"In the nick of time" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ESTELLE visits the Colonel in order to save her Private lover. He is proved to have broken his arrest, and is sentenced to death. ESTELLE offers to marry the Colonel if he will pardon the Private. The latter's discharge arrives in the nick of time, and as he is thus beyond the reach of the Colonel's vengeance, he graciously pardons him, and joins his hand to that of ESTELLE. He remarks—or ought to—"Bless you, my children." Every body suddenly finds out that every body else is noble and generous. And ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... the rescue!" shouted Mr. Bouncer, as he dashed across the street. "Come on, Pet! Here we are in the thick of it, just in the nick of time!" ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... It was just in the nick of time, for two minutes later the savages would have been upon him. As it was, when they saw the giant moving off they paused for a ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... the woman, stolidly. Glancing again at Father Friday's kind face, she added, more graciously: "Wa-all, yer jest in the nick of time; the hoe-cake's nyearly done, and we war about ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... was a fierce, deep, growling bark, a rush, a man's deep voice as if encouraging a dog, and Marcus was free, to stand there breathless and giddy, listening to the retreating steps of his foes and the shouts to the dog of Serge, who had come to his help in the nick of time. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... returning quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me; she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and again fall, could ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... high as you can, fellow!" ordered Hal. Just in the nick of time he remembered Captain Foster's instructions, and spoke in English instead of Spanish. But his gesture was eloquent enough for ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... all. I would have wagered my reputation against a hospital assistant's pay, that our friend had not sixty seconds of life in him, when that young lady appeared, like a fiery whirlwind, and caught him back to earth in the nick of time.' ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... what ails you Man that you change Colour so? 'Tis all a Lie Boy I warrant thee: And hadst thou not come just in the Nick of Time, I think o' my Conscience I shou'd ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... end of stars and bars. Even if the hero is merely an honest boy trying to get his living, he is not permitted to do so in a natural way, by hard work and years of patient effort, but is suddenly adopted by a millionaire whose pocket-book he has returned; or a rich uncle appears from sea just in the nick of time; or the remarkable boy earns a few dollars, speculates in pea-nuts or neckties, and grows rich so rapidly that Sinbad in the diamond valley is a pauper compared to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Just in the nick of time the Regent surrendered the town to Duke Philip, not, we may be sure, without many regrets for having recently refused him Orleans. He realised that thus, by returning to its French allegiance, the chief city of the realm would make a more energetic defense against the Dauphin's ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... attempt to escape, and finally, at the conqueror's bidding, should have laid down its arms without striking a blow, would before the event," says an English military authority, "have seemed impossible. It set the investing force free to crush the new-made Army of the Loire, and it occurred in the nick of time to prevent the raising of the siege of Paris, which the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... puissant army of Beelzebub been approaching, their terror could not have been greater. Yet fear kept many from escaping, while they knew not which way to run for safety. Rigby in the nick of time galloped up to this awful and hostile appearance, crying out to his troops that he would soon demolish the bugbear. This saying encouraged some of the runaways, who followed him to the combat. Approaching within a sword's length, for he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... inopportune moment. That did not count. For him, Maurice, the opportune moment simply did not exist; he was one of those people who are always inopportune, come and go as they will. He might have waited for days; he would never have caught Schwarz in the right mood, or in the nick of time. How he envied those fortunate mortals who always arrived at the right moment, and instinctively said the right thing! That talent had never been his. With him it ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... with him," announced Frank, as two figures were discovered coming toward them. "Why, if we'd made all the arrangements ourselves we couldn't have done better, Bob. Here comes our reinforcements just in the nick of time. And if Eugene and his backers are still up yonder in the cliff dwellers' homes, they have stayed a little while too ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... But in the nick of time the Liberal Administration fell, and Lord Salisbury's Cabinet reversed their decision. It is interesting, in reading the Blue Books on Indian questions, to watch the emotions of party principles, stirring beneath the uniform ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... that it was some barbarous thing they had done, and that they had like to have paid dear for it, for the men resented it to the last degree, and gathered in such numbers about them, that, had not sixteen more of our men, in another boat, come all in the nick of time, just to rescue our first men, who were but eleven, and so fetch them off by main force, they had been all cut off, the inhabitants being no less than two or three hundred, armed with darts and lances, the usual weapons ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... terrible. He moved outside the yard-gate and my heart sank once more as I saw that he now intended to throw us in the gutter of the roadway. But (fortune was indeed with us that day), a large man in, blue clothes and silver buttons stopped him in the nick of time. Evidently, from the way the large man lectured and waved a short thick stick, it was against the rules of the town to throw ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... not recognize Sam Weller, making his first appearance in "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"? And who has not revelled in the lively scene in the White Hart when Mr. Pickwick and his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but still sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not difficult to understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick" was the turning-point of the book's fortunes. Prior to the advent of Sam in the courtyard of the White ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... in evidence throughout the day, and since no news is good news, one or two unquenchable spirits in his troop continued to hope that he would put in a dramatic appearance just in the nick of time, with the report of a sensational discovery—the tracks of a bear or a wild cat, for instance. It is significant that they would have been quite ready to believe him, whatever ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... hanged at H—-, {280} I harnessed a Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at H—- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hour at least before Ali Partab rode out through the arch, looking down anxiously at his horse's off-hind that had been showing symptoms of "brushing" lately. Joanna rose instantly to cross the street and intercept him; and she recoiled in the nick of time to save herself from ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... too, that the poor girl has fallen in love with a Christian chief, who lives on an island some fifty miles or so to the south of this one, and that she is meditating a desperate attempt at escape. So, you see, we have come in the nick of time. I fancy that this chief is the fellow whom you heard of, Ralph, at the Island of Emo. Besides all this, the heathen savages are at war among themselves, and there's to be a battle fought the day after to-morrow, in which the principal ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... who had seen him coming leaped to one side, and just in the nick of time, for the runaway horse passed within a foot of him. The man gasped in astonishment, and for several seconds did not know ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... The cavalry arrived in the nick of time. A battle was imminent that might have ended in a massacre. Within striking distance of Brown's island Colonel Sumner encountered General Whitfield, a Southern Member of Congress, at the head of a squadron of avengers, two hundred and fifty strong, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... the portiere close behind her. It had been as dramatic an entrance and exit as the two visitors had ever seen upon the stage. It was as if Aram had given a signal, and the only person who could help him had come in the nick of time to plead for him. Aram, stupid as he appeared to be, had evidently felt the effect his wife's appearance had made upon his judges. He still kept his eyes fixed upon the floor, but he said, and this time with more ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... but probably the most glorious one in Akakiy Akakievitch's life, when Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak. He brought it in the morning, before the hour when it was necessary to start for the department. Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his countenance was a significant expression, such as Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... them, "Why don't you move about,—you would be then warm?" They answer, "Măzāl shemtz" (no sun yet). Rais is excessively gracious: he gave me a small loaf of white sugar. I had none left, and the gift came in the nick of time when required. I have said so much about Rais Mustapha, that I must now give a personal description of his Excellency, before I take leave of him and of Ghadames. First of all, Rais is not a military man; he is a ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... instant it disappeared beneath the ice, and with it the location of your father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of babiche, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort McLeod, more dead ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... hill. Now it was the turn of my reindeer to go fast. I prepared myself for the occasion, for I did not know how steep was the descent. I said to myself, "Paul, you must not upset; bend your body on the opposite side when the sleigh makes the curve, and be quick when the time arrives. Do this in the nick of time." ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... into any case yet but what it transpired that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama—he always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It is Providence, that is what ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after Cranston's skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,—for White had dared the wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,—walked the garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big hospital tent, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Jean-Christophe—I, "Revolt."] she wrote to tell him that she was going to be married: she gave him news of his mother, and sent him a basket of apples and a piece of cake to eat in her honor. They came in the nick of time. That evening with Christophe was a fast, Ember Days, Lent: only the butt end of the sausage hanging by the window was left. Christophe compared himself to the anchorite saints fed by a crow among the rocks. But no doubt the crow was hard put to it to feed all the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... signs of gratitude. To judge by them the Virgin would make a dramatist of the first rank; there was not a picture in which the miraculous assistance came a moment too soon, never & hero of our ancient, pre-Edison melodramas appeared more exactly "in the nick of time." The famous portrait of the miraculous being herself, over the high altar, is dimly seen through thick glass. Inside the chapel under the blue and white dome pilgrims were dipping up the "blessed" water from the bubbling well ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... street-fighting of the fiercest kind, and hand-to-hand combats in the houses and even in the cellars. "Blood," he wrote, "ran in the gutters like water on a rainy day." The French soldiers were being hard pressed and reserves came with their new regiments in the nick of time. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Brethren's creditors, in a state of panic, pressed hard for their money. The little Church of the Brethren was now on the brink of ruin. At one moment Zinzendorf himself expected to be thrown into prison, and was only saved in the nick of time by the arrival of money from Germany. But the English Brethren now showed their manhood. The very men whom Zinzendorf was supposed to have robbed now rose in his defence. Instead of thanking Whitefield for defending them in their supposed distresses, they formed ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... some thirty thousand men, proceeded at once to aid the hosts encircling Paris with fire and steel; while two more corps were led by Prince Frederick Charles towards the south of France, where they arrived in the nick of time to assist the Duke of Mecklenburgh and the defeated Bavarians under Van der Tann in breaking up the formidable army of the Loire commanded by Chanzy, which had very nearly succeeded in altering the condition of the war; the remainder of the German investing force from Metz ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it some time. Hank, you're on board just in the nick of time. I found out what the trouble was with the carriage of the gun and repaired it while you were amusing yourselves out there. Get in lively, now, there's ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... be done out of this piece of indulgence, which now seemed desirable beyond words, although I crawled back into my blanket, and found for a while oblivion in sleep. I was no sooner up in the morning than I planned a new banquet. But in the nick of time, Mr. G., who had gone a march farther, returned with his escort of policemen, moonshees, pundits, ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "Just in the nick of time I felt the cord relax, and, although the veins in my head seemed to be bursting, I managed to get my fingers under that damnable rope. To this very hour I can hear Vadi's shriek of pain as I broke his thumb, and it brings the whole ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... fantastic game of tag her lover was playing, with death the penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that were extended, and little by little he decoyed ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys; (Both I remember well—many the hardships, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... manifesting this skill did not fail to present itself soon—as indeed it seldom does to such a hero of romance as young Otto was. Fate seems to watch over such: events occur to them just in the nick of time; they rescue virgins just as ogres are on the point of devouring them; they manage to be present at court and interesting ceremonies, and to see the most interesting people at the most interesting moment; ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... movement, and on this expectation being disappointed they were, as we have seen, sequestered under the pretence of security for the Allied armada. Another excuse was needed for their appropriation; and it came in the nick of time: two Greek steamers at that moment struck mines, presumably sown by an enemy submarine, in the Gulf of Athens. With the promptitude that comes of practice, Admiral Dartige announced to the Hellenic Government his decision to employ, at a valuation, its light flotilla ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... towed home. One late afternoon we were hurrying across the mesa to supper, when our magneto flew off into the ditch, scattering screws in all directions. Fortunately, a kind of Knight Errant to our family appeared just in the nick of time to take us home and send help to the wreck. I once kept a garage in San Diego open half an hour after closing time by a Caruso sob in my voice over the telephone, while my brother-in-law's miserable chauffeur hurried ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... who had been left behind in the palace almost starved to death when the international troops guarding the Forbidden City forbade all ingress and egress through the pink gates, until the I.G. saved them, in the nick of time, by applying to the Allied Generals, might ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... then, Amy. Somehow I felt sure that in the nick of time her lady friend would step out from somewhere and say that the ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... and in the scuffle some one lurched forward against the driver at a critical turn in the road, throwing him against the wheel. The big car swerved almost into the ditch, was brought back just in the nick of time and sped on, while Death, who had looked into that tonneau, turned away ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... ends well," replied Colonel Zane cheerily. "But we must thank Providence that Wetzel and Jonathan came up in the nick of time." ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... life; and you nursed him, and fell in love with him, and married him, and his old uncle dies and leaves him a fortune in the nick of time. It sounds like a fairy tale; you ought to finish with—'and they lived ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... "and just in the nick of time. He was on the inside in the campaign of '96, and I remember one night he came to dinner at our house and told us that the Republican party had raised ten or fifteen million dollars to buy the election. 'That's the end of silver,' ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... struck up the desperado's arm just in the nick of time, thus preventing a terrible crime. But the end was not yet. There were five more bullets in the cylinder of the weapon, as the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... lovingly. Nimrod eyed his enemies, for such plainly he counted them, as if he wished he were a lion that he might eat as well as kill them. At the same time he seemed to regard them with triumph, saying in his big heart, "Ha! ha! you did not know what a friend I had! Here he is, come in the nick of time! I thought he would!" Clare proceeded to untie the ropes from the ring in his nose. The man ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... have secured you at short notice like this," Lord Bracondale was saying. "I only found I had a free evening at breakfast, and I met Jack on my way to the polo-ground just in the nick of time." ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... why many modern critics and painters almost dislike Raphael is the very reason for which he was so greatly revered. Coming in the nick of time, at the close of an epoch of investigation, himself a man of wide culture and quick intellect but of no special originality or emotional power, he learned from all his predecessors what they had to teach and, choosing from the elements of their art those which ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... said: "By Jove! how lucky, Miss Daisy. You've come in the nick of time. Just finished our pool. Now you and Mrs. Halton shall play a single and ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... was aware of a disturbance in the water, little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... know what to make of it all, and don't now. Whether a telegram from the invalid mother did really come in the nick of time to save me, like Abraham's ram that caught in the bushes at the last minute; or whether this sudden dash to Scotland is a deep-dyed plot; or whether he isn't going, really, but means to stop and spy on me disguised as a chauffeur or a performing ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... swiftly with outflung arms. "Oh, come in, dear! Come in! I've had such a ghastly dream! You've come just in the nick of time." ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... husband mine," replied the lady, "he was taken but now, all of a sudden, with a fainting fit, so that I thought he was dead: and what to do or say I knew not, had not Fra Rinaldo, our sponsor, come just in the nick of time, and set him on his shoulder, and said:—'Gossip, 'tis that he has worms in his body, and getting, as they do, about the heart, they might only too readily be the death of him; but fear not; I will say a charm that will kill them all; and before I take my ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... little Winter-Wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away,—how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time? Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondack, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little busybody. Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood? or has that compact little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... did during that mad retreat. More than once had my rifle been emptied in behalf of some sore-beset soldier, and I even went so far in my sympathy for the white men that I saved the life of a Tory who would have been killed had we not come up in the nick of time. After rescuing him, however, we turned the fellow over to a squad who were guarding twenty or more prisoners, thus making certain he would not be left at liberty to work mischief among ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... one knocks three times, with a harsh and bony finger against one of the steps of our stairs, and in the aperture of our doorway appears an idiot, clad in a suit of gray tweed, who bows low. "Come in, come in, M. Kangourou. How well you come, just in the nick of time! I was actually becoming enthusiastic ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... no small trouble to secure in the nick of time the game demanded by the huntress who has recently fallen a captive to my net. As assistant-purveyors I have a few small schoolboys, who, released from the tedium of their declensions and conjugations, set out, on leaving the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... out, and they talked it over with a great deal of noise and many threatening gestures and a complete loss of temper on both sides. Ste. Marie, from his bed, cheered them on, but there came a commotion in the ivy which draped the wall below, and the two birds fled in ignominious haste, and just in the nick of time, for when the cause of the commotion shot into view it was a large black cat, of great bodily activity and an ardent ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... unless probability be superadded. And although it cannot be said that Fielding disregards probability, he certainly strains it considerably. Money is conveniently lost and found; the naivest coincidences continually occur; people turn up in the nick of time at the exact spot required, and develop the most needful (but entirely casual) relations with the characters. Sometimes an episode is so inartistically introduced as to be almost clumsy. Towards the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... longing that will drive a modest girl to boldness, such as I have shown ever since the day I first met you at dear old Basel. It almost broke my heart when father—fatherland—when Burgundy made war on Switzerland." The word "land" was a lucky thought, and came to the girl just in the nick of time. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... sparkling, and pointed at both with gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of either would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of the justly-enraged matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master Stirn, the squire's right-hand man, had not come up in the nick of time. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abroad, but to a certain extent also directed from there. The strikes broke out with particular force precisely in October last, that is to say, at a time when our Government was making the attempt to bring about a large foreign loan without the participation of the Rothschilds,[A] and just in the nick of time for the frustration of the realisation of that financial scheme. The panic provoked by it among the holders of Russian securities and the hurried sale of those securities could not but procure in the end, as was safely to be expected, new profits for the Jewish ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... takes to tell it, a score or more of strong arms hurled one out to him, and he caught it in the nick of time. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... he was hanged at H——, I harnessed a Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at H—— just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my gig, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... banks, holding millions of unsaleable collateral, would have become involved; many big institutions would have failed and a run on savings banks would have begun. It is idle to speculate upon what the final outcome might have been. Suffice it to say that these grave consequences were prevented in the nick of time by the prompt and determined action of the Stock Exchange, and by ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... that," pursued Charlie, having gulped down his coffee, "you are just come up here in the nick of time, for there's a ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... fingering of that coin! "At last I have him," said the exulting French General Soult of Wellington, at the battle of St Pierre, but his exultation proved distressingly premature. So did ours! Car and capital vanished just in the nick of time through that Waterfall Gorge, and to this ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... of communication and of exit were too ample for the security of the lenders, who, as members of religious communities, could not seek redress at law, and, moreover, those "lucky hits" which were made by penniless Europeans in former times by pecuniary help "just in the nick of time" were no longer possible, for every known channel of lucrative transaction was in time ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... were now between two fires. The frontal attack was within 200 yards. The rear attack, flushed with success, were hurrying impetuously forward. The defeat and consequent total destruction of the Kassala column appeared certain. But in the nick of time the Dervish frontal attack, which had been suffering heavily from the fire of the troops, wavered; and when the Arab battalion and the 16th Egyptians advanced upon them to complete their discomfiture, they broke and fled. Colonel Parsons at once endeavoured to meet the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... asked him if he would get some beer for us! And I reached for my purse, and for one wild moment I thought sure he had called my bluff and would really take my only nickel, my carfare home. I nearly fell over with suspense, but in the nick of time he went out, refusing my money. And I even taunted him, asked him if he ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... unexpectedly bestirring themselves, and threatening to capture that "Castle of Frauenberg" (mythic old Hill-castle among woods), Broglio's chief post in those regions. Broglio, May 24th, has fought a handsome skirmish (thanks partly to Belleisle, who chanced to arrive from Frankfurt just in the nick of time, and joined Broglio): Skirmish of Sahay; magnified in all the French gazettes into a Victory of Sahay, victory little short of Pharsalia, says Friedrich;—the complete account of which, forgotten now by all creatures, is to be read in him they call Mauvillon; [Guerre de Boheme, ii. 204.] ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... lighting the lamp. As she beholds him under the door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and his house ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... singed brand it had been her mission to snatch in the nick of time and detained her in conversation with unusual empressement. Madeleine responded with an excessive politeness, and Mrs. Abbott learned for the first time that sweet brown eyes could glitter as coldly as her own protuberant orbs when ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... or in books something always happens just in the nick of time to put things right; but that ain't life, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... and Colonel John R. Fellows, the district attorney, and his assistants, Francis L. Wellman and Mr. Lindsay, went to Boston to try to have Lawson extradited. The Governor of Massachusetts came to Lawson's rescue in the nick of time and declined to honor the request of the Governor of New York for his extradition; but for years thereafter the future author of "Frenzied Finance" made his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... said Shaw to Lingard. "Dead calm again. We got into this funny place in the nick of time, sir." ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... instant recollected what Captain Warmsley had said of the fresh-killed pigeon, which the falconer in the nick of time is to lay upon the heron's back; and now, even as the cancelleering was going on—three times most beautifully, Helen saw only the dove, the white dove, which that black-hearted German held, his great hand round the throat, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the summit of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not very heavy. One ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... to get something better than matches," growled Watson. He had just been saved from pitching out upon the roadside by the quick efforts of one of his companions, who had seized him around the waist in the nick of time. Andrews went to the ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... interrogator:—"And did you say it this morning?" Whereto Rinaldo answered, "Troth, did I," which caused the other, who by this time knew what course matters would take, to say to himself:—"'Twill prove to have been said in the nick of time; for if we do not miscarry, I take it thou wilt have but a sorry lodging." Then turning to Rinaldo he said:—"I also have travelled much, and never a prayer have I said though I have heard them ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... packet arrived: I have dipped into the Schumann already with great pleasure. Surely, in what concerns us there is a sweet little chirrup; the GOOD WORDS arrived in the morning just when I needed it, and the famous notes that I had lost were recovered also in the nick of time. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is every whit as good as his master—as that master will tragically soon find out if he tries to make his help eat at second table! At any rate, Percy and potato-lipped Terry developed friction which ended up in every promise of a fight, only Dinky-Dunk arrived in the nick of time and took Terry off his harassed neighbor's hands. I told him he had rather the habit of catching people on the bounce. But I am reserving my opinion of Terry Dillon. We are a happy family here, and I want ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... doubt that the brave dog would have, eventually, paid the penalty for its rashness—for the wolf had mauled it badly, and it was beginning to show signs of exhaustion through loss of blood—had not Savanich arrived in the nick of time. A couple of thrusts from his knife stretched the wolf on the ground, when, to his utmost horror, it suddenly metamorphosed into ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... "you have come in the nick of time. There is madame overwhelming me with questions respecting the count; she insists upon it that I can tell her his birth, education, and parentage, where he came from, and whither he is going. Being no disciple of Cagliostro, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... overboard. Help comes in the nick of time. Tad accuses his assailant. Whiskers as evidence. Plotters are driven from the ship ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... answered quickly, "I have been seeking you for weeks, and I find you in the nick of time. But there is no time to explain now. There were others with your captors; I saw the sledge following behind. We must get away ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... was a relative of Marston, and who had come to the city fresh from college, just in the nick of time for the latter, felt, now that the excitement of his wild prank was over, a great deal more sober about the matter than he had expected to feel. Reason and reflection told him that he had no right to trifle with any one as he had trifled ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... sorts of scrapes, right side up wid care. Ugh! did ye say that floater we passed? Sure it was a big tree, so it was. And av we'd slapped bang agin the roots, what a juicy hole they'd have knocked in our shiny side. Ye swerved just in the nick of time, Jacky, bye." ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... "Then we came in the nick of time," answered Dick. "Will you allow me to introduce myself?" and he bowed. "My name is Dick Rover and this is my brother Tom and this my brother Sam. You are Miss ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... Company supported in the nick of time by two platoons of "I" Company repulsed a savage counter-attack staged by the Red Guards, September 16th, on a morning that followed the capture of a crashing Red bombing plane in the evening and the midnight conflagration ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... said, after writing the telegram, a task of no mean magnitude for him, "that puts the credit jest where it belongs. I ain't sayin' the lawyer didn't do his share; but he'd been snowed under if Tim hadn't been brought in the nick of time." ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... two pulses quicker; Ten minutes more of quiet talk unbroken, And heaven alone can tell what might be spoken! But it was not to be, for fates unequal Compelled—but this anticipates the sequel. Just in the nick of time, King Arthur rose From his sedate post-prandial repose, And called for lights. Along the shadowy aisles His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered from each silver sconce. The scene was ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... camp. She employed her grandchild, Leonora, to open relations in a friendly way with Lavengro, and then to persuade him to eat of a "drabbed" of poisoned cake. Lavengro was grievously sick, but was saved in the nick of time by the appearance upon the scene of a Welsh preacher, Peter Williams, and his wife—two good souls who wandered over all Wales and the greater part of England, comforting the hearts of the people with their doctrine, and doing all the good they could. They never slept beneath a roof, unless ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... one with his father's slippers, the other with his mother's hubble-bubble; and having tied the slippers, that were a world too big, on Mungloo's little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village hurkaru, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking his hubble-bubble,—and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real Nawab, "as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... with, in an inexperienced attempt to roll it up correctly, and I swallowed a cup of coffee which my kind hostess had provided for me (why is coffee always so hot when one is in a hurry?), and I mounted my horse in the nick of time to fall in with my column ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... threatened it, but its safety was dearly bought. According to the tradition accepted in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the siege of Nineveh. This ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... melancholy pleasure from it all, and Cranze remained unvaryingly drunk. Cranze passed insults to casual strangers who came on board and did not know his little ways, and the casual strangers (after the custom of their happy country) tried to knife him, but were always knocked over in the nick of time, by some member of the Flamingo's crew. Hamilton said there was a special providence which looks after drunkards of Cranze's type, and declined to interfere; and Cranze said he refused to be chided by a qualified teetotaller, and mixed himself ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... though small, came just in the nick of time, because of the Saratoga-trunk scheme not proving a success. In less than one hour after I had made the deal, the landlord asked me to pay in advance. I immediately flew into a rage and demanded him to make out ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... given you up for lost," he said. "But you have arrived in the nick of time. A concerted German advance is expected momentarily, and without the reply you have brought we would have been at ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... this morning," his good Samaritan replied. "In the nick of time, it seems, to be of assistance. And you?" he added, with a slight bow. "You are a ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... My dear girl, if it had rested with me, we should both be lying in smithereens at the present moment, on the rocks below. She realised the drop just in the nick of time, and wheeled ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... lying in her lap twitched convulsively. Is it possible she was thinking of giving the comfortable mother that admonition which the policeman had so narrowly escaped? I know not what would have happened if the merry goddess, seeing things rushing to this dreadful climax, had not stopped the train in the nick of time at a wayside station and caused a breathless lady, pushing parcels before her, to clamber in. The mother's surprised stare was of necessity diverted to the new-comer. A parcel thrust into Priscilla's hands brought her back of necessity to ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... mischievously, as Dab stepped upon the platform; but Dick Lee, who had just escaped from the tremendous hug his mother had given him, came to his friend's aid in the nick of time. Dick felt that "he must shout, or he should go off," as he afterward told the boys, and so at the top of his ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... tell you there was great game up? I was just wanting some one to help me. Met you in the nick of time." ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... are in the nick of time to help materially. Will you ring off, and find out from the exchange who 'phoned here two minutes ago? I don't mean Fenley's Bank, which is just trying to get through. I want to know who made the preceding call, ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Paradise and the perfumes which are our Lady's merits. His holiness dwindled, and he might, perhaps, have sunk into voluptuousness and become little by little like those lukewarm souls which Heaven rejects had not succour come to him in the nick of time. ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... put out the fires, hid our things, and hastened behind our bulwarks. I seized my rifle. Chanden Sing loaded the Martini. A Shoka, who was too far off to reach our fortified abode in time, screened himself behind some rocks. In the nick of time! Half a dozen soldiers, with matchlocks to which were attached red flags, were cantering gayly up the hillside only a few yards in front of us. They were undoubtedly searching for me. They looked in every direction, but fortunately never turned their ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... two or three of the rabble behind her were in the act of poising themselves with great stones in their hands, and their muscles were stiffening for a cast when, just in the nick of time, the obstinate snap yielded, and with a jerk ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... variety of sources not ostensibly connected with Bagford, Fenn, or any other culprit of this type, shewing that the process of disappearance was in universal operation, and that mere chance arrested it here and there just in the nick of time. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... stories of supernatural terror. Mrs. Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823) was one of the most successful writers of this school of exaggerated romance. Her novels, with their azure-eyed heroines, haunted castles, trapdoors, bandits, abductions, rescues in the nick of time, and a general medley of overwrought joys and horrors,[219] were immensely popular, not only with the crowd of novel readers, but also with men of unquestioned literary genius, like ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the nose of the boat true enough, too, I guess, when I let the torpedo drive. But that infernal Jack Benson was on the watch, and he saw the thing coming. Of course he stopped his boat and put the reverse clutch on just in the nick of time. That young Benson always appears to be in the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... "You come in the nick of time," he observed, "to preserve me from my sister's fratricidal intentions. Perhaps you would like to arbitrate. The offence was that I accused her of being in love—with you, of course. She seems ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... be because she has lots of cash, eh? Good! you will pay me my rent now. There are two years and one-quarter owing, you know, my boy; that is two thousand seven hundred francs altogether; the money will come just in the nick of time to pay the cooper. If it was anybody else, I should have a right to ask for interest; for, after all, business is business, but I will let you off the interest. Well, how much ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... believed that he had arrived at Cabul in the nick of time, for an envoy from the Shah of Persia was already at Candahar, bearing presents and assurances of support. The Dost made no concealment to Burnes of his approaches to Persia and Russia, in despair of British good offices, and being hungry for assistance from any source ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... "In the nick of time, Ralph!" exclaimed Lord Tamerton, clasping his hand warmly. "We are trying to create a mediaeval atmosphere in keeping with our surroundings, and as host I was about to announce in the approved manner of Chivalry that the Champion of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... our chairs for we have much to talk of, And we have Ullad and Muirthemne, and here Is Conall Muirthemne in the nick of time. ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... a sleepless one for Derues, whose brain was occupied by a confusion of criminal plans. The chance which had caused his acquaintance with Madame de Lamotte, and even more the accident of Brother Marchois appearing in the nick of time, to enlarge upon the praises which gave him so excellent a character, seemed like favourable omens not to be neglected. He began to imagine fresh villanies, to outline an unheard-of crime, which as yet he could not definitely trace out; but anyhow ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... four days' full rations were available, and there were 800 sick and wounded in hospital, by far the larger proportion being down with dysentery and enteric fever. Truly it seemed that deliverance had come in the nick of time. "Thank God," Sir George White had said, "we have kept the flag flying." Thank God also that the brave defenders had been spared the worst horrors of a siege, and that help had not longer been withheld in their extremity. Only a concluding word remains to be said. On ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... responsibilities as leader of at least a part of the mob, he had turned, and followed by a dozen men, had hurried back to the rescue, arriving in the nick of time. Standing in the open door of the house to which the justices had retired, the rescued sheriff just behind him in the hall, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... for these here young ones," said Sam. "This one would have been roasted sure, if I hadn't a-happened along in the nick of time." ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... at my own success in turning away his blade, but after I had guarded myself from three or four thrusts, I took to mind that offence is the best defence, and ventured a lunge, which he stopped with his dagger only in the nick of time to save his breast. His look of being almost caught gave me encouragement, making me realize I had received good enough lessons from my father and Blaise Tripault to enable me to practise with confidence. So I pushed the ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. As quickly as this happened it had gone, and again she seemed ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... housing the women for the night. Despite his precautions, it was a wild night. There was continued tumult in the streets and, at one time, shortly before dawn, a gang of rioters actually broke into the palace and groped about in search of the queen's apartments. Just in the nick of time the hated Marie Antoinette hurried to safer quarters, although several of her personal bodyguard were killed in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... thankful to say," replied Dick Rover. "Our greatest trouble was with some mutineers who got drunk and wanted to run things to suit themselves. They might have got the best of us, but a warship visited the island just in the nick of time ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... once in my school who came from Illinois, and who said that his mother had seen a snake, which had stiffened itself into a hoop, and taken its thorny tail in its mouth, trundling along over the prairie after a man. The man got behind a tree just in the nick of time, for the hoop unbent, and sent the thorny tail into the tree instead of into the man. Then the man came out and killed it. That was ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Swieten. "Peter Buyskens is come in the nick of time. He knows father and daughter both. They ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... leap, he grasped the lowermost limb and swung upward, at the moment the foremost grizzly was beneath him. So close in truth was his pursuer that the hunter distinctly felt the sweeping blow of his paw aimed at the leg which whisked beyond his reach just in the nick of time. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... have thanked God a hundred times, dear Cousin Dick, that you fired no shot that night, but only helped a hunted, miserable man away, for you did get free. Just in the nick of time your sail caught the wind, and you steered for the open sea. Three days from that, Tom Doane was safe in the Low Country, and you were on your way back to Lincolnshire. You came by a fishing boat to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Sung. In 630 Tsin induced Ts'in to join in an attack upon Cheng, the object being, of course, to revenge similar personal rudenesses; however, Cheng diplomacy was successful in inducing Ts'in to abandon Tsin in the nick of time: this was one of the very few cases in which Ts'in interfered, or was about to interfere, in "orthodox" affairs. In 592 Tsin sent a hunchback envoy to Ts'i; it so happened that at the same time Lu sent one who was lame, and Wei a third who was blind of one eye. The Ts'i ruler ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... air concerning the loyalty of the district. Indeed, the Governor had arrived but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the presidency of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable into sedition were presented. The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result that the new- born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Cure and the Avocat ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... my boy; 'tis like he waits for me at the pease- puddingry, or the curiosity shop; yet stay; his instructions were to meet me at the frippery. Ah, hither comes he in the nick of time: ay, and has purchased a beesting-pudding and girdle-cakes and leeks, sausages and steak, dewlap and tripe and collops.—Good, Atticion, you have made most of my journey no thoroughfare.' 'Why, sir, I have been looking round ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... is rather a taking adventurer, like Bothwell in "Old Mortality." Readers regret the necessity which kills Kennedy. The whole fortunes of Vanbeest Brown, his duel with the colonel, and his fortunate appearance in the nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a modest instrument; but what was ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... accidents, and so their machines were smashed; fortunately Mr. Brock was comparatively high up in the air, and though his machine rocked about and banked in an ominous manner, yet he was able to gain control just in the nick of time. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... the cab and prepared to descend, a faint—a very faint— sound almost in my ear, set me keenly on the alert. Just in the nick of time I ducked ... as the blade of a long knife flashed past my head, ripping its way through my ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... them there was a fight at Brookfield, the Nipmucks and their allies being victorious. They proceeded to burn the town nearly entire, though the inhabitants who survived, after a three days' siege in a fortified house, were relieved by troops from Boston just in the nick of time. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... word) at the Golden City from a "Sherman Shoe." Well, wandering in the direction of the farm, I came near a duck-pond and a clump of small trees, from which smoke was arising. My curiosity being aroused, I approached, and found that some Australians and Cape Boys were smoking out some bees. I arrived in the nick of time, and got a helmet-full of the most delicious honey in the comb I have tasted for many a day. On Monday, June 4th, we started for what we understood was to be our last march to Pretoria. We had the good fortune to be in the ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... a lane of green that curved beside and between two cellars, each deeper than the last. He knew instantly that he could not survive these, and, with every ounce of his strength, drove across the broken river to the head of the chute. Making it in the nick of time, he plunged in, with the water sucking at his thighs, and the sinews in his arms burning like fire. There followed a swift descent through cellars of dwindling depth, till he floated into the long, spume-flecked ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... her. They fascinated her by their very fierceness. Forgetting where she was for the instant, she stared dumbly at them until called to life and action by a scream from the locomotive's whistle. Then she sprang from the track just in the nick of time. She actually laughed as she saw two grayish-white wolf-tails bob here and there among the sage brush, as the wolves took flight at ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... eyes catch sight of Will's well-known writing. Mrs. McKay rapidly reads it as Uncle Jack is bestowing bags and bundles in the omnibus and feeing the acceptive porter, who now rushes back to the boat in the nick of time. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... had made an end of his small war budget, I set him on to tell me how he came to be at hand to help me so in the nick of time on the night of the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... descent. Instead of this I came to an impossible overhanging cliff of lava, and was forced to descend as I had come up. It was no easy task, and I was glad to get down with only one slip, when I brought myself up with my ice axe in the nick of time to prevent a fall over a cliff. This Island is very steep on all sides. There is only one known place of ascent; it will be interesting to try ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... they might not see overmuch of each other, there arrived at Twenty Mile one Sandy MacPherson, as companionable a man as ever whistled along the trail or raised a ballad by a camp-fire. A Jesuit priest had run into his camp, a couple of hundred miles up the Yukon, in the nick of time to say a last word over the body of Sandy's partner. And on departing, the priest had said, "My son, you will be lonely now." And Sandy had bowed his head brokenly. "At Twenty Mile," the priest added, "there is a lonely man. You have need of each ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... two boys in a twelve-month! Frederick came just in the nick of time, Sylvester Eve (December 31, 1893), to gain me a little brief renown, for royalty likes its women to be rabbits and, in the reigning houses at least, we are esteemed in proportion to ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Mr. Holmes, with grave face and eyes that never flinched. "I think she would have fallen down the stairs, had she not been caught in the nick of time." ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... to see the place one mass of fire, and he might easily have been forgiven if he had turned his back on it then. He is made of brave stuff, though, and they said he dashed straight into that blazing place, and, with the flames and smoke all around him, he brought his patient out in the nick of time, for the whole show collapsed just as he got to the doorway, the sheets of red-hot corrugated roofing fell down upon him, and he was so badly burned that someone will have to go and find a doctor to cure up the one we've got, for I'm thinking that Latimer won't let a hero of that sort ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... if the Ancient Britons went through this performance?" said Winnie Fowler. "Did they have to hold their skin garments round camp-fires? Thank goodness, we've got these things dry at last! We're only in the nick of time. Here ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... kirn, or a batch of bread that would not rise; a flock of sheep to be gathered together on a stormy night, or a bundle to be carried home by some weary labourer; Aiken-Drum, as we learned to call him, always got to know of it, and appeared in the nick of time. It looked as if we had all got wishing-caps, for we had just to wish, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... troops at once, and the French must be amused for two months until the troops arrived; then, whether the French attacked him or not, he should attack them."[67] Keith also wrote from Vienna to Grenville on 2nd May, that the French declaration of war had come in the nick of time to furnish the Hapsburgs with the opportunity of throwing the odium of the war upon France.[68] Other proofs might be cited; and it seems certain that, if France had not thrown down the gauntlet, both the German Powers would have attacked her in the early summer of 1792. Pitt ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... profit to Canada! For this year, the Canadian most constitutional Parliament, such a congeries of persons as one can imagine, decides that the aforesaid flame of rebellion shall not only be forgotten as per bargain, but that—the loyal population, who flung their lives upon it and quenched it in the nick of time, shall pay the rebels their damages! Of this, I believe, on sadly conclusive evidence, there is no doubt whatever. Such, when you wash off the constitutional pigments, is the Death's-head that discloses itself. I can only say, if all the Parliaments ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... insult him; and when Quonab's knife flashed out at last, it was only his recently established relations with the governor's son that saved him from some very sad results, for there were many loafers about. But burly Vandam appeared in the nick of time to halt the small mob with the warning: "Don't you know that's Mr. Van Cortlandt's guide?" With the governor and Vandam to back him, Quonab soon had the mob on his side, and the dock loafer's own friends pelted him with mud ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... exclaimed Capt. Noah, and the Ark was turned in the direction pointed out by the faithful lookout. Then Mr. Jonah leaned over and pulled in the life-preserver as the Ark slowly came alongside, and just in the nick of time, for the ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... were settled in two comfortable arm chairs before the fire, he held forth as usual. He had arranged the affairs of Bobby Bulteel only in the nick of time. "I have all the receipts, Nicholas, to hand to ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... wrote in the nick of time. The whole thing was just being given up for lack of funds. Now I have told him he may spend what he pleases, so long as ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... o'clock; night was coming on, so it was highly necessary to look out for shelter. We came in view of a bamboo-hut in the nick of time. An old Indian was reclining in front of it, warming his meagre limbs in the rays of the setting sun, clad in nothing but a pair of drawers and a hat with a torn brim. He rose as we came near, and ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star fails you in the nick of time."—Juvenal, ix. 32.] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... "Thou hast come in the nick of time, and 'twill be easier for me to leave home, as I am ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... surprise you," said Betty gleefully, noting with pride how splendid he looked in his uniform. "You don't seem at all glad to see us. Mrs. Watson," remembering her manners in the nick of time, "this is a friend of ours from Deepdale—Allen Washburn. He didn't know we ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope |
