"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... along the white monotony of the way and sometimes on bleak swells there were no markings at all. Some distance from Carey's Crossing a much heavier snowfall, covering a wide swath, under which the trails were entirely lost, had wandered in zigzag ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... with the earth. They moved upward, looking in the darkness like golden particles of the sun. And soon they formed an oblique streak, a streak which suddenly twisted, then extended again until it curved once more. At last the whole hillside was streaked by a flaming zigzag, resembling those lightning flashes which you see falling from black skies in cheap engravings. But, unlike the lightning, the luminous trail did not fade away; the little lights still went onward in the same slow, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... else you thought,—the murmuring noon He turns it to a lyric sweeter, With birds that gossip in the tune, And windy bough-swing in the metre; Or else the zigzag fruit-tree arms Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Neck when Tryon was in the vicinity. Hastily gathering a few militia, he annoyed the British as long as possible, and then, compelled to flee before the enemy's overwhelming force, his men hid themselves in the adjacent swamp, while he, spurring his spirited horse over a precipice, descended a zigzag path, where the British dragoons did not ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... eight francs), my friend, Mr. H. F. Jones, and myself ascended to Serralunga, finding the views continually become more and more bewitching as we did so; soon after passing through Serralunga we reached the first chapel, and after another zigzag or two of road found ourselves in the large open court in front of the church. Here there is an inn, where any one who is inclined to do so could very well sleep. The piazza of the sanctuary is some two thousand feet above the sea, and the views are in some respects finer even than those from the ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... heaven, and empty rivers of rain. Then the lightning was uninterrupted, and you could have read a book, or counted the trees, or viewed the lake by its constant blaze; while now and anon a wilder volley exploded, and a more furious flash flew its zigzag flight from the zenith to ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... until it gradually covered the whole scene from our view, (shipping, and harbour, and town, and camp, and sugar estates,) boiling and rolling in black eddies under our feet. Anon the thunder began to grumble, and the zigzag lightning to fork out from one dark mass into another, while all, where we sat, was bright and smiling under the unclouded noon—day sun. This continued for half an hour, when at length the sombre appearance ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw their chase into confusion. "What do you confounded fools mean?" shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right and left with his whip. "I'll swear to every one of you before the magistrate. You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know. You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sunken trees, presenting a jagged or pointed end above the surface of the water. As the channel of the river frequently shifted from side to side according to the bends and sand-banks, the boat had, in the same way, to advance in a zigzag course. Often a part of the crew would have to leap into the water at the shallows, and wade along with the towing line, while their comrades on board toilfully assisted with oar and setting pole. Sometimes the boat would seem to be ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... hand. She barely recognized him, her gaze traveling beyond the fellow toward the disappearing line of prisoners. It was an evening promising storm, with some motion to the sea, and a heavy bank of clouds visible off the port quarter, brightened by flashes of zigzag lightning. The brig rolled dizzily, so the cavalier sought to steady her steps, but she only laughed at the effort, waving him aside, as she moved easily forward. Once with hand on the rail, she ignored his presence entirely, looking first at the threatening cloud, and then permitting ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... taken daily, "turned" in a very curious manner. After being deposited, in its usual place, in the pantry, it began to darken; first of all it became light blue, then deepened into an almost inky blackness, exhibiting curious zigzag lines; and, lastly, the whole mass began to putrefy and to emit a stench so overpowering that every one in the house retched, and the whole place had to be disinfected. This occurred day after day. Nothing would stop it. The dairyman ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... half-a-gallon of the same remedy to take home with him. It was a cheap prescription, costing only twelve and a half cents, but it proved very effective. Old Belz put the stuff into an earthenware bottle, which he corked with a corncob. Michael started for home by the zigzag path which led up the steep limestone bluff, but his steps were slow and unsteady; he sat down on a rock, and took another dose out of his bottle. He never went any further of his own motion, and we buried him next day. We were of different opinions about the cause of ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... range extends from the plains to the timber-line; and he dwells on both sides of the mountains, for I met with him at Glenwood. About a half mile above Malta a western nighthawk was seen, hurtling in his eccentric, zigzag flight overhead, uttering his strident call, and "hawking for flies," as White of Selborne would phrase it. A western grassfinch flew over to some bushes with a morsel in its bill, but I could not discover its nest or young, search as I would. Afterwards it perched on ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... saw at Long Kai had the mark of a ripe durian on each shoulder in front and an immature one above each nipple. On the lower part of the upper arm was a tatu of an edible root, in Penihing called rayong. Over the back of his right hand, toward the knuckles, he had a zigzag mark representing the excrescences of the durian fruit. In regard to the presence of spirits, number of souls, blians, disease, and its cure, restrictions for pregnant women, the child's cradle—the ideas of the Bukats are identical with ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... possession; they looked to see an army in rout. Suddenly they beheld the double line of British squares—or, rather, "oblongs"—with their fringe of steady steel points; and from end to end of the line ran the zigzag of fire—a fire that never slackened, still less intermitted. The torrent and tumult of the horsemen never checked; but as they rode at the squares, the leading squadron—men and horses—smitten by the spray of lead, tumbled dead or dying to the ground. The following ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... the little mother was wonderful. In spite of the unrest of her life, of continual struggles, and work over the nest, she frequently indulged in marvelous aerial evolutions, dashing into the air and marking it off into zigzag lines and angles, as if either she did not know her own mind for two seconds at a time, or was forced to take this way to work off surplus vitality. During all this time I was hoping to see her mate. But if he appeared at all, as several times a ruby-throated individual ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... zigzag ribbon of flame fluttered across the darkened portion, accompanied by a crash that seemed to shiver the earth. Fred Linden, who happened to be staring straight at the fiery burst, saw the upper part of a large cypress that leaned ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... other Frenchmen, a few Canadian voyageurs, and twenty-five Assiniboin Indians. Leaving the Assiniboin River, they crossed the North Dakota prairies on foot. Owing to the timidity of his Indian guides, La Verendrye was not led direct to the Missouri River, the "Great River of the West", but along a zigzag route which permitted his guides to reinforce their numbers at Assiniboin villages, and every now and then join in a bison hunt. All the party were on foot, horses not then having reached the Assiniboin tribe. But on the 28th ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... time watching the Hebron road. They constructed a track over the mountains to get the Division to Dharahiyeh when it should be ordered to take part in the attack on the Jerusalem defences, and while they were waiting at Dilbeih they did much to improve the main road. The famous zigzag on the steep ridge between Dharahiyeh and Dilbeih was in good condition, and you saw German thoroughness in the gradients, in the well-banked bends, and in the masonry walls which held up the road where it had been cut in the side of a ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... equally cut off from the commercial movement. But every year will diminish the charm of this dirty old town to the antiquary. It will be observed that all the old streets are not accidentally crooked, but that they have been carefully laid out on curved or zigzag lines, which turn now in one direction and now in another. The motive was a defensive one in view of street-fighting, which was often so terrible and so prolonged in the Middle Ages. Each curve of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... thinking, that I will venture to confess in their name, that their past omission of corresponding with you, is, in a considerable measure, unaccountable. It is certainly better to step forward towards a man of candor, in the straight line of honest confession, than in the zigzag track of awkward apology. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... citizens live happy as monks. They are so well shut in by high rocks that they can laugh at enemies, and through a hollow in the rocks with softest pace creeps the river Oysivius (the Idle). There is only one way up, their rocks for the inhabitants, and that is not by zigzag steps, but by a rope and basket. Birds wholly peculiar to the place supply food by being themselves eatable, and by the great multitude of their eggs, and by the loads of fish they bring into their nests to feed their young. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... to call it. I always had a fairly accurate sense of direction; but, standing in many places in this giant battlefield, it was impossible for me to say where were the Germans and where the French, so completely was I turned around on account of the constant zigzag of the trench lines. Sometimes, when I was positive that a furious cannonade coming from a certain position was German, it turned out to be French. At other times, when I thought I was safely going in the direction of the French, I was hauled back by officers, who told me I was ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... window of leaded glass Mistress Yordas and her widowed sister sat for an hour, without many words, watching the zigzag of shale and rock which formed their chief communication with the peopled world. They did not care to improve their access, or increase their traffic; not through cold morosity, or even proud indifference, but because they had been so ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... noise grew louder and louder, till at last Dyke began to divine the cause. A short distance farther the open plain was crossed by an erratic line of trees and rocks, forming a green and grey zigzag of some three hundred yards wide, and down in a hollow, hidden till close up, there was the rivulet-like stream at which he had halted on his outward way to ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... primaries light. Underparts rosy in breeding season. Nests very abundantly in the marshes of Minnesota and northward. Nest made of grasses and placed in the marsh grass barely above the surface of the water. Eggs same color as the last but the markings more inclined to zigzag lines. Size 2.10 x 1.40. Data.—Heron Lake, Minn., May 26, 1885. Nest of wet sedge stalks and rubbish placed in a bunch of standing sedge in shallow water; at least five thousand birds in rookery. Collector, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... restful, and real talk which is the most roving. You may begin in Portland and end in San Francisco. You may start talking about preserving peaches, and halt on the latest sensation. It is often very amusing to trace the line of such converse: it moves in a zigzag course, and terminates many miles out of the original direction. By this discursiveness I do not mean gossip. Of course talk of that kind has no good part in conversation: it is the slave of ignorance and bad character. I might, however, differ from some ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... groove running from bottom to top; others with two spirals, ascending in different directions, so as to cross over one another; some are fluted or channeled straight up and down; some are wrought with chevrons, like those on the sleeve of a police inspector. There are zigzag cuttings and carvings, which I do not know how to name scientifically, round the arches of the doors and windows; but nothing that seems to have flowered out spontaneously, as natural incidents of a grand and beautiful design. In the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... saints began to unfold their tales at once, Both wished their tales, like simial ones, prehensile, That they might seize his ear; fool! knave! and dunce! Flew zigzag back and forth, like strokes of pencil In a child's fingers; voluble as duns, They jabbered like the stones on that immense hill 110 In the Arabian Nights; until the stranger Began to think his ear-drums in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Henry VII. of England; and Ferdinand and Isabella, of course; with notices of various movements in those countries in their several reigns. The second chapter is got up in the same manner, taking a zigzag course over our continent, north, south, east, and west, with occasional excursions to Europe to keep up the variety. This procedure often produces an assemblage of events, as we have said, on the same page, rather startling to themselves as well as to us.—Thus on page 48 of the first volume—"On ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... as you can, and sail as near as you can to the wind. Then when you have gone some distance you must bring her head round, till the sail goes over on the other side; and sail on that tack, and so make a zigzag course: but if the wind should come dead ahead, I think your best course would be to lower the sail and row against it. However, at present, with the wind from the east, you will be able to sail ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... are drawn slantwise across the window panes, and one watches, absently, the curious behaviour of the drops. They hang bulging and pendulous, in one spot for some seconds. Then, as they swell, suddenly they break loose and zigzag swiftly down the pane, following the slippery pathway that previous drops have made. It is like a little puzzle game where you manoeuvre a weighted capsule among pegs toward a narrow opening. "Pigs in clover," ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... troop—as the major had ascertained before starting. The account was not reassuring. The guide reported that it stood on a rock, which rose perpendicularly some eighty or a hundred feet from the plain; the only access being by a zigzag road cut in the face of the cliff, with a gateway defended by a gun, and loopholed walls at each turn, and with a very strong wall all round the edge of the rock. The garrison, they had learned from ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... are dropped astern. These are white and enable the rearward vessels to keep their distance with relation to those steaming ahead. The destroyers circle in and about the convoyed craft, which, in the meantime, are describing zigzag courses in order that submarines may not be able to calculate their gun or torpedo fire with any degree ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... place of observation there were brief glimpses of the human element in this scene of impersonal powers and secret forces. Across a stretch of flat ground beyond some of those zigzag lines of trenches little black things were scurrying forward. They were not bunched together in close groups, but scattered. Some of them seemed to hesitate, and then to fall and lie where they fell, others hurrying on until they disappeared in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... illustrates the weaving of a zigzag sawali panel. The straws, a, b, k, and l are woven by ones. It takes twelve straws one way and nine the other to make this panel. If a wider panel is desired, the same weaving is repeated as often ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... you, and you see a Scallop rising to the top of the water with zigzag jerks, and immediately sinking to the sand again, on the side opposite that whence it started. There it rests with expanded branchiae and moving cilia; a rude passer-by jostles it, and with startled sensitiveness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... day of our voyage, we reached a point where the Gulf of Serocasfe divides, a sharp jutting cape or peninsula parting its waters. We took the northern branch, about fifteen miles in width, and here, rising to the surface and steering a zigzag course from coast to coast, I was enabled to see something of the character of this most extraordinary strait. Its walls at first were no less than 2000 feet in height, so that at all times we were in sight, so to speak, of land. A road had been cut along the sea-level, and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... example; but much as I liked and admired Firm, I had my own ideas as to what was unbecoming, and now in my lonely little walks I began to think about it. My father's resting-place had not been invaded by the imperious flood, although a line of driftage, in a zigzag swath, lay near the mound. This was my favorite spot for thinking, when I felt perplexed and downcast in my young unaided mind. For although I have not spoken of my musings very copiously, any one would do me wrong who fancied that I was indifferent. Through ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... searches for a lower level and the view is magnificent, as a great endless expanse of land is unfolded. Here and there are banks of smoke caused by the veldt fires and often close to the railway the high dry grass has been lighted by a chance spark from an engine, and is burning furiously. We now zigzag down hill instead of up and far beneath, can be seen the thin line of rails glistening in the sun like fillets of silk. Having reached this level, we plunge through inviting looking forests at one time full of elephants, buffaloes and other game, but practically ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... after its capture, I was struck by its strength and extent. It occupied the base of a bluff near the water's edge. On the summit of the bluff there were breast-works running in a zigzag course for five or six miles, and inclosing a large area. The works along the river were very strong, and could easily hold a ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... applied by the Greeks to the lightning and a snake; when the Quiche call the electric flash a strong serpent; and many other such examples. The Pueblo Indians represent lightning in their pictographs by a zigzag line. A zigzag fence is called in the Middle States a worm or "snake" fence. Besides this, adjectives which describe the line traced by the serpent in motion are applied to many twisting or winding objects, as a river, a curl ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of the clattering, yelling column. It fluctuated; the warriors who were there did not like to be aimed at; they began to zigzag, caracole, and diverge to right or left; several halted and commenced using their bows. At one of these archers, whose arrow already trembled on the string, Thurstane let fly, sending him out of the saddle. Then he felt a quick, sharp pain in his left arm, and perceived ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Cannon placed on the summit have long range. A great deal of labor was expended to make it an impregnable place. There were batteries close down to the water under the hill, with heavy guns. A gallery was cut along the side of the bluff, a winding, zigzag passage, which, with many crooks and turns, led to the top of the hill. They had numerous guns in position on the top, to send shot and shell down upon Commodore Foote, should he attempt to descend the ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... feet high, each story lighted by a single window, the highest compartment having invariably four lancet windows opening to the cardinal points of the compass. The roof is conical, made of overlapping stone slabs, and a circle of grotesquely carved heads and zigzag ornamentation is found beneath the projecting cornice. The masonry is of hewn stone, but not the least regularity is observable in the size or shape of the blocks, some being very large, others small, and every figure known to the geometrician can be found in the stones ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... amongst the harder portions, where heath and broom and furze, whose roots were matted with green and grey coral moss, found congenial soil, were long holes full of deep clear water—some a few yards across, others long zigzag channels like water-filled cracks in the earth, and others forming lanes and ponds and lakes that were of sizes varying from a quarter of a mile to ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... tearing her dress among the briers which clung to the hillside. Knowing every inch of the ground, she could follow the shore of the lake until nearly opposite the statue, and then climb a few feet among the bushes at a point where a zigzag path, seldom used and nearly obliterated by undergrowth, led to ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... and quite fearless. For many days my lonely rambles had been in the direction of Montenegro, and my upward gaze had turned hourly towards the path which leads thither, issuing forth from the gate of the town in a zigzag form, and mounting till it seems lost in the clouds. It was so tantalising to know that three hours' ascent on one of the stout mules of the country, would bring one to the heart of the Black Mountain, and to the palace of its chivalrous ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... six feet thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... have seen them put both their fore feet out together, and let them slip, then drag their hind feet up to them, and repeat this process on descending the vitrified, and almost perpendicular roads of Madeira, taking a zigzag direction across the road each time. Mules do the same, and perhaps derive the faculty ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... I was walking along the edge of the green mound on which the Montmartre telegraph stands. Below me, along one of the zigzag paths which wind up the hill, a man and a girl were coming up, and arrested my attention. The man wore a shaggy coat, which gave him some resemblance to a wild beast; and he held a thick stick in his hand, with which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... bringing up the rear as fast as he could. He came sideways in a zigzag course ducking and whirling constantly, and in between firing promptly at any portions of enemy anatomies that dared project into the line of the corridor. The Hawk covered the last few yards of his retreat, and then they were ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... one; most of the others, the captain told him, were long ones. The width of the shaft was about six feet by nine. It was nearly perpendicular, and the slope of the ladders corresponded with its width—the head of each resting against one side of it, and the foot against the other, thus forming a zigzag of ladders all the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... to marvellous stories of active lunar volcanoes. To the south-east lies another smaller crater, Herodotus, north of which is a narrow, deep valley, nowhere more than 2-1/2 miles broad, which makes a remarkable zigzag. It is one of the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... by Apsley House. From hence I walked at the same rapid pace along Piccadilly, insinuating myself among the crowd with the skill born of long acquaintance with the London streets, crossed amidst the seething traffic at the Circus, darted up Windmill Street and began to zigzag amongst the narrow streets and courts of Soho. Crossing the Seven Dials and Drury Lane I passed through the multitudinous back-streets and alleys that then filled the area south of Lincoln's Inn, came ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... and fresh. Travelled zigzag through creeks from the eastward for about twenty miles and camped on large one from south of east that we could not find a crossing at; our distance in a direct line would not be much more than ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... carrying their festoons of wild roses. They bring to the great festival joy and love of life - a telling addition to all that has been expressed in the court. They savor of old Greek days, these maidens of archaic hair and zigzag draperies. Paul Manship loves the classic which brings with it much of free expression, and he has adopted the archaic style that recalls the figures such as are seen on old Greek vases. No one is more joyous among the sculptors ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... the water was a man who knew how to handle it. Prisoners are landed on the eastern side, and such advantage is taken of the natural conformation of this precipitous rock, that a man climbing the steep zigzag stairway which leads to the inhabited portion is hidden from sight of any craft upon the water even four or five hundred yards away. Nothing seen from the outside gives any token of habitation. The fishing-boat, I suppose, is kept ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... twenty minutes, the train stopped at the small wayside station, and the Rodenhurst party got out in a hurry. They were to descend to the beach, and walk along the shore to Linkthwaite Bay, a distance of about three miles, geologizing as they went. A steep zigzag path led down the side of the cliff to the sands, and when once her flock was all collected at the bottom, Miss Roberts improved the occasion by giving a short lecture on the formation of the rocks which formed the headland, then, leading the way, ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air and embroidered ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... eloquent and pregnant proof of the fact that necessity is the mother of invention. He was a mason; the levee that buffeted back the rage of the Colorado in flood, the wall that turned the creek, the irrigation tunnel, the zigzag trail cut on the face of the cliff—all these attested his eye for line, his judgment of distance, his strength in toil. He was a farmer, a cattle man, a grafter of fruit-trees, a breeder of horses, a herder of sheep, a preacher, a physician. Best and strangest ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... is the Venetian, in which the rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in its extreme simplicity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... rocks, until the pinnacle was reached. Nearer, along the broad successive terraces of the opposite mountains, the evergreen pine, the cedar, with its stiff, angular branches, and the cottonwood, with its varied curves and bright colours, were crowded into bunches or strung into zigzag lines, interspersed with shrubs and mountain plants, among which the flaming cactus was conspicuous. To the right and left, the bare cones of the barren peaks rose in multitude, with their calm, awful forms shrouded in snow, and their dark shadows reflected far into the valleys, like spectres ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Lightning broke forth out of the cloud, Zigzag and dart, cleaving their way Slantwise to ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... but instead of falling on the third storey where he is now lying, I fell into the second. I am going away now to see my father. Whenever you are in any difficulty just think of me. I will be there by your side to assist you by all possible means." So saying, the Nagaraja glided away in zigzag movements, and was out of ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... a zigzag journey. He reeled and plunged, dragging her in all directions; and so yielding were his knees that she doubted if they could bear him to the house. Once, when seemingly on the point of a collapse, he muttered, in a confidential tone: "This hauling guns under a frying sun ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps, and turning round found ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... belonged to the women, we gentlemen slept on the ground outside, or on beds made of round poles. The night was piercingly cold. The wished-for morning came at last, and long before the sun looked over the mountains we were on our march. It was the same terrible road, running zigzag, or "quingo" fashion, up to Camino Real, where it was suddenly converted ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... knoll, back of the Warrenton road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces, halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by the rebel shells; they see an army, in every ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... suddenly threw open the door and dashed out, he nearly fell over the dog whining in terror. But Balthazar kept on. In a better business—with a heart in him—he would have been counted among the bravest of men. Running a swaying, zigzag course, in the very face of the fire of Harry and Pauline, he reached the hunter's hut and dropped the bomb ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... is a narrow depression in the ridge, commanded on each side by high pine-clad mountains. The approach to it from the Kuram valley was up a steep, narrow, zigzag path, commanded throughout its entire length from the adjacent heights, and difficult to ascend on account of the extreme roughness of the road, which was covered with large fragments of rocks and boulders. Every point of the ascent was exposed to fire from both guns and rifles, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... from their terraced ledges, rising one above another from the shores of the ocean like the stairs leading up from a pool. In achieving the ascent of these gigantic stairs all the expedients of road-makers have been resorted to: the zigzag, the trestle, the tunnel, the curve, have been pushed to their utmost applications; for five continuous miles on the Thull Ghat Incline there is a grade of one in thirty-seven, involving many trying curves, and on nineteen miles of the Bhore Ghat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Flemming. "I am going home—in a zigzag way. I've been obliged to take a reef in my Eastern itinerary. The fact is, I have had a letter from the old gentleman rather suggesting it. I believe he has availed himself of my absence to fall ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... end of the house, and darted across the wider space here, racing for the opening in the fence—and suddenly changed his tactics, and began to zigzag a little. A revolver flash cut the night. Came the Wolf's howl from the back stoop, and, over his shoulder, Jimmie Dale saw the other, dark-shadowed, leap forward in pursuit—and heard the Wolf ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the casual tourist in the little Spanish-American town on the seacoast need have nothing to fear from the ascent. In some spots they contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop sheer away; elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more hair-raising than the last, or fill to demoralization with loose boulders and shale. A fall on the part of your horse would mean a more than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall. The major premise stands: even the casual tourist has no real reason ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... it alive," I told her. "There's a scarcity of fun in Bridgeboro because we used it all up. That's why we have to explore the country. The next thing we're going to do is a zigzag hike." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... without once awakening, until the sun stood high in the heavens, and the coach moved very slowly; and when he stuck his head out of the window, he saw, to his utter astonishment, that they were ascending the zigzag road up the Maloja, that was so familiar to him from ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... emitting harsh, guttural chirps, to resume his stand. Meanwhile the female is invisible, keeping closely concealed under the long grass. But at length, attracted perhaps by the bright bosom and aerial music of the male, she occasionally exhibits herself for a few moments, starting up with a wild zigzag flight, and, darting this way and that, presently drops into the grass once more. The moment she appears above the grass the male gives chase, and they vanish from ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and principal business houses. It has narrow streets badly paved and drained, and made still more dirty and offensive by the surface drainage of the upper town. Communication with the upper town is effected by means of two elevators, a circular tramway, and steep zigzag roads. The upper town is built on the western slope of a low ridge, the backbone of the peninsula, and rises from the edge of the bluffs to altitudes of 200 to 260 ft. above the sea-level, affording magnificent views ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... he was a great coward, though strong as an ox, and whipping with ease every man who could force him into a fight. So that, in the whole man, a sensitive observer would have felt a peculiar pathos, as though nature had given him a desire to be, and no power to become, and had then sent him on his zigzag way, never to ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... enabling it to run upon the surface of the aquatic vegetation, as if it were solid ground. It was in the month of January, their breeding season, and at every turn of the boat we started them up in pairs. Their flat, open nests generally contained five flesh-colored eggs, streaked in zigzag with dark brown lines. The other waders were a snow-white heron, another ash-colored, smaller species, and a large white stork. The ash-colored herons were always in pairs, the white one always single, standing quiet and alone on the edge of the water, or half hidden in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... which it becomes shiftiness, and it would be rash to assert that Mr. Lloyd George is careful to keep on the right side of it. At the Conference his conduct appeared to careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as these were various and changing the result was a zigzag. One day he would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction. Guided by no sound knowledge and ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the outer enclosure of the ancient stronghold, and with them their sheep and goats and the few cattle which remained to them, were employed in building up the entrance permanently with stones, a zigzag secret path upon the river side, that could be stopped in a few minutes, being now their only method of ingress and egress through the thickness of the walls. A certain number of men were also sent out as spies to discover, if possible, the ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... undergrowth, in many place, of heath and bramble. The chief feature, however, is a dense growth in the centre, consisting of dogwood, water-beech, swamp-ash, alder, spice-bush, hazel, etc., with a network of smilax and frost-grape. A little zigzag stream, the draining of a swam beyond, which passes through this tanglewood, accounts for many of its features and productions, if not for its entire existence. Birds that are not attracted by the heath, or the cedar and chestnut, are ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the Alps) is built beside the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, shining peaks of the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... night, but had been thwarted by the precipitancy of the young Indians and Canadians. These now showed no inclination to depart from the cautious maxims of forest warfare. They made a terrific noise, but when they came within gunshot of the fort, it was by darting from stump to stump with a quick, zigzag movement that made them more difficult to hit than birds on the wing. The best moment for a shot was when they reached a stump, and stopped for an instant to duck and hide behind it. By seizing this fleeting opportunity, Hawks ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... Warbeach by drinking a match against a Yorkshire skipper till four o'clock in the morning, when it was a gallant sight, my boys, to see Hampshire steadying the defeated North-countryman on his astonished zigzag to his flattish-bottomed billyboy, all in the cheery sunrise ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rear room with the zigzag of fire escape across it was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with a little pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left a red rut, sat down beside the window. There were ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Zeal fervoro. Zealot fervorulo. Zealous fervora. Zebra zebro. Zenith zenito. Zephyr venteto. Zero nulo. Zest gusto. Zigzag zigzago. Zinc zinko. Zinc-worker zinkisto. Zodiac zodiako. Zone terzono. Zoology zoologio. Zoophyte zoofito. Zouave ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and should have done so if the great streaks of lightning which now and then shot zigzag through the sky had taken the shape of words and bid us all beware. I was not one to be daunted, and knew no other course than that of advance when once a stroke of justice had been planned, and the direction for its fulfilment marked out. I went on, but I began to think, ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... basketwork. But, as time went on, the early artist learned to press into his service new implements, pieces of wood, bone scrapers, and the flint knife itself, with which he incised more regular patterns, straight or zigzag lines, rows of dots, squares and triangles, concentric circles, and even the mystic cross and swastika, the sacred symbols of yet unborn and undreamt-of religions. As yet, there was no direct imitation of plant or animal forms; once only, on ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... line of nations or at least of national alliances was a frontier not of language but of faith. Germany was but a geographical expression. The union of Protestantism, subscribed by a large proportion of its three hundred and seven sovereigns, ran zigzag through the country, a majority probably of the people at that moment being ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one, two, or three lines of shelter-trenches lying parallel, measuring twenty or twenty-five inches in width, and varying in length according to the number they hold; the trenches were joined together by zigzag approaches and by a line of reinforced trenches (armed with machine guns), which were almost completely proof against rifle, machine gun, or gun fire. The ordinary German trenches were almost invisible from 350 yards away, a distance which permitted a very deadly fire. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the question of his reasoning which pursues a devious and zigzag course, varying according to the way the wind blows—and he is not alone in this peculiarity in Kansas, as I say—Jonathan steadily toiled against the wind, he stopped altogether, and taking out his lunch basket, he removed a pie and sat down on a log to eat it, while his ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... apart on centers. The tops of the towers have X-bracing and the connecting spans have two panels of intermediate vertical sway bracing between the three pairs of longitudinal girders. In the low viaducts, where there are no towers, every fourth panel has zigzag lateral bracing in the two panels between the pairs of ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... tenth or eleventh round we hit her in the upper works, as was shown by a bright red and yellow flash near her funnel. This did not check her firing or speed in the least, in fact she seemed to be gaining on us. She also began to zigzag slightly and throw smoke bombs overboard, which were not so effective from her point of view as I had thought they ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... covered with a pattern intended to imitate the similarly shaped designs of variegated glass of the Graeco-Phoenician period. This pattern is entirely produced by minute globules of metal soldered to the surface in tiers of zigzag or Vandyke patterns. Another specimen is a strip of gold covered with granulated lines and bearing a row of birds in relief. On other ornaments are exquisitely carved heads and flowers, produced apparently by hammering on the reverse of the object, but with a delicacy ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... obviate these inconveniences they are fixed obliquely to the axis of the central pipe, and are differently arranged in regard to each other. A more symmetrical disposition of them could, however, be adopted by placing them zigzag, or in such a way as to form two helices, one of which would move in a particular direction, and the other in a different way. The central pipe, furnished with its brooms, being set in motion by means of a pulley fixed upon its axis (which also carries a flywheel), ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... words in a strange language, which somehow made my flesh creep. He repeated the words: "Orel. Orel. Adartha Cay." Then he glanced at the other hand, still muttering, and made a sort of mark with his fingers on my forehead. Hugh told me afterwards that he seemed to trace a kind of zigzag on my left temple. All the time he was muttering he seemed to be half-conscious, almost in a trance, or as if he were mad: he frightened us dreadfully. After he had made the mark upon my brow ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... instantly obeyed, for, under cover of sharp, well-aimed fire from aloft, from the shelter of projecting rock or stranded bowlder, again there leaped into sight a few scattered, sinewy forms that rushed in bewildering zigzag up the steep, until safe beyond their supports, when they, too, vanished, and again the cliff stood barren of Apache foemen as the level of the garrison parade. It was science in savage warfare against which the drill book of the cavalry taught no method whatsoever. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... train painfully climbed the narrow, rocky zigzag trail. The climate is favorable for agriculture. Wherever the sides of the canyon were not absolutely precipitous, stone-faced terraces and irrigation had transformed them long ago into arable fields. Four thousand feet above the valley floor we came to a very fine series of beautiful ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... which should go for Fildes and Bartlett, and which for Lawson and Moore. By such division harmony would be attained, and one city would be going the wrong road, the other the right road; at present both are going zigzag. ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... to drive with him, than because she liked the arrangement—Mrs. Phelps got him to take her trunk and herself upon their way. They drove steadily upward, through apple orchards that stretched in hot zigzag lines, like the spokes of a great wheel, about them, and through strips of forest, where the corduroy road was springy beneath the wagon wheels, and past ugly low cow sheds, where the red-brown cattle were already gathering for ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... together, tossed above the hurrying under-mass, tumultuous as a close-packed drove of wild horses. The rivermen rode them easily. For an appreciable time one man perched on a stable timber watching keenly ahead. Then quite coolly he leaped, made a dozen rapid zigzag steps forward, and stopped. The log he had quitted dropped sullenly from sight, and two closed, grinding, where it had been. In twenty seconds every man was ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... is a very charming design of the Annunciation, and, on the under, another of the Crucifixion, each measuring 7-3/4 by 5-3/4 inches. In both cases the ground is worked with fine gold threads 'couched' in a zigzag pattern, the rest of the work being very finely executed in split-stitch by the use of which apparently continuous lines can be made, each successive stitch beginning a little within that immediately preceding it—the effect in some places being that of a very fine chain-stitch. The lines of ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... was now steered this way and that, sometimes backed, and then sent forward again. After about an hour of this zigzag work Mr. Gibbs ordered the ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... a zigzag course, and the way was strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but out of the wreckage John Quincy Adams always appeared, calm, poised and serene. When he opposed the purchase of Louisiana it looks as if he allowed his animosity ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and they promptly became unmanageable. In vain Phaethon pulled at the reins; in vain he called the steeds by name. Up the sky they dashed, and then, first to the south, then to the north, they took their zigzag course across the heavens. What a sight it must have presented from below, this sun reeling crazily about the sky! Worst of all, however, the horses did not keep at the same distance from the earth. First they went down, down, until they almost ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... "black-smithing". Every time we fired we drew a perfect hornet's nest about our heads. While attending to a casualty, a shell broke through both sides of the trench, front and back, about twelve feet away. The zigzag of the trench was between it and us, and we escaped. From my bunk the moon looks down at me, and the wind whistles along the trench like a corridor. As the trenches run in all directions they catch the wind however it blows, ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... to this is seen in electricity, which lies latent and viewless till by a sudden coalescing of its parts it manifests itself in zigzag lines and flashes of light which ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... it wrapped me round like a cloak. It was a universal caustic, that would not endure to be touched; much less torn away. I groaned. I gnashed my teeth. I griped my hands. I struck myself violent blows. I ran with fury, in circles, in zigzag, with sudden turns and frantic bounds; and, finding myself on the banks of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.[195] See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson |
