough that Greg didn't try to go home by the river. The canoe may have gotten adrift, and he may have started toward home on foot. Some of us, I think, ought to follow the road. We may find Greg somewhere along the road, injured as a result ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... out of half their plans and pleasures, and she runs home, not knowing whether to be pleased or hurt, and pulls down half a dozen of your books and sits proudly at the window. Her poor foolish mother had some gifts, but she went adrift very soon, and I should teach Nan her duty to her neighbor, and make her take in the idea that she owes something to the world beside following out her own most satisfying plans. When I was a young woman it was a most blessed discovery to me—though I was not any quicker at making it than other ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and through with the inspiration of a fervent spirit, uncompromising in its devotion to the truth, asking no indulgence if also, perhaps, giving none, serving God in his own way with a fidelity above every bribe, scornful of every compromise. But he cut Scotland adrift so far as in him lay from the brotherhood of habit and tradition, from the communion, if not of saints, yet of many saintly uses, and much that is beautiful in Christian life. He made his country eminent, and secured for her one great chapter in the history of the world; ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... occurred to me that this attempt to cut the ship adrift was most probably the act of some of our own people; whose purpose of remaining at Otaheite might have been effectually answered without danger if the ship had been driven on shore. At the time I entertained not the least thought of this kind, nor did the possibility of it enter ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... culture, manner, and ease of a past which nothing could dim? Had he suggested some personal relation to that past which her father preferred to keep unexplained? These questions crowded into her mind speculatively. They were seeking a form of conveyance when she realized that she had been adrift with imaginings. He was getting older. She must expect his preoccupation and his absent-mindedness ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... his eyes in a stupid manner, with the stubborn, distrustful expression of an animal subject to the lash. He had set out armed with a pitchfork, because his fellow villagers had done so; but he could not have explained what had thus set him adrift on the high roads. Since he had been made a prisoner he understood it still less. He had some vague idea that he was being conveyed home. His amazement at finding himself bound, the sight of all the people staring at him, stupefied him still more. As he only spoke and understood the dialect ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... would mean only that to the world; and so you would be cut adrift from both sides, as all women are who move from where they rightfully belong to where they ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... with Adam's assistance, having hauled in the longboat until she was well under the gallery, I presently got me a-down the swaying rope ladder and safe aboard of her (though with no little to-do) and at my shout Adam cast off the towline, and I was adrift. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... with the sign of others' crimes, ruined before my life is begun, cut off from happiness, from ambition, from you—O Hilda! that is what I came to tell you—I have spoken very badly—it is best to say it clearly. My beloved, this has taken you from me, and me from you, and has cast me adrift from all that remained, from the greatest and best of all. If I could dare to marry you now, to give you my miserable name, to take you to the home that is darkened by so many deaths—I should be the last and lowest of men! It is of no use, for I feel ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... rose, bright and ruddy, from its eastern bed, the vessel's gun, giving the signal for departing, sounded beyond the foaming bar, and the newly wedded lovers were adrift, alike upon the ocean of life and upon the blue expanse that surrounded them-adrift to suffer a dismal shipwreck, or to anchor safely within some remote ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... thinking, Harold, it may be well for you to find out something of this boy. If you can prove to Aunt Eliza that he is of bad character, she will send him adrift." ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... the word with a prolonged hiss, and then—before I could even guess at his intention—there was the swift gleam of a knife, a splash of the severed painter, and caught by the tide the old boat swung out, and was adrift. ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without you, Heaven only knows. It's curious—the effect imprisonment has on you. It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a baby. You want to be free—and yet you're almost afraid of ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Jasper turned about instantly to watch his brig; and, even before he realised that—in obedience, it appears, to Heemskirk's orders given beforehand to the gunner— the tow-rope had been let go at the blast of the whistle, before he had time to cry out or to move a limb, he saw her cast adrift and shooting across the gunboat's stern with the impetus of her speed. He followed her fine, gliding form with eyes growing big with incredulity, wild with horror. The cries on board of her came to him only as a dreadful and confused ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... English regiment just home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, "was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been the widow of a soldier before she married Roger Sterne. In the ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... unfamiliar shapes lay here and there around the little galley forward; coils of running rigging were kicking about under-foot instead of hanging on the belaying-pins; a pig-pen, which had apparently gone adrift in a gale, blocked up the gangway to the forecastle on the port side between the high bulwark and a big boat which had been lashed in V-shaped supports amidships; and a large part of the space between the cabin ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Dr. Bailey was again adrift, and we next find him concerned in "Kelley's Expedition to Oregon." This had been projected at St. Louis, which was to be its starting-point; and thither hastened our adventurous young physician—to learn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... wit you, Mistress Edith, what cometh at times to men adrift of the ocean, when all their ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... vocation for some time, when the old lady fell sick and died. She divided her fortune between her two nieces, and as they were now independent, they married their respective lovers; but the old lady forgot to mention me in her will, and I should have been turned adrift on the world had it not been for Donna Teresa, who immediately appointed me as her own attendant. I was as happy as before, although no more doubloons fell into my hands, after the marriages took place. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... most miserable and wretched, whom I had seen for years as beggars in the streets;-young women,—perhaps the unhappy victims of seduction, who, having lost their reputation, and being turned adrift in the world, without a friend and without a home, were reduced to the necessity of begging, to sustain a miserable existence, now recognized me as their benefactor; and, with tears dropping fast from their cheeks, continued their work in the ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... him compassionately, for he was old and broken in spirit, and would plainly starve if turned adrift on the prairie, while as I did so the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... been towing behind; it was half full of water, had no oars, and was quite unvictualled. I refused to go aboard her, and flung myself full length on the deck. In the end, they swung me into her by a rope (for they had no stern ladder), and then they cut me adrift. I drifted slowly from the schooner. In a kind of stupor I watched all hands take to the rigging, and slowly but surely she came round to the wind; the sails fluttered, and then bellied out as the wind came into them. I stared at her weather-beaten side heeling steeply towards me; and then ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... you will have done no good after all, and perhaps only caused bloodshed. Like enough, if matters go quietly, there won't be no bloodshed, and the officers and those who stick to them will just be turned adrift in the boats, or maybe handed over to the Spanish at the port ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... up immediately, and looked around. He was indeed adrift. His weight, pressing upon the outer ends of the logs, had lifted the other ends off the shore, and the raft was slowly floating up the stream. The reason why it floated up was, that there was at this place what they call an eddy, which is a current ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... of the Deep Broke up, shall heave the Ocean to usurp Beyond all bounds, till inundation rise Above the highest Hills: then shall this Mount Of Paradise by might of Waves be moovd Out of his place, pushd by the horned floud, With all his verdure spoil'd, and Trees adrift Down the great River to the op'ning Gulf, And there take root an Iland salt and bare, 830 The haunt of Seales and Orcs, and Sea-mews clang. To teach thee that God attributes to place No sanctitie, if none be thither brought By Men who there frequent, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... strangest physical sensation. Richard straightened himself in his chair, passed his hands across his eyes impatiently. Brockhurst, and all the old life of it, was a subject of which he forbade himself remembrance. He had divorced himself from all that, cut himself adrift from it long ago. By an act of will, he tried to put it out of his mind now. But the fog remained—an actual clouding of his physical vision, blurring all he looked upon. It was horribly uncomfortable. He wished he was alone. Then he might have slipped down from his chair ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... will be a taint in the army and the community which will endure in the relations of pacific life. And more than half a million of men, who have tasted the fierce joy of battle, have suffered the moral privations and dangers of the camp, are to be returned suddenly to us, and cast adrift, with no hope of finding immediate employment, and hankering for some excitements to replace those of the distant field. If little truth and little conscience have been at stake, these are the reasons which make wars so demoralizing: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... life; for in the quiet of a hospital, the best of surgical skill could hardly avail to reset the fractured particles of bone in the limp arm, and bring to place the crushed ribs. And he was adrift on a floating island of ice, with the temperature near the freezing point, and without even the rude appliances of ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... remained seated for a few minutes, when some men went forth and beat tuba with short sticks, then threw water upon it, and as a final procedure cast the bark into the river and again beat it. From the group of the most important people an old man then waded into the water and cast adrift burning ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... while taking to the boats; German submarine U-31 sinks British steamer Olivine and Russian bark Hermes, the crews being saved; German Baltic fleet, returning from bombardment of Libau, is cut off from its base by German mines, which have gone adrift in large numbers because of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Adrift in the City Andy Grant's Pluck Ben's Nugget Bob Burton Bound to Rise Boy's Fortune, A Chester Rand Digging for Gold Do and Dare Facing the World Frank and Fearless Frank Hunter's Peril Frank's Campaign Helping Himself Herbert Carter's Legacy In a New World Jack's Ward Jed, the Poorhouse Boy ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... instances on record showing that people have been planted on Pacific shores many hundred miles from their native land. It seems that the primitive Pacific Islanders have sent people adrift from their shores, thus adding a rational cause to those many fortuitous causes for the interisland migration ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... two more prizes fall into the Sumter's hands. These were the brigantines Cuba and Machias, both of Maine. The captures were taken in tow and carried off in the direction of Cienfuegos. The next day, however, the Cuba broke adrift from her hawser, and on being recovered, a prize crew was sent on board the vessel, with directions to carry her into Cienfuegos, for which port Captain Semmes was ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... whom England had turned adrift, and France had won in her stead, concluded his long oration by dropping on his knees ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... was only calculated to last the Flamingos themselves for a little over that time. Things are cut pretty fine in these days of steam voyages to scheduled time. So there was no sentimental waiting to see the Grosser Carl finally burn out and sink. The boats were cast adrift, as the crews were too exhausted to hoist them in, and the Flamingo's nose was turned toward Liverpool. Pratt, the chief engineer, figured out to half a ton what coal he had remaining, and set the pace so as to run in ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... their search for the "Red Rover." Miss Elting frowned. The message from her brother was still in her pocket. She recalled the peculiar actions of Dee Dickinson, wondering if perchance he had anything to do with the casting adrift of their houseboat, Harriet had not told the guardian of having found a hot stove on the occasion of their first visit to their summer home. That, perhaps, might ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... cupboard and found the crown and dagger as he had left them; but though he searched high and low for the jewel, he could not find it in any of the secret places where he used to lay it; and at last he took the crown and dagger in despair, turned adrift the men-at-arms, and left none but the old nurse in the house. The priest asked for some gift or pension that would not leave him destitute, but Robert said, "Go to, you have lived in gluttony and sloth all the years at the expense of my estate; and now that ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... British ships, tacking, made all sail in pursuit. The Newcastle was on the Constitution's lee quarter and directly ahead of the Leander, while the Acasta was on the weather-quarter of the Newcastle. All six ships were on the port tack. The Constitution cut adrift the boats towing astern, and her log notes that at 12.50 she found she was sailing about as fast as the ships on her lee quarter, but that the Acasta was luffing into her wake and dropping astern. The log of the Acasta says, "We had ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... I mean, of my rebellious soul, For still my bodily eyes were closed and dark: A random thing I seemed without a mark, Racing without a goal, Adrift upon life's sea ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... at will was for ever lost, the force that had driven her resistlessly along the chosen path was still. The powerful propellers were idle, the huge stern-post wrenched so badly that the rudder was useless. She was adrift, helplessly adrift. Of what avail the wheel and a patched-up rudder to the mass that lay inert, motionless on ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Lieutenant-General of Canada and the adjacent countries" was clapped in jail like a common malefactor. Meanwhile what of the forty promising colonists on Sable Island? They dropped for years out of human knowledge as completely as Henry Hudson when dastardly mutineers set him adrift in an open boat in the bay which bears his name,[2] or Narvaez and his brilliant expedition whose fate was a mystery until the appearance of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... feeble old man sitting within ten feet of me, fidgeting about in his chair, the glare of the big windows flooding his face with light, his long legs tucked under him, his bony hands clasped together, the scanty gray hair adrift over his forehead, his slouch hat hooked over his knee, was my own Jonathan come back to life. His dog, George, too, was somewhere within reach, and so were his fishing-pole and creel, with its leather shoulder-band polished like a razor-strop. You who read ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sea wall," he cried, "is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith "Where ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... adrift somewhat as to direction; for I had steered before this time so that I should come to the North of the House of Silence; and afterward had shaped my way by the Road. But now was I adrift, as it might be set down, in ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... "Send your boat adrift, Enda," she said; "but first take out your shining spear; the water-dress and the crystal helmet will take ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Sunderland 'cause our cargo shifted; We put out from Sunderland — met the winter gales — Seven days and seven nights to the Start we drifted. Racketing her rivets loose, smoke-stack white as snow, All the coals adrift adeck, half the rails below, Leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray — Out we took the Bolivar, out ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... he said coolly, resolved to clear the ground thoroughly for Mrs. Devar's benefit; "your French ally is resorting to the methods of the blackmailer. If you are wise you will cut yourself entirely adrift from him, and warn your son to follow your example. I shall deal with Monsieur Marigny—have no doubt on that score—and if you wish me to forget certain discreditable incidents that have happened since we left London ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... into it you must contrive to get as you best can. Hide yourself there so that no one can see you from the deck. When the watch is changed, instead of going forward I shall make for the boat. No one will see me, I promise you. When I am with you we shall cut the boat adrift and let the vessel outsail us. Then we must make for the coast in the direction of Tuxtla. We shall know which way to steer because of the volcano. But after that—why, I know not ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... full of confidence in the blessed Virgin, had still preserved the chaplet of Xavier, and feared not drowning while he held it in his hand. The float of planks was hardly adrift upon the waves, when he found he was transported out of himself, and believed he was at Meliapor with Father Francis. Returning from his extacy, he was strangely surprised to find himself on an unknown coast, and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... Walleye served notice on the Injins that a dollar a head went; and we all set to building a tule raft like the others. Then the wild bunch got uneasy, so they walked upstream one morning and stole the Injins' boats. The Injins came after them innocent as babies, thinking the raft had gone adrift. When they got into camp our men opened up and killed four of them as a kind of hint. After that the ferry company didn't have any trouble. The Yumas moved up river a ways, where they've lived ever since. They got the corpses and buried them. That is, they dug a trench ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... there's no time to lose. The tide is just at its turn; and if the wind comes from the north, the boys will be adrift. Come; get up, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... the same time, always taught that Ireland was utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body, Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. 'This plan of personal ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... such a disaster, the fresh-water mussel carefully nurses her young between her gills, till they are old enough to help themselves. You will be surprised when I tell you the strange device they have come to adopt, so soon as they are cast adrift, whereby they may complete their days of infancy. Shielded throughout the winter months, they are turned adrift on the first warm day of Spring, a troop of very lively youngsters indeed. Each is encased in a very wonderful shell (S in the figure in the top ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... there,—floating gardens adrift in the tropic gale; pale green gardens of berry and leaf and long meandering vine, rocking upon the waves that lapped the shores of the Antilles, feeding the current of the warm Gulf Stream; and, forsooth, some of them to find their way at last into the mazes of that mysterious, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... vision. What a difference, in this respect, between the literature of Louis XIV and the literature of Elizabeth! The latter is obsessed by the smell of mortality; its imagination, penetrating to the depths and the heights, shows us mankind adrift amid eternities, and the whole universe the doubtful shadow of a dream. In the former, these magnificent obscurities find no place: they have been shut out, as it were, like a night of storm and darkness on the other side of the window. The night is there, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... figure ruefully. He felt that he had been taken in and done for. His small capital had vanished, and he was adrift in the streets of a strange ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... indeed, fully realize that," I replied. "We felt that society was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift. Whither it would drift nobody could say, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the fray, the Christian army was weakened by its sufferings to such an extent that it was virtually brought to a standstill. Even King Richard, with all his impetuosity, dared not venture to cut adrift from the seashore, and to march direct upon Jerusalem; that city was certainly not to be taken without a long siege, and this could only be undertaken by an army strong enough, not only to carry out so great a task, but to meet and defeat the armies which Saladin ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Ahenobarbus. "Never a sesterce will I get out of him! He's as good as turned me adrift, and Cato my uncle is always giving him bad reports of me, like the hypocritical Stoic that ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... immediately and the skies grew darker still. His relations with the Mannheim theater were presently strained to the point of disgust by the production of a farce in which he was satirized. He was in terrible straits for money. To have something to do, after he was set adrift by Dalberg, he decided to go ahead with his project of a dramatic journal. An attractive prospectus for the Rhenish Thalia was issued, and he began to prepare for the first number, which was to contain an installment of 'Don Carlos'. The advance subscriptions fell far short of his sanguine ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... under the fire of the Venetian flagship, and had failed in an effort to board her. He cut his galley adrift. Veniero let her go, and turned to attack other enemies. Pertev's ship drifted down on two Christian galleys, and was promptly boarded and taken. The Seraskier slipped on board of a small craft he ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... sight, he drew his knife to cut the boat adrift, but paused as he reflected that she and her freight would probably be picked up by some passing vessel. As the thought struck him he saw the dim form of the skipper come towards the bow of the boat and, seizing the rope, begin to haul ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... instance was related by Dr. Harris, of New York, at a recent meeting of the State Charities Aid Association. In a small village in a county on the upper Hudson, some seventy years ago, a young girl named 'Margaret' was sent adrift on the casual charity of the inhabitants. She became the mother of a long race of criminals and paupers, and her progeny has cursed the county ever since. The county records show two hundred of her descendants who have been criminals. In one single generation of her unhappy ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... I observed that a lighter had broken adrift from her moorings, and was sweeping down the ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... twelve feet. Once, when a cargo of stores had been landed, and thirty-two men were at work, the vessel which had conveyed them, and was to take them back, and which was named the "Smeaton," broke away from the moorings and got adrift. Mr. Smeaton was almost the first to notice this, and he became very anxious as he remembered the number of men on the rock, and that they had only two boats, which were capable of carrying but eight ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... made the suggestion, for the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous; but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle, while he was pelted with mud ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... David again, getting a bit over the feeling of suffocation which had at first oppressed him. "Jonathan's voice sounds too real for that, and I can see that I am adrift on the ocean, and resting on something. Oh, how my leg hurts me! I'll give a hail, and see whether it is Jonathan's voice or not that I hear. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the narrow lagoon. Not daring to follow, the soldiers strode furiously through the reeds. They climbed up into the willows on the banks to try to reach the fugitives with their lances—as they did not succeed, they continued for a long time to threaten the terrified family adrift upon ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... to enter on board of one of these vessels about to sail, provided they would advance him a part of his wages for his father's support; when, as a heavy squall cleared away, he perceived that a boat had broken adrift from the outermost vessel (a large brig), with only one man in it, who was carried away by the rapid current, assisted by the gale blowing down the river, so as to place him in considerable risk. The man in the boat tossed out ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... week the journey up the stream progressed in pretty much the same deliberate fashion, at the end of which time they were detained for a whole day by a furious outburst of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, in the course of which the raft broke adrift, and, but for Dick's skilful handling of the situation, would probably have been lost, with all the party's belongings, and, quite possibly, a few lives as well. As it was, they were driven back some ten miles down ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... yours, but to make us both unhappy, and me desperate! Why, I shall be the laughing-stock of the town—and I confess it is more than I can bear without flinching, to have it circulated about, that Seabrook married a wife who cut him adrift the first thing she did. And then look at your position, too, which would be open to every unkind remark. You must not incur this almost ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... He dared not risk letting go of us, however, or of running us under, for fear of incurring the risk of heavy damages. I would not consent to be landed. So about the twentieth of June we were set adrift in Bellingham Bay and, tired and ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... breaking up of our right, two brigades of Davis's division, one of Van Cleve's, and the entire of Sheridan's division was caught in the whirl and sent adrift from the main command, the enemy in heavy columns completely controlling all access to Thomas and the remaining divisions with him, except by way of the Dry Valley road across the ridge and on to Rossville, thence back on the La Fayette road to Thomas's left. The troops of ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... The ridge of the rapid sprays and skips: Loud and low by the water's lips, Tearing the wet pines into strips, The saw mill is moaning ever. The little grey sparrow skips and calls On the rocks in the rain of the water falls, And the logs are adrift in the river. ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... christened the child, and I saw the King hang this Cross about the baby's neck, a Cross like the one he had given John himself. This is the child who disappeared fourteen years ago. The King sent him away to be killed. But the servant to whom the task fell was less cruel. The child was set adrift on the ocean, and escaped as you have heard. Will you let him ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... evokes an immediate volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment is often extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate objects. One June morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner lying in the bay took fire, and had to be set adrift. An immense crowd gathered on the wharves; and I saw many curious manifestations of grief,—such grief, perhaps, as an infant feels for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling, but not the less ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... fellows felt a single prompting of conceit, and if their very innermost feeling had been translated it would come out like this: "Brothers, through mercy we've all slipped away from an ugly fate; we're on safe ground; let's hang together and help each other nearer to God, lest we should get adrift and make shipwreck." ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... New Orleans. There the old manager had found his final resting place and she had no definite desire to go elsewhere. Adrift in the darkness of the present, the young girl was too perplexed to plan for the future. So she remained in the house Barnes had rented shortly before his death. An elderly gentlewoman of fallen fortunes, to whom this semi-rural establishment belonged, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Further, Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. ii) that "it is a sign of fortitude to cut oneself adrift from all the deadly pleasures of the passing show." Now noisome pleasures and delights are the concern of temperance rather than of fortitude. Therefore it seems that fortitude is not the gift corresponding ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... says ter myself, "I'm a darlin'; A chap with a woman like that, To set here a-grumblin' and snarlin', As sour as a sulky young brat— I'd better jest keep my helm steady, And not mind the fog that's adrift, For when the Lord gits good and ready, I reckon it's certain ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Free Trade in literature, why should we not have Free Trade in art? Why should not every artist go into the market without title or masquerade that blinds the public to the value of what he has to sell? I would turn art adrift, titleless, R.A.-less, out into the street and field, where, under the light of his original stars, the impassioned vagrant might dream once more, and for the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... But I didn't get riled up worth a cent, Fred, just grinned in his face, and kept on saying it was so, and we did find the boat adrift. Then, what d'ye think, he says that Bob Armstrong told him the paddle was all the while in the woodshed, so if the canoe did break loose, however in the world could it have been with the boat, 'less ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... his skiff, and for two days floated down the Wisconsin River till we reached the Mississippi, boarded the first steamboat we could hail, and let our own little craft adrift. In due time we reached St. Louis and boarded ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... He asked them in mild words whence they came, "for in good sooth," said he, "never have I seen so well-favoured a company"; and Horn answered proudly, "We are of good Christian blood, and we come from Southland, which has just been raided by pagans, who slew many of our people, and sent us adrift in a boat, to be the sport of the winds and waves. For a day and a night we have been at sea without a rudder; and now we have been cast upon your coast, you may enslave or slay us, if but, it please ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 1755 the peaceful French farmers of Acadia, without adequate notice or proper regard for family ties, were hurried aboard waiting British vessels and arbitrarily deported to various ports, where they were turned adrift to join the scattered members of their families and earn their living as best they could. The outline of the story of Evangeline, and of her long, faithful search for her lover Gabriel, is too well known to need ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... folds o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... he gathered from the cook, namely, that his favourite, Ellen, was being turned adrift with a matter of three pounds in her pocket, to go she knew not where, and to do she knew not what, and that she had said she should hang or drown herself, which the boy implicitly believed ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... this so frightened the emigrants, that a general rush was made to get on the raft. About thirty were already on it, and so alarmed were they lest the number crowding on it might capsize it, that, ill-provisioned as they were, they cut it adrift. What became of them I know not; for the night coming on, they were soon lost sight of, and we never saw them again. That night was far more dreadful than the first; for, though the terror of the people was not so loud, their despair was more pitiable. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... distant relations, would recall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and would think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling tendency to dislike and fear him be a part of that misfortune in her, which had turned her father's love adrift, and left her so alone? She dreaded that it might be; sometimes believed it was: then she resolved that she would try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded herself that she was honoured and encouraged by the notice of her father's friend; and hoped that patient ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... warned an' watched, elseways we shall hev all in the house afloat, 'cepting the stoves an' flat-irons, by-'n'-by. Somebody at Mrs. Moyler's acted so, and the house was like a roarin' sea, with the baby adrift in his little cradle, and the roaches a-swimmin' round. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... majority! Picture to yourself a man on a vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match, in his hand; he is alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded by the man who held the match. "At the first disobedience, we will quit you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable of keeping their word; therefore, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the eye could reach, black smoke, white smoke, brown smoke, and red flames rolled and spread, and licked and leaped, from unnumbered piles of cotton bales, and wooden wharves, and ships cut adrift, and steam-boats that blazed like shavings, floating down the harbor as they blazed. He stood for a moment to see a little revenue cutter,—a pretty topsail schooner,—lying at the foot of Canal street, sink before his eyes into the turbid yellow depths of the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Beyond all bounds; till inundation rise Above the highest hills: Then shall this mount Of Paradise by might of waves be moved Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood, With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift, Down the great river to the opening gulf, And there take root an island salt and bare, The haunt of seals, and orcs, and sea-mews' clang: To teach thee that God attributes to place No sanctity, if none be thither brought By men who there frequent, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... light draught of water, to render much aid in exploring the rivers and steaming against currents. She left on the 6th of July, towed out of Hudson's Bay by the Sydney steamer. The weather became stormy, and the steamer was compelled to cut her adrift during the night. Left to herself and her gallant captain, with a crew of two men only, she made her way to Sydney. During this time the coast was visited by severe gales, and much anxiety was felt for the Sir Charles Hotham. The agents of the Sydney steamer ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... was not entirely unregenerate; a lie sat awkwardly on his honest lips, and now that his feeble effort at deception had miscarried, he felt himself adrift on a boundless sea. He wildly felt around for a reply, and was greatly relieved by the arrival of his father on the scene, who, seeing the lights of the auto in the yard, had come out hurriedly to see what was the matter. Grandpa Kennedy, although nearing ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... than to wait for her to be completely wrecked against the rocks. He did not show the least alarm, and as he leaned over to cut the rope the boat sheered into the stream, the stern-post broke and he was adrift. With perfect composure he seized the large scull-oar, placed it in the stern rowlock and pulled with all his strength, which was considerable, to turn the bow down stream. After the third stroke she passed over the falls and was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... to lower the boat in which he intended to cast them adrift, and one by one the men were allowed to come up the hatchways, and made to go over the side of the ship into it. Meanwhile, no heed was given to the remonstrances, reasoning, and prayers of the captain, saving threats of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... In rules of Porterage untaught, Simplicity, not worth a groat, For years had kept the Temple-door; Full on his breast a glass he wore, Through which his bosom open lay To every one who pass'd that way: Now turn'd adrift, with humbler face, But prouder heart, his vacant place Corruption fills, and bears the key; No entrance now without a fee. 170 With belly round, and full fat face, Which on the house reflected grace, Full of good fare, and honest glee, The steward Hospitality, Old Welcome smiling ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... 'You would like to sit in it yourself—that's where the shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift—on shore—after ten years' service—and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left me his night-glasses—here they are; and he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... into wrinkles. It lifted the gentleman's hat, so that he saved it only by a violent snatch which made the boat rock. As he jammed the hat down he broke or displaced some string or clip near his ears. At any rate his beard came adrift on the side nearest to me. The man was wearing a false beard. He remedied the matter at once, very cleverly, so that I may have been the only witness; but I saw that the boatman was in the man's secret, whatever it was. He pulled hard on his starboard oar, bringing the boat partly across ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... never drinks; and as to fighting, if you can believe such a thing, miss, I don't think he has had a casual turnup three times in his life—not oftener, at any rate. All he wants is to be married; and then he'll be steady to his grave. But if he's left adrift now, Lord knows what will become of him. He'll mope first—he's moping at present—then he'll drink; then he'll lose his pupils, get out of condition, be beaten, and—One word from you, miss, would save him. If ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... magnificent. Victorine was faithful to Dupin; and poor and handsome as she was, never wronged him by a loose look. Well, Dupin's father said his son must marry, and the son saw how reasonable and how necessary the proposal was. He did marry, and he cut himself adrift from Victorine without the least compunction, allowing her a small sum weekly, insufficient to keep her. There was no scene when they parted, for his determination was communicated to her by letter. Three months afterwards she had a child of whom he was the father. Did ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... man- of-war which falls in with us, and your punishment will speedily follow. Hear me, men," he continued, raising his voice and addressing the crew generally; "I don't in the least understand your motive for behaving in this extraordinary fashion; but cast me and my two mates adrift, and I promise you on my word of honour that I will listen patiently to whatever complaint you may have to make, and will redress any wrong which you can ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... with books, pictures, talk? No, because it is all a purposeless passing of dreary hours. Before, there was always an object ahead of me, a light to which I made my way; and all the pleasant incidents of life were things to guide me, and to beguile the plodding path. Now I am adrift; I need go neither forwards nor backwards; and the things which before were gentle and quiet occupations have become ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson |
