"Offing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which is a battery, formerly of considerable dimensions, and strength, but since suffered to decay, and is much reduced in effectiveness. It was intended to command the harbor and anchorage; but with Spanish artillerymen, a mile offing, and reasonably good weather, a ship would be as safe from its fire, for three months at least, as though she was all the while in ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Holt's short, sturdy body was descried in the offing tramping the sand-dunes on his way to Fogarty's, and a signal flag—part of Mother Fogarty's flannel petticoat, and blood-red, as befitted the desperate nature of the craft over which it floated, was at once set in his honor. The captain put his helm hard down and came up into the wind and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... see their names?" demanded Roger eagerly, as he counted the great gray ships in the offing. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... sea—the sea whose waters break on the shores of Newfoundland! An English steamship lies at anchor in the offing. The vessel is plainly visible through the open doorway of a large boat-house on the shore—one of the buildings attached to a fishing-station on the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... day lingered out its departure, although the full moon was up and already touching with a faint radiance the towers on St. Michael's Mount—'the guarded Mount'—that rested as though at anchor in the silver-grey offing. The land-breeze had died down with sunset; the Atlantic lay smooth as a lake below us, and melted, league upon league, without horizon into the grey of night. Between the Vicar's fuchsia-bushes we looked down on it, we three— ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he paced the long carpet in the lounge after dinner, pausing at the window to look into the harried street. He was Anthony Patch, brilliant, magnetic, the heir of many years and many men. This was his world now—and that last strong irony he craved lay in the offing. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... polished boulders and streaked rocks lift up above the granulated snow. But all that is gone in a few weeks, and the wild winter locks down again on the land; while at sea the ice tears up and down the offing, jamming and ramming, and splitting and hitting, and pounding and grounding, till it all freezes together, ten feet thick, from the land ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... was breaking lazily on the Atlantic. There was not wind enough to move the vapors in the foggy offing, but where the vague distance heaved against a violet sky there were dull red streaks that, growing brighter, presently painted out the stars. Soon the brown rocks of Greyport appeared faintly suffused, and then the whole ashen line of dead coast ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... this time regarded himself as a potential multi-millionaire. The type-setting machine which for years had been sapping his financial strength was believed to be perfected, and ship-loads of money were waiting in the offing. However, we shall ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... leaving only a frigate and the "Venerable," commanded by Admiral Duncan, with my father as his flag-captain. To deceive the Dutch, they continued to make signals, as if the rest of the fleet were in the offing, till they could return to England; when, without delay, Admiral Duncan and my father went alone on board each ship, ordered the men to arrest the ringleaders, which was done, and the fleet immediately ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... remedy the failures of strength that come from misuse or inheritance or ignorance. The anatomists and the pathologists have their place, but we must look to the living to learn the laws of life, not to the dead. A wreck shows you where the reef is, perhaps, but not how to manage a ship in the offing. The men who make it their business to write the books and the men who make it their business to follow them aren't the ones for ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... was three whopping Whales in the offing, Brave boys! And them he did loudly h-a-a-ail; But to such a voice as his'n They worn't a-going to listen, Especially that big black Whale, Brave boys! Most especially that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... there. I was at the one called in the chart 'Saddle Hill,' the smallest of them, I think: and seldom have I had such sensations of peace as I lay a whole burning day in a rising vale, deeply-shaded in palm and tropical ranknesses, watching thence the Speranza at anchor: for there was a little offing here at the shore whence the valley arose, and I could see one of its long peaks lined with cocoanut-trees, and all cloud burned out of the sky except the flimsiest lawn-figments, and the sea as absolutely calm as a lake roughened with breezes, yet making a considerable noise in its ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the leading actors in this political drama. Behind the lines, in the "offing," was the Insurgent Group, young men like Mark Sullivan and John Treacy of Hudson, stout defenders of the liberal wing in the Convention, feeling sullen, beaten, and hopelessly impotent against the mass attack of the machine forces. What a political medley was present in this ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... better nesting places than those that were hidden in the mountain crevices or among the osier bushes. But the best of all was the old fisherman who lived there. Dunfin had heard that in his youth he had been a great shot and had always lain in the offing and hunted birds. But now, in his old age—since his wife had died and the children had gone from home, so that he was alone in the hut—he had begun to care for the birds on his island. He never fired a shot at them, nor would he permit others ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... scene has changed, and great is the transformation. In place of the scattered huts there are huge buildings on the beach, and behind them is a great and ever greater city. The catamarans have not disappeared, but great ships pass to and fro in the offing or lie within the shelter of the harbour walls. The little 'Factory' in the Fort, within which the Company transacted its mercantile business, has gone; but elsewhere in its stead there are big offices of numerous commercial firms; and, ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... dread of the burning zone, another fanciful obstacle beset the mariner who proposed to undertake a long voyage upon the outer ocean. It had been observed that a ship which disappears in the offing seems to be going downhill; and many people feared that if they should happen thus to descend too far away from the land they could never get back again. Men accustomed to inland sea travel did not feel this dread within the regions of which they had ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Lo! in the offing the white sails are gleaming, Ships from afar to the land drawing nigh; Laden with men, strong and brave to meet danger, Stalwart of form, fair of skin, blue of eye. Boldly they land where the white man is alien; Women are with them, ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... made me curious," replied Prescott. "As an army officer, if this were a fort that I commanded in troublous times, I'd want to look into any strange craft that I caught cruising lazily in the offing and holding a marine ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... my boy," responded the skipper. "There's nothin' like a good offing an' a tight ship. We stand but a poor chance as we go creepin' 'long shore in them rotten tubs, that are well named 'Coal-Coffins.' Why, if it comes on thick squally weather or a gale when yer dodgin' off an' on, the 'Coal-Coffins' go down by dozens. Mayhap ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... power of expression, lonesome as the interstellar space, and quite as cold, and in all that limitless vastness of the World's Edge, two specks—the hut, its three windows streaming with light, and the tiny schooner rocking in the offing. Over all flared the pallid ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... in a rickety sampan across the harbour of Sourabaya involves numerous collisions with fruit-boats, canoes, and rafts, before reaching the steamer in the offing. Intervals of comparative safety permit cursory observation of the gorgeously-painted praus with upturned stern, curving bamboo masts, and striped sails, the outline of the gaudy boats accentuated by a black line, and ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... was Aileen talking bravely at the time she invaded Mrs. Lillian Cowperwood's domain of the necessity of "her Frank" finding a woman suitable to his needs, tastes, abilities, but now that the possibility of another woman equally or possibly better suited to him was looming in the offing—although she had no idea who it might be—she could not reason in the same way. Her ox, God wot, was the one that was being gored. What if he should find some one whom he could want more than he did her? Dear heaven, how terrible that would be! What would she do? she asked herself, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the ice outside of us, and as far as we could see, setting constantly at a great rate to the eastward. Some of our gentlemen, who had landed in the course of the day, and who had to scramble their way on board over the ice in motion, described the bay as deeper than it appeared from the offing. Dr. Neill “found, on such parts of the beach as were not covered with ice or snow, fragments of bituminous shale, flinty slate, and iron-stone, interspersed amongst a blue-coloured limestone gravel. As far as he was able ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... had, in the meantime, remained inactive outside of Massowah, knowing that the co-operation of our vessels would enable us to take the place without difficulty. When those vessels appeared in the offing, several small Abyssinian war-ships steered towards them. A few shots from ours put the enemy's vessels to flight, and the Negus at last understood the situation. However, he still hoped to demolish our wooden ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... mast were thorough seamen, the task was speedily accomplished. There were no "green hands" to be favored, for every one was competent to hand, reef, and steer. By the time the squadron was well in the offing, the ship's company was in condition to make sail. About ten miles outside of the harbor, the steamer ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... we listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing. For forty-eight hours the storm-signals had never been lowered, nor changed, except to intimate the shifting of a point or two in the current of the gale, and few vessels, if any, had been found rash enough to slight ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Fresh gales at South-West with frequent Squalls attended with rain. The South-West swell still keeping up we stood to the North-West all this day with a prest Sail in order to get an Offing. At Noon True Course made good North 38 West, distance 102 Miles. Latitude in per Observation 35 degrees 10 minutes South. Cape Maria Van Diemen bore North 10 degrees East; ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... pretending to guard it; the vessels (his own amongst them) in the land-locked anchorage; the open sea beyond, violet blue to the morning under a steady off-shore breeze; white gulls flashing aloft, and, in the offing, a pair of ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... existed. Government lands, which could only be paid for in specie, were eagerly sought after; plans of new towns were puffed up; drawings made, in which every street was laid down and named; churches, theatres, hospitals, rail-road communications, canals, steam-boats in the offing, all appeared on paper as if actually in existence, when, in fact, the very site was as yet a forest, with not a log—but within a mile of the pretended city. Lots in these visionary cities were eagerly purchased, increased daily in value, and afforded a fine harvest to those ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... probability, in another winter, the extremity of it will be carried quite away. It would require the talents of a very skilful architect to lay the foundation of a good mole, on an open beach like this; exposed to the swell of the whole Mediterranean, without any island or rock in the offing, to break the force of the waves. Besides, the shore is bold, and the bottom foul. There are seventeen feet of water in the basin, sufficient to float vessels of one hundred and fifty ton; and this is chiefly supplied ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... taking fire, communicated the flames to the rest, until they were burnt to the water's edge. The bombardment continued, with little intermission, till nearly eleven: the Algerines fighting all the time with the utmost fury and desperation. About ten it was deemed advisable to take a large offing during the night. It was extremely dark: but the darkness was illuminated by a violent storm of lightning accompanied with thunder, and by the incessant fire of the batteries. The firing ceased about ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... informed that they were the beacons raised in the days of old, when the Moorish corsairs haunted that coast, and that the moment the pirate sail was descried in the offing (I hope this is correctly nautical) the warning fire blazed by night, or the warning plume of smoke went up by day, to summon Spain's chivalry to the rescue, she was enchanted, and recited a ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... under the trees of the muddy shore of what appeared to be a creek, they had been observed, sails were rapidly hoisted, and the slight, graceful vessel began to glide so swiftly through the water that it was evidently no slow ship that would catch her should she once get into the offing. ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... returned from a five mile sail in a rowing boat, Morris and I being determined to find the "Marquette" if she was among the ships out in the offing, being anxious to get our letters, but she was not there. We sorrowfully wheeled about and returned, encircling the "Queen Elizabeth" with her eight 15-inch guns, then along to examine the German ship "Acane Herksman," which struck one of their own mines off Smyrna. A huge ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... from the first, And so the second midnight to the cliff We went. I mind me how the round moon rose, And how a great whale in the offing plunged, Dark on the golden circle. There we cut A space of turf, and lifted it, and ran Our knife-points sharp into our arms, and drew Blood that dripped into the warm mould and mixed. So there under the turf our plighted faith Starts ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... following. On the morning of that day they were in the woods as usual, searching for food and water, as well as their weakness permitted, when their attention was aroused by a sound which they thought was distant thunder; but looking towards the sea, they saw a ship in the offing, which had just fired a gun. Their joy at this sight may be more easily imagined than described; they immediately fell on their knees, and thanked God for His goodness, in thus sending deliverance when least expected; then, hastening to the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... throne, stands the wondrous Mirror, Tabarino-Kagami, reflecting the state of souls and all the happenings of the world. A landscape now shadows its surface,—a landscape of cliffs and sand and sea, with ships in the offing. Upon the sand a dead man is lying, slain by a sword slash; the murderer is running away. Before this mirror a terrified soul stands, in the grasp of a demon, who compels him to look, and to recognise in the murderer's ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... command their own ships; and here will they all jollify together while the sky holds a cloud or the locker a drop. Nothing here can shake their ships, except a violent east wind, against which they wet the other eye; lazy boats visit them with comfort and delight, while white waves are leaping, in the offing; they cherish their well-earned rest, and eat the lotus—or rather the onion—and drink ambrosial grog; they lean upon the bulwarks, and contemplate their shadows—the noblest possible employment for mankind—and lo! if they care to lift their eyes, in the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... mouth will be kept open throughout the year. The eastern suburbs, so to call them, want clearing of offal and all manner of impurities. Beyond the original valley of the Besaon the ground rises and bears the wall of trees seen from the offing. There is, therefore, plenty of building-room, and long heads have bought up all the land in that direction. Mr. Macarthy, of the School of Mines, owns many concessions in ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the bonny boy went on: "O, sir, look yonder! In the offing see the sails that east and westward wander; Every hour they come and go, the misty distance thronging. While we watch and see them fade, with sorrow ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... better than level, only it swelled a little this way and that. It was a bright sunny day and the air very clear, and as they rode Ralph said: "Quite clear is the sky, and yet one cloud there is in the offing; but this is strange about it, though I have been watching it this half hour, and looking to see the rack come up from that quarter, yet it changes not at all. I never saw the like of ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... and begged them to take him to the wars on the mainland; and they smiled and bade him wait ten years. So he was left with the women and children on the island, while the men went off in galleys to fight the invader. Then one fatal day, how they woke to see white-sailed ships in the offing and boats of armed men landing on the shore, and how in doubt and terror women and children and old men hastened to yonder castle on the hill, and begged the few armed men ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... it seemed, for the cutter was flying back to us under sail and oars; and before she reached us, the first Danish ships were clear of the Swanage headlands, making for the offing. Then I got my ships into line abreast, and Thord worked up Odda's five alongside us to seaward; and all the while the Danish sails hove into sight in no sort of order, and seeming so sure that none but friends could be afloat that they paid no heed ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... article I, section 10, does not comprehend judicial decisions. Yet even in these cases, it will intervene to protect contracts entered into on the faith of existing decisions from an impairment which is the direct result of a reversal of such decisions, but there must be in the offing, as it were, a statute of some kind—one possibly many years older than the contract rights involved—on which to ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... dishonest proposition to make ninety cents' worth of silver pass as a dollar. The "storm-driven, buffeted, and scarred" ship of industrial peace, an easterner declared, "deeply laden with all precious and golden treasure is sighted in the offing!... shall we put out the lights?... Dare we remove the ship's helm, leaving her crippled ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... frequenters of the ocean, a form more appropriate, more fitting, than this specimen of human skill, whose beautiful model and elegant tapering spars were now all that could be discovered to break the meeting lines of the firmament and horizon of the offing. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... remind us of the solid world. The shoreless river was, however, populous with craft of all rigs, for this is the highway to the great interior, and some of them were bound to Cuyab, 2,600 miles in the heart of the continent. During the night a ship on fire in the offing lit up with great vividness the silent waste of waters, and as the flames leaped up the rigging, the sight was very grand. Owing to calms and light winds, our passage was a slow one, and I was not sorry when at last I could say good-bye to the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... of great influence with Polk's Administration. So that among the younger officers the query was very natural, "Who the devil is Governor of California?" One day I was on board the Independence frigate, dining with the ward-room officers, when a war-vessel was reported in the offing, which in due time was made out to be the Cyane, Captain DuPont. After dinner we were all on deck to watch the new arrival, the ships meanwhile exchanging signals, which were interpreted that General Kearney was on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... southwards, and made their camp for the night at the mouth of the river Terias. Starting early next day, they proceeded along the coast, and, crossing the bay of Thapsus, came in sight, for the first time, of their great enemy, Syracuse. The main body of the fleet remained in the offing, but ten triremes were sent forward to reconnoitre the Great Harbour, and get a nearer view of the fortifications. When the little squadron came within hearing of the walls, a herald proclaimed in a loud voice that any of the Leontines now present in Syracuse should leave ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... of knowing the cause of his journey to London. The lieutenant satisfied his curiosity in all these particulars; and, in answer to the last question, observed that, from the information of Pipes, understanding he was land-locked, he had come from the country in order to tow him into the offing. "I know not how the wind sets," said he, "but if so be as three thousand pounds will bring you clear of the cape, say the word, and you shan't lie wind-bound another glass ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... looking like the wings of white birds, were in the offing; to the right and left rose the high cliffs; a sort of cape interrupted the view on one side, while on the other the coast-line stretched out till it could no longer be distinguished, and a harbor and some houses could be seen in a bay a little way off. Tiny waves fringing the sea with foam, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... ship-shape above and below, and the craft holding well on her way. He also prays you not to think of returning at present, and says that it would be as bad seamanship, as for a captain who has made a good offing in a gale, and has plenty of sea-room, to run down close to a rocky shore under the lee, before the storm has altogether ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... more fitting name," writes Fenger, "than that of the famous townsman of Columbus.... The Andrea Doria may have attracted but little attention as she appeared in the offing ... but, with the quick eyes of seafarers, the guests of Howard's Tavern had probably left their rum for a moment to have their first glimpse of a strange flag which they all knew must be that ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Ann waited for the well-known signal in the offing,—daily walking to the shore, where kind old Uncle Shubael, now long superannuated, and idly busying himself about the fish-house, strove to cheer her fainting soul by store of well-chosen proverbs, and yarns of how, aforetimes, schooners ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... lowering the keels greatly steadied her. Grant now had a good opportunity for testing her capabilities. A large convoy ready to sail for the West Indies lay at anchor here, and on the evening of the 23rd, as the fury of the wind increased, many signals of distress were seen flying in the offing. Finding the Lady Nelson drag very much, her commander let go another anchor, with the result that she rode out through the gale with ease, although next morning six vessels were ashore dismasted, while two others had lost ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... way to Quebec. Some of Durell's ships destroyed the French 'long-shore batteries near this Traverse, at the lower end of the island of Orleans, while the rest kept ceaseless watch to seaward, anxiously scanning the offing, day after day, to make out the colours of the first fleet up. No one knew what the French West India fleet would do; and there was a very disconcerting chance that it might run north and slip into the St Lawrence, ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... for two reasons: first, to explain again what I said before of ships being embayed and lost here. This is when ships coming from the westward omit to keep a good offing, or are taken short by contrary winds, and cannot weather the high land of Portland, but are driven between Portland and the mainland. If they can come to an anchor, and ride it out, well and good; and if not, they run on shore on that vast beach and are ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... edge of the cloud-bank always strives for, but seldom wins, the middle of the gulf. The sun—as the sailors say—is eating it up. Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away from the main body to career all over the gulf till it escapes into the offing beyond Azuera, where it bursts suddenly into flame and crashes like a sinster pirate-ship of the air, hove-to above the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... last we were only a few hundred yards distant. As it was, however, I felt very much surprised; for having passed it twice before, both times in steam vessels, and having seen with what care the captains endeavoured to maintain a wide offing, I could not conceive the reason of our being now so near this dangerous region. The wind was blowing hard towards the shore, if that can be called a shore which consists of steep abrupt precipices, on which the surf was breaking with the noise of thunder, tossing up clouds of spray and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... case, Mike, I'm not going to hang on the hook of suspicion. Maybe I can find out whose picture I sent," and away Matt went up town to the photograph gallery. When he returned ten minutes later Mr. Murphy, sighting him a block in the offing, knew the skipper of the barkentine Retriever for a broken man! Beyond doubt he had shipped a full cargo ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... that afternoon when the lookout forward gave the news that there was a ship in the offing. Immediately the Vaterland altered her course slightly and headed for the newcomer, which it developed ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... contrary, was well lodged and victualled; had sixty men, with arms, ammunition, boats, and everything requisite either for defense or retreat. The party, beneath the guns of his fort, were at his mercy; should an enemy appear in the offing, he could pack up the most valuable part of the property and retire to some place of concealment, or make off for ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... a ship, and sail'd the boundless seas, Sailing and ever sailing—all seas and into every port, or out upon the offing, Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass'd, little or big, "Ship ahoy!" thro' trumpet or by voice—if nothing more, some friendly merry word at least, For companionship and good will for ever to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the offing, isn't that the Seagull at anchor? Why, it is, it must be! Then Jap Norris is here, and can ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... gun and rifle ammunition. This was a sound discovery. He memorised the spot and tried to locate it on the map. Passing on, he came to a field hospital. This was being cleared, for wagons were taking the wounded men away to the ships which lay in the offing. When a hospital is being cleared, look out for a fight. A soldier understands what ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... large bay of Faxa, bordered on the north by the enormous glacier of Sneffels, and in which bay the Valkyrie was then the only vessel at anchor. Generally there were one or two English or French gunboats, to watch and protect the fisheries in the offing. They were now, however, absent ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... a gale as the pale dawn broke, lashing the lake into a sheet of foam, and growing colder and colder as the flying watery clouds obscured the sun and the dismal day waxed and waned. With our faces pressed against the window-panes we watched the fresh-water sea in its fury. Out in the offing several vessels were scudding under bare poles, and a steamer trying to make the harbor was blown over almost horizontally in the water before she reached the piers. Darkness fell and the wind howled over the city, changing to the north and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... men could not have borne to live so, in such deadly insecurity. But probably they troubled their heads little about the pirates, kept the women and children at home, and set a retainer on the cliff in open weather, to scan the offing for the light-rigged barques, while poorer folk took their chance. We live among a different set of risks now, and think little of them, as ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to enter the Navy when they grew up. They knew what it meant, too. The great battleships from Plymouth ran their speed-trials off Polpier: the westward mile-mark stood on the Peak, right over the little haven; and the smallest child has learnt to tell a Dreadnought in the offing, or discern the difference between a first-class and a second-class cruiser. The older boys knew most of ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... in his sportsman's cap and waterproof, hugging his rod cases to his breast, watched while a heterogeneous fleet of canoes, skiffs, and sailboats came racing out from shore, for the steamer does not land here, but hangs in the offing and lighters its cargo ashore. Leading the lot was a sort of whaleboat propelled by two oars on one side and one on the other, and in the sternsheets sat a rosy-cheeked, good-natured looking man with a smooth-shaven face who Bennie knew must ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... cruiser was seen about a mile away in the offing, and on the shore stood about half a dozen sailors, taking charge of the boats in which the armed force ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... arrived. From the pilot she learned that the vessel of which she was in quest had not yet made its appearance, and she sent an officer up to the town to communicate with the British Consul. On the return of this officer, the corvette stood away from the land, and commenced cruising in the offing. For a week she had now been thus occupied, it being her practice to run close in, in the morning, and to remain hovering about the bar until near night, when she made sail for an offing. When first seen from the Montauk, she had ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... wants it. They will let Myrtis play with them and perhaps Myrtis' girl-chum from Westover. They will play five sets, running into scores like 19-17, and at lunch time will make plans for a ride into the country for the afternoon. Daddy will stick around in the offing all dressed up in his tennis-clothes waiting to play with Uncle Ted, but somehow or other every time he approaches the court the young people will be in ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... sloop of war in the offing," he remarked to his lieutenant, Dominique You, standing beside him. "She has sent off a pinnace with a flag of truce. I go to meet it. Order an ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... do on soundings, and in an offing where one knew the channel," returned old Cap; "but in an unknown region like this I think it unsafe to trust the pilot alone too far from the ship: so, with your leave, we will not ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... on to blow at Vera Cruz, all the vessels remaining near the city let go an extra anchor and batten down the hatches; or, wiser still, they let go their ground tackle and hasten to make an offing. The natives promptly haul their light boats well on shore; the citizens securely close their doors and windows; while the sky becomes darkened by clouds of sand driven by fierce gusts of wind. It is a fact that passengers have been obliged ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... seize vessels fitted for the traffic, this mischievous plan tends directly to make the cruiser let the slaver make ready and put to sea, or it has no tendency or meaning at all. Accordingly, the course is for the cruiser to stand out to sea, and not allow herself to be seen in the offing—the crime is consummated—the slaves are stowed away—the pirate—captain weighs anchor—the pirate-vessel freighted with victims, and manned by criminals fares forth—the cruiser, the British cruiser, gives ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... minutes having gone by without any one approaching us, and occasional servants or "guests" passing through the room or being seen in the offing without even so much as vouchsafing a word or appearing to be interested in us, the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... out of our course in the afternoon, because we dared not pass between two large islands on account of possible shoals. The islands were round in form, like those we had seen farther back, but were of a good height. Now we held east again, with four biggish islands and two islets in the offing. On our other side we presently had a line of flat islands with steep shores. The channel was far from safe here. In the evening we suddenly noticed large stones standing up above the water among some ice-floes close ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short cut. It was giving myself away, doing just the very thing that you ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... perceived that the Polly had made offing at a lively pace during her wild gallop under the impetus ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to. I know that skipper; his notion of yachting is to lie in what he calls the "offing," where he can be well in touch with his wife and family, to say nothing of ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... on that inhospitable shore, And day by day they learned to love each other more and more. At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day, They saw a frigate anchored in the offing ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... wreck them on unknown reefs, were among the stock legends of Rivermouth; and not a few people in the town were ready to attribute the firing of those guns to some supernatural agency. The Oldest Inhabitant remembered that when he was a boy a dim-looking sort of schooner hove to in the offing one foggy afternoon, fired off a single gun that didn't make any report, and then crumbled to nothing, spar, mast, and hulk, like a piece ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... three chairs. Through the door he could see Collins, perched on a high stool before the shelf-like desk. From the open window came the clear, musical note of the circular saw, the fresh aromatic smell of new lumber, the bracing air from Superior sparkling in the offing. He felt tired. In rare moments such as these, when the muscles of his striving relaxed, his mind turned to the past. Old sorrows rose before him and looked at him with their sad eyes; the sorrows that had helped to make him what he was. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... conversation he had had with her an hour after her arrival, and the worthy man was quite taken aback when she paid her bill, and leaning on the arm of Captain Costigan, left his establishment, to take up her quarters on board the good ship, now lying with her anchor apeak in the offing. ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... the news went suddenly flying over the town that the pirates were inside the capes. As the report spread the people came running—men, women, and children—to the green before the tavern, where a little knot of old seamen were gathered together, looking fixedly out toward the offing, talking in low voices. Two vessels, one bark-rigged, the other and smaller a sloop, were slowly creeping up the bay, a couple of miles or so away and just inside the cape. There appeared nothing remarkable about the two crafts, but the little crowd that continued ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... be, seeing that the tide had ebbed and the sand was still wet. At another time I might have asked myself why nobody came out to meet us, and why there was no lookout for the island to hail a strange ship in the offing; but I was too eager to go ashore, and, for that matter, had my feet on the sand almost ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Ben Bunting?" cried (when in full view 500 Our new acquaintance) Torquil. "Aught of new?" "Ey, ey!" quoth Ben, "not new, but news enow; A strange sail in the offing."—"Sail! and how? What! could you make her out? It cannot be; I've seen no rag of canvass on the sea." "Belike," said Ben, "you might not from the bay, But from the bluff-head, where I watched to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling."—"When ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... you," he cried, "and row these children and the passenger out a mile from the ship—two miles, three miles, make an offing." ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... malice have we here?" cries Herve Riel: "Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell, 'Twixt the offing here and Greve where the river disembogues? Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? Morn and eve, night and day. Have I piloted your bay, Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... a ship from the sacred isle of Delos, and with it the fires in the houses and the workshops were relit. The people said that with the new fire they made a new beginning of life. If the ship that bore the sacred flame arrived too soon, it might not put in to shore, but had to cruise in the offing till the nine days were expired.[345] At Rome the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta was kindled anew every year on the first of March, which used to be the beginning of the Roman year;[346] the task of lighting it was entrusted to the Vestal Virgins, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... in her own heart, and when the three had taken seizin of the northern hill, eaten their manchets of saffron cake, and shared their canful of milk, she took up a post from which, while the others scanned the offing for Spaniards, she could watch and time the ebb of ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... together as sisters whilst thou bidest with me; we shall go down to the sea when the storm begins once more; thou shalt see the billows rushing upon the land like wild, white-maned horses—and then the whales far out in the offing! They dash one against another like steel-clad knights! Ha, what joy to be a witching-wife and ride on the whale's back—to speed before the skiff, and wake the storm, and lure men to the deeps with ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... pennant, and was received with a salute of eleven guns from the monitor Miantonomoh. The remainder of the day passed without any other unusual or noteworthy incident, but sometime in the night the fleet of Admiral Sampson joined the Flying Squadron in the offing, and Thursday morning the people of Key West saw, in their harbor and at sea off Fort Taylor, the largest and most powerful fleet of war-vessels that had ever assembled, perhaps, under ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... that upon the shore beyond Yarmouth there are no less than four lighthouses kept flaming every night, besides the lights at Castor, north of the town, and at Goulston S., all of which are to direct the sailors to keep a good offing in case of bad weather, and to prevent their running into Cromer Bay, which the seamen ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... even with a fireplace so ample, Mrs. Tossell managed to cook for them all—Arthur Miles boldly approached Chrissy and got her to persuade her sweetheart, Festus, to lend him a hook. Armed with this, the children retraced their steps down the coombe. The fog had lifted a little, and in the offing Holmness loomed out dimly, with a streak of golden light on the water beyond its westernmost cliffs. But the boy nerved himself; he would not loiter to gaze at it, but strode into the cottage and began hacking with great fierceness at the nettles, which Tilda—her hands cased in a pair of old ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... innuendoes and doubles entendres of the most alarming character, that, high as is our opinion of the intrepidity of British seamen, we should not fear to back the two at odds against a full-manned jolly-boat from a frigate in the offing sent in to fill her water-casks. Caliban himself—and what a Caliban he has become!—fights shy of the plenireps. Why—if it must be so—we give our arm to his sister Sycorax, a "fearsome dear" no doubt, but what better could one expect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the vessel. The sailor gave it as his opinion that it was a French boat, though something in the rig made him not quite positive. It cruised about in a queer manner, 'just as if she was on the watch for something,' as the man said. However, towards mid-day she drew out into the offing, and they saw her sails slowly disappearing below ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... twice, but with difference cadence. Then something like amusement lurked a moment in her eye, and she quietly presented Bles to her friends, while Stillings hovered unnoticed in the offing: ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... prepared, and sent off next day in one of the stone-lighters. On the 9th July the stone was placed in a praam-boat, decorated with colours for the occasion. Flags were also displayed upon the beacon and from the shipping in the offing. The stone was gently lowered into the water, which occupied the site of the building, amidst the cheering of all present. The stone was necessarily landed at high water, for want of a sufficient length of railway for conveying it along the rock at low water ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... which I kept with me. The poor fellow probably lost more men, for he cut his cable, and got out before me. I weighed my anchor, but had one of my men killed by a musket ball in doing it. I stood out after the midshipman. We had gained an offing of four miles, when a violent gale and snow-storm came on. The sails belonging to the vessel all blew to rags immediately, being very old. I had no resource, except to anchor, which I did on a bank, in five fathom water. The other vessel lost all her sails, and, having no anchor, as ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... good offing, and the mountains of Lebanon began to sink below the horizon in the distance as she bowled along merrily on her north-western course, a long way to the southward of Cyprus, bearing up direct for the Archipelago, a keen observer on board might have noticed something that looked strange, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... walk or drive down to Elberon when there is a sea-breeze, especially if there happen to be a dozen yachts in the offing. Such elegance as this watering-place has lies in this direction; the Elberon is a refined sort of hotel, and has near it a group of pretty cottages, not too fantastic for holiday residences, and even the "greeny-yellowy" ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... seen the yellow bodies of the bathers. A dozen bare-legged men got hold of a yacht under sail with as many passengers on board, and pushed it forcibly right down into the sea, and then up sprang its nose and it heeled over and shot suddenly off, careering on the waves into the offing where other yachts were sliding to and fro between the piers, dominating errant fleets of rowboats. And the piers also were loaded with excited humanity and radiant colour. And all the windows of all the houses and hotels were open, and blowing with curtains and flowers ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... possessed me at that period to be a sailor, as, beyond reading Robinson Crusoe like other boys, I was absolutely ignorant of the life and all concerning it. Indeed, up to then, although it may seem hardly credible, I had only once actually seen the sea, and a ship in the distance—far-away out in the offing of what appeared to me an immeasurable expanse of space. This was when father took my sister Nellie and me for a day's visit to Brighton. It was a wonderful experience to us, from the contrast the busy town on the coast ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... smartly, and a lieutenant, diminutive but highly effective in appearance, led six men toward the Karluk. He wore a sword and revolver; the men carried carbines. Their disciplined rank and smartness, the waiting launch, the gunboat in the offing, were ominous with the suggestion of power, the will to administer it. The officer in command carried his chin at an arrogant tilt. Lund had rigged a gangway and stood at the head of it, saluting the lieutenant as the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... the offing, With her topsails shot with fire, And my heart has gone aboard her For ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... to work at getting well in good earnest." But, alas! it was a work which no earnestness could forward. Day after day he went down to the beach, and sat for hours drinking the sea air and watching the sails that came and went in the offing. By-and-by he could go no further than the garden of the house in which we lived. A little later, and he spent his days on a couch beside the open window, waiting patiently for the end. Ay, for the end! It had come to that. He was ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... nearly all came in together. Thus, when the North Star, bearing the flag of the commanding general and sailing from New York on the 4th of December, arrived in the early morning of the 13th at Ship Island, nearly the whole fleet lay at anchor or in the offing; and as soon as a hasty inspection could be completed and fresh orders given, the expedition got under way for New Orleans. The larger vessels, however, like the Atlantic, Baltic, and Ericsson being unable to cross the bar, lay at anchor at Ship Island ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... by a hunter bold Of a sealing schooner's crew, Of a midnight raid where the breakers played On reefs that the offing strew. ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... standing outside his cottage, with his old spy-glass under his arm, waiting for them, and apparently he had been filling up the time by watching three or four vessels out in the offing. ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... indignation vanished when the fierce gray eyes of Jim fixed him in an unflinching stare. He saw trouble looming in the offing. Jim turned his eyes ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction—as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... his part, had seen trouble in the offing, though he was unprepared for it to take this form. He did not dislike the young woman, half French, half Belgian, with the qualities of both races, though secretly he thought his father a fool to have offered her marriage when something ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... N.E. a sharp hill like a sugar-loaf, with a cross upon it, N.E. by E. the church in the valley S.E. In this valley there are many trees, the high land S.E. from the church, and the entire valley being full of trees. We moored S.E. and N.W. the anchor in the offing being in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... of the island was the large and populous bay of Hannamanoo, where the men sought might yet be found. But as the sun was setting by the time the boat came alongside, we got our offshore tacks aboard and stood away for an offing. About daybreak we wore, and ran in, and by the time the sun was well up, entered the long, narrow channel dividing the islands of La ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Notwithstanding all the difficulties his old theory had brought him into, the former remained of opinion that the true current set to windward, and that we should so find it as soon as we got a little into the offing; while the mate was frank enough to say he had been of opinion, all along, that it ran the other way. The latter added that Bourbon was rather a small spot to steer for, and it might be better to get into its longitude, and then find ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... days had passed, and the dispirited peasantry had already mourned him as dead, when some fishermen on the northern coast observed a ship of light burden in the offing, making signals to the shore. They put off to her in their boats; and on reaching the deck saw standing before them the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... of course, not oblivious to the great changes which have occurred in the conditions and means of naval warfare since the rules hitherto governing legal blockade were formulated. It might be ready to admit that the old form of "close" blockade, with its cordon of ships in the immediate offing of the blockaded ports, is no longer practicable in the face of an enemy possessing the means and opportunity to make an effective defense by the use of submarines, mines, and air craft; but it can hardly be maintained that, whatever form of effective blockade may be made use ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various |
