"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passion awakened again in her grandfather's breast, and to what further distraction it might tempt him Heaven only knew. What fears their absence might have occasioned already! Persons might be seeking for them even then. Would they be forgiven in the morning, or turned adrift again! Oh! why had they stopped in that strange place? It would have been better, under any circumstances, to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... feared further punitive acts at the hands of the British, they were totally unprepared for the approaching catastrophe, and did not for a moment dream that they were to be cast out of their homes, deprived of all they held dear in the land of their nativity, and sent adrift as wanderers ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... dismantle the set, build a raft and set himself and the apparatus adrift upon the water in the attempt to ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... Canadian history which I found an interesting study, namely, the disbanding of a regiment of Scottish soldiers in the neighborhood of Rimouski and the district about Father Point. Many of these stalwart sons of old Scotia who were thus left adrift strangers in a strange land accepted the situation philosophically, intermarried amongst the French families already in that part of the country, and settled down as farmers in a small way. A visit to that part of the country will show what their ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... ready to embark now. Here is the harbor; and there lies the Great Eastern at anchor,—the biggest island that ever got adrift. Stay one moment,—they will ask us about secession and the revolted States,—it may be as well to take a look at Charleston, for an instant, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... simple and commonplace at once, if I had only asked their meaning. I was, for the most of the time, in a world of my own. I had a great deal of imagination, and was always telling myself stories; and my mind was adrift in these so much, that my real absent-mindedness was mistaken for childish unconcern. Yet I was a thoroughly simple unaffected child. My dreams and thoughtfulness gave me a certain tact and perception unusual ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... of some months, the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law. The Missouri compromise was abrogated, and the question of the extension of slavery to the territories was adrift again, never to be got rid of except through the abolition of slavery itself by war. The demands of the South had now come fully abreast with the proposal of Douglas: that slavery should have permission to enter all the Territories, if it could. The opponents of the extension of slavery, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... corruption and other economic crimes; and (c) keep afloat the large state-owned enterprises, many of which had been shielded from competition by subsidies and had been losing the ability to pay full wages and pensions. From 80 to 120 million surplus rural workers are adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time low-paying jobs. Popular resistance, changes in central policy, and loss of authority by rural cadres have weakened China's population control program, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... must see to it that free Cuba be a reality, not a name, a perfect entity, not a hasty experiment bearing within itself the elements of failure. Our mission, to accomplish which we took up the wager of battle, is not to be fulfilled by turning adrift any loosely framed commonwealth to face the vicissitudes which too often attend weaker States whose natural wealth and abundant resources are offset by the incongruities of their political organization and the recurring occasions for internal ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... aside that law on two different occasions and thus succeeded in convicting criminals to whose crimes there were no witnesses but themselves. What have you accomplished this day? Do you realize it? You have set adrift, unadmonished, in this community, two men endowed with an awful and mysterious gift, a hidden and grisly power for evil —a power by which each in his turn may commit crime after crime of the most ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was agreed upon. A quantity of provisions and water were got ready, and then Don Luego was seized and disarmed in spite of his struggles. The seamen lowered him in a boat over the side of the galleon, and then, cutting the ropes, cast the fierce commander adrift at the mercy of wind and wave. They watched him as the boat was seen to rise at times on the crest of a huge wave, and saw that he shook at them threateningly his disarmed hand. At last they lost sight of him, and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "My good Sir! when the sea runs very high this is the case, as I know, but if my authority is not enough, see Bligh's account of his run to Timor, after being cut adrift by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... picked up the other note. It was from Spaulding, and as he read it all his finespun theories vanished and once more he was adrift on an uncharted sea without a ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... apparently, the only way in which he could hope to disencumber himself of them, except by releasing the ship at the same time. To turn some seven hundred prisoners, however, many of them delicate women and children, adrift in a place known to be suffering from the fearful scourge of yellow-fever, would have been an act of inhumanity of which the Confederate captain was quite incapable. Sorely to his disappointment, therefore, he felt himself compelled ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... offspring were a fair example of these irresponsible people. Like a ship adrift without skipper or rudder, they were at the mercy of every adverse wind of misfortune. Each morning they went out with frantic energy to earn or in some way procure sustenance for one more day. Young Dave hounded the sponge fishermen ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... turn the poor child adrift among strangers," observed papa. "We must take him with us, and try to ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... one from Lady Considine, one from Mrs. Sinclair, one from Miss Macdonnell, and one from Mrs. Wilding, and found that all these ladies were obliged to postpone their dinners on account of the misdeeds of their cooks, she felt that the laws of average were all adrift. Surely the three remaining letters must contain news of a character to counterbalance what had already been revealed, but the event showed that, on this particular morning, Fortune was in a mood to strike hard. Colonel Trestrail, who gave in his chambers carefully devised ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... had lost heavily under the fire of the Venetian flagship, and had failed in an effort to board her. He cut his galley adrift. Veniero let her go, and turned to attack other enemies. Pertev's ship drifted down on two Christian galleys, and was promptly boarded and taken. The Seraskier slipped on board of a small craft he was towing astern, reached another ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Grigsby, slowly, "that we've our three friends to thank for this. Looks to me as though somebody had cut the rope and set the canoe adrift, ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... dismissed; at some point in their lives they have known desire, have dreamt of ambition, have hoped for friendship. In all of them there was once something sweet, "like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards in Winesburg." Now, broken and adrift, they clutch at some rigid notion or idea, a "truth" which turns out to bear the stamp of monomania, leaving them helplessly sputtering, desperate to speak out but unable to. Winesburg, Ohio registers the losses inescapable to life, and it does so with a deep fraternal ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... State lingo; mayhap in Greek or High Dutch. But dost it know what it means itself? canst answer me that, good woman? Your midshipman can sing out, and pass the word, when the captain gives the order, but just send him adrift by himself, and let him work the ship of his own head, and stop my grog if you dont find all the Johnny Raws ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... observations, while by Sunday afternoon's we were in 79 deg. 50' north latitude, and 133 deg. 23' east longitude. This fall-off to the southeast again was not more than I had expected, as it has been almost calm since Sunday. I explain the thing to myself thus: When the ice has been set adrift in a certain direction by the wind blowing that way for some time it gradually in process of drifting becomes more compressed, and when that wind dies away a reaction in the opposite direction takes place. Such ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... suggested some personal relation to that past which her father preferred to keep unexplained? These questions crowded into her mind speculatively. They were seeking a form of conveyance when she realized that she had been adrift with imaginings. He was getting older. She must expect his preoccupation and his ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... me up an' 'e looked me down Till I felt my cheeks go warm, For I knowed there wos somethin' adrift by 'is frown; Then 'e closed 'is jaw with a wicious snap; 'Where,' ses 'e, 'is your perishin' cap? Do you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... call from Rugiero. His face was pale and his eyes were wild. He sank into an easy-chair, and after a long silence broke into the most terrible invectives against his brother Eugenio, who had dragged the widow and orphans from a peaceful home to cast them adrift. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... there will be no safety for any of us, but that we shall all be turned into filth and corruption. Therefore, John Sharkey, we Rovers of The Happy Delivery, in council assembled, have decreed that while there be yet time, before the plague spreads, you shall be set adrift in a boat to find such a fate as Fortune may be pleased to ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them to do so. It was comparatively easy to move her with setting-poles, but they could have done nothing with the unwieldy craft in the deep water. I therefore concluded that they had merely pushed her out into the lake, and then turned her adrift. It was probable that she had been driven ashore by the north-west wind somewhere in ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... me the choke off sign, and as we walks up Broadway he gradually opens up more and more on the subject until I've got a fair map of the situation. Seems that Sis ain't exactly set him adrift without warnin'. He'd sort of helped cut the cable himself. She'd begun by writin' to him every week, tellin' him all about the lively season she was havin' in Washington, and how much fun she was gettin' out of life. She even ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... in a confessing humour; therefore Milo had to gather scandal as he could. There was very little difficulty about this. 'In the city of Tours,' he writes, 'in those middle days of Advent, it appears that rumour, still gadding, was adrift with names almost too high for the writing. There were many there who had no business; the Count of Blois, for instance, the Baron of Chateaudun, the fighting Bishop of Durham (I fear, a hireling shepherd), Geoffrey Talebot, Hugh of Saint-Circ. One reason of this was that King Henry was in ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... of Economists which Parliament contained, now Gentlemen, solicits the honour of representing you; and merit may perhaps be claimed for him for his exertions upon that occasion. If it be praiseworthy to have contributed to cast shoals of our deserving countrymen adrift, without regard to their past services, that praise cannot be denied him; if it be commendable to have availed himself of inordinate momentary passion to carry measures whereby the general weal was sacrificed, whether designedly for the attainment of popularity, or ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a line, I expect, on this little debate of ours. Yep! Gerald is No. 8 on Pyramid Gordon's list. He'd been a private secretary for Mr. Gordon at one time or another; but he'd been handed his passports kind of abrupt one mornin', and had been set adrift in a cold world ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... was tedious and, when the winter came, even dangerous; a few pilots were lost and some spent hours adrift on wrecked seaplanes. Here is the report of a December experience of Squadron Commander J. W. Seddon, over ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... is, Mistress Lydia; an' I may as well out with it. Ken you pictur' to yourself a craft tossed about on the sea, with no cap'ain nor compass nor steerin' gear nor nothin',—the whole thing clean adrift, an' no anchor to hold it from a-driftin' furder? Well, I'm that craft. I want some one to tow me into smooth waters, and then sail alongside allers—somebody kind and sensible and good. Now do you ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... to waste an hour or a sixpence upon the unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of the poor lone woman left a widow in the little villa there. I was annoyed with myself because Clem's abandonment of me so much affected me. I wished I could cut the rope and carelessly cast him adrift as he had cast me adrift, but I could not. I never could make out and cannot make out what was the secret of his influence over me; why I was unable to say, "If you do not care for me I do not care for you." I longed sometimes for complete rupture, so that we ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... had a confidential conversation with Mrs. Monckton. He told her he had been very secret with her for her good. "I saw," said he, "this Monckton had no deep regard for you, and was capable of turning you adrift in prosperity; and I knew that if I told you everything you would let it out to him, and tempt him to play the villain. But the time is come that I must speak, in justice to you both. That estate he left your son half in joke is virtually his. Fourteen ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... just vouchsafed him, that he was justified of his own past action, merely emphasised his consciousness that he was still very much adrift, with no definite port to steer for. He had, perhaps unwisely, promised George Lovegrove that he would stay on at Trimmer's Green, but what, after all, did that amount to? Even the exterior life was second-hand enough there; the interior life, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... adrift!" cried Ruth. "I have a very dear friend I must introduce you to. Oh—" she hesitated and turned to the Governor, "is Mr. Comly a roamer? Has he a heart ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... vegetation that seemed to be writhing in the gloom. The river, free now from the gorges and shallows around the city, had ceased its roaring. It seethed and swirled along in absolute silence, effacing all trace of the land. The two men felt like a couple of shipwrecked sailors adrift on a shoreless, sunless ocean, alone save for the reddish flame flickering at the prow, and the submerged treetops ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sea wall," he cried, "is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith "Where ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... adventure of his own in the filibustering days that preceded our war with Spain; the faithful narrative of the voyage of an open boat, manned by a handful of shipwrecked men. But Captain Bligh's account of his small boat journey, after he had been sent adrift by the mutineers of the Bounty, seems tame in comparison, although of the two the English sailor's voyage was ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... was also on board, to be returned to him. I sent him on shore, and presently made sail to go to the other large island which was in sight to the westward. I also ordered the other large canoe, which the caravel Nina was towing astern, to be cast adrift; and I soon saw that it reached the land at the same time as the man to whom I had given the above things. I had not wished to take the skein of cotton that he offered me. All the others came round him and seemed astonished, for it appeared ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... sucked against a big dock and smashed and bumped down a quarter of a mile of its length before we could get clear. Two hours afterward, on San Pablo Bay, the wind was piping up and we were reefing down. It is no fun to pick up a skiff adrift in a heavy sea and gale. That was our next task, for our skiff, swamping, parted both towing painters we had bent on. Before we recovered it we had nearly killed ourselves with exhaustion, and we certainly had strained the sloop in every part from keelson ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... haste, yet haltingly; were all but inaudible whispers; went flying back and forwards, like brief cries for aid, implying a peculiar sense of aloofness, of being cut adrift and thrown on ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... that she was afraid to do so now for two reasons: first, she feared he might discover on his first attack that someone had had access before him to the sanctuary of love, and secondly, from the dread that in the event of a child coming before the usual time he might denounce her and turn her adrift. ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous
... mild words whence they came, "for in good sooth," said he, "never have I seen so well-favoured a company"; and Horn answered proudly, "We are of good Christian blood, and we come from Southland, which has just been raided by pagans, who slew many of our people, and sent us adrift in a boat, to be the sport of the winds and waves. For a day and a night we have been at sea without a rudder; and now we have been cast upon your coast, you may enslave or slay us, if but, it ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is going crazy on the notion of individual ability. Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else, without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift, and is pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, and shipwrecked on some ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... As I was always in a blithe humour, worked hard, and knew a great many good songs, I soon earned a good deal more than the rest. This, however, awakened my comrades' envy. They blackened my character to my master, so that he turned me adrift; and everywhere where I went or where I stood they cried after me, 'German cur! Cursed heretic!' Three days ago, as I was helping to unload a boat near St. Sebastian, they fell upon me with sticks and stones. I defended myself stoutly, but that malicious Nicolo dealt me a blow with his oar, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the sunshine upon the stone steps with her head bowed upon her arms. The morning that was so bright was not bright for her; she thought that life had used her but unkindly. A great tree, growing close to the house, sent leaves of dull gold adrift, and they lay at her feet and upon the skirt of her dress. The constable spoke to her: "Now, mistress, here's a gentleman as stands for the King and the law. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... effected in 1867 when the Bishop boldly cut adrift from New Zealand and made his base for summer work at Norfolk Island, lying 800 miles north-east of Sydney.[40] The advantages which it possessed over Auckland were two. Firstly, it was so many hundred miles nearer the centre of the Mission work; ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... behind him a'n't Mr. Jennings's, I declare! Boarders must be warned an' watched, elseways we shall hev all in the house afloat, 'cepting the stoves an' flat-irons, by-'n'-by. Somebody at Mrs. Moyler's acted so, and the house was like a roarin' sea, with the baby adrift in his little cradle, and the roaches a-swimmin' round. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... cents a week each had been receiving, representing the five shillings with which they had started from home. The manager, who had become discouraged with his American experience, refused to accede to their demands, gave them each a ticket for Chicago, and heartlessly turned them adrift. Arriving in the city, they quite naturally at once applied to a theatrical agency, through which they were sent to a disreputable house where a vaudeville program was given each night. Delighted that they had found work so quickly, they ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... accounting will demand Should this frail craft be wrecked or run aground, For he doth wish to cast it soon adrift With crew well drilled to ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... Philadelphia merchant, to the tune of seven hundred pounds sterling. The money had been invested in a cargo of flour and corn meal which had been shipped to Jamaica by the bark Nancy Lee. The Nancy Lee had been captured by the pirates off Currituck Sound, the crew set adrift in the longboat, and the bark herself and all her cargo burned ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... attempting to escape over the river Elbe. After this fury had subsided, the remaining inhabitants were stripped naked, severely scourged, had their ears cropped, and being yoked together like oxen were turned adrift. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... "cheer up, my lads, and we shall do well!" Encouraged by the captain the men laboured on, though from the violent working of the ship it was not without great difficulty and danger that the mass of spars, ropes, and canvas could be hauled on board or cast adrift. As a landsman my assistance was not of much value, though I stood by clinging to the bulwarks, to lend a hand in case I should be required. While glancing to windward, as I did every now and then, in hopes of seeing signs of the abatement of the gale, I caught sight of what seemed ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... was excellent, but I found that my amateur lashing together with the strong current that was running made the whole plan quite impossible, so, after being nearly thrown into the river several times, and one of the floats coming adrift and washing away, and then doing a flying leap to save myself being hurled into the water upon a trestle which collapsed with my weight, I decided to give up the experiment and explore the river bank further down in the hope of getting across. Eventually, after going for about two kilometres, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... resting on the ground, placed in baskets perched on pinnacles of rock or hung to the branches of trees,—the last being the mode often adopted in the case of children. Lastly, some nations were accustomed to sink their dead beneath the water, or turn them adrift in canoes. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... said not to have exceeded eighty thousand men. At this time, in fact, a weak administration had suffered the empire to be torn asunder by convulsions. Every department, both civil and military, was under the control of eunuchs. Six thousand of these creatures are said to have been turned adrift by the Tartars on taking possession of the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... only were clean——" Miss Vance looked uneasy and perplexed. "She is not my maid. She is Fraulein Arpent. The Ewalts brought her as governess from Paris, don't you remember? They sent the girls to Bryn Mawr last week and turned her adrift, almost penniless. She wished to go back to France. I engaged her as assistant chaperone for ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... seaboard for a ship the Plague came; and because I had preached its coming, the people rose in wrath, and, falling upon me, roughly handled me. They beat me full sore in the market- place; then, piercing my eyeballs, set me adrift in a ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... my dear sir, the matter is decided; for my heart whispers me that this slight deviation from truth would be a less culpable offence than turning so young and, I had almost said, so innocent a creature adrift upon the world. I may take your opinion ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the show's owner. Four rival advance cars go out on one train. Teddy sends the enemy's cars adrift. Sleeping a sleep of innocence. Phil is puzzled over the mystery of the missing cars. Teddy's expression arouses the suspicion of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... poetry and the essays addressed to the mood of unrest, of questioning, to the scientific spirit and to the shifting attitudes of social change and reform, claim the attention of an age that is completely adrift in regard to the relations of the supernatural and the material, the ideal and the real. It would be natural if in such a time of confusion the calm tones of unexaggerated literary art should be not so much heeded as the more strident voices. Yet when ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... gains the boat, and climbs the side. 110 The beasts astonished, lined the strand, The anchor's weighed, he drives from land: The slack sail shifts from side to side; The boat untrimmed admits the tide, Borne down, adrift, at random toss'd, His oar breaks short, the rudder's lost. The bear, presuming in his skill, Is here and there officious still; Till striking on the dangerous sands, Aground the shattered vessel stands. 120 To see the bungler thus distress'd, The very fishes sneer and jest. Even ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... comes to me this morning—no matter from whom—and here's what it says: 'I know you're not the eldest son, and that somebody else is the heir of Tilgate.' Surely, if anybody was to know, I should have known it first. Surely, if I'm to be turned adrift on the world, after being brought up to think myself a man of means so long, I should, at least, be turned adrift with my ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... least know what book I wanted. I knew it wasn't a Bible, for we had one at home, but further than that I could not go. Now, if knowing how to buy a book is a part of complete living, then, in that blond presence, I was hopelessly adrift. I had been taught that gambling is wrong, but there was a situation where I had to take a chance or show the white feather. Of course, I took the chance and was relieved of my money by a blond who may or may not ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... delicate and thread-like outline: gallant, too, when, we being all aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus 'Cheerily men, oh cheerily!' and she followed proudly in the towing steamboat's wake: but bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-rope being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spreading her white wings she soared away upon ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... With some difficulty we rowed out to sea, and round the S.W. point of Anchor Isle. It happened very fortunately that chance directed me to take this course, in which we found the sportsmen's boat adrift, and laid hold of her the very moment she would have been dashed against the rocks. I was not long at a loss to guess how she came there, nor was I under any apprehensions for the gentlemen that had been in her; and after refreshing ourselves with such as we had to eat and drink, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... beat a slave severely, for alleged carelessness in letting a boat get adrift. The slave was told to secure the boat: whether he took sufficient means for this purpose I do not know; he was not allowed to make any defence. Mr. Swan called him up, and asked why he did not secure the boat: he pulled off his hat and began to tell his story. Swan told him he was ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... went to bed, regretting the preposterous fanlike spread of the corncrib walls. Nothing walled should be smaller at the floor than it was at the top. It gave one a hopeless feeling of constriction. The feeling colored his dreams. Kenny found himself hazily adrift in an inquisitorial corncrib made of bars of moon-plated silver. They pressed in upon him ever tighter and tighter until with a mighty sweep of his arms he ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... doctor; "try that in law and see how it would work. No two cases would be decided alike; you'd be adrift at once, and a drifting ship soon touches bottom. No, that won't hold water. Stick to general principles, and if a thing is an exception to the rule, put it in Schedule A or B, and you know where to look for it. General ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... answered Iola, smiling. "Mamma, what do you think of that? Did any of you gentlemen ever see a young woman of much ability that you did not look upon as a flotsam all adrift until some ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... 'Tis not the little Province Town maid again! And adrift like this. I'll have to take you to England and let Betsey and ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... in a softened voice, "I am sure you cannot understand what you ask of me when you seek to take my home and turn me adrift. Here I lived with my poor husband; here my boy was born. During my married life I have had no other home. It is a humble dwelling, but it has associations and charms for me which it can never have for no one else. Let Mr. ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut by ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Fournier, the American, Lazowski, and Maillard are not only murderers, but likewise robbers,[26147] while, by their side, arises the future general of the Paris National Guard, Henriot, at first a domestic in the family of an attorney who turned him out for theft, then a tax-clerk, again turned adrift for theft, and, finally, a police spy, and still incarcerated in the Bicetre prison for another theft, and, at last, a battalion officer, and one of the September executioners.[26148]—Simultaneously ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... as until they reached the mouth of the river there would be no occasion for paddling, and beyond that the stock of provisions could be transferred to their own canoe to take the place of those used up on the way, and the craft could then be cast adrift. As there was a light breeze, however, the sail was hoisted, rather because it gave them steerage way than for any increase to their speed. As soon as the canoe shot out into the rougher water in the full force of the stream, Godfrey was still more delighted with the boat, ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... was a considerable benefit to me. It would have been no small hardship to have been turned adrift immediately under my unfavourable circumstances, with the additional disadvantage of the wound I had received; and yet I could scarcely have ventured to remain under the same roof with a man, to whom my appearance was as a guilty ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... but little of Mrs. Braddock and Christine. Braddock's failure to extract money from him made that worthy so disagreeable that his wife and daughter were in mortal terror of his threats to turn the boy adrift if he caught ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... had been stolen. If such were the doings of officials, it came as a matter of course that the hard-handed merchant-skippers who in brigs and schooners hung round the coasts of the Islands thought little of carrying off men or women. They would turn their victims adrift in Australia or on some South Sea islet, as their humour moved them. With even more cruel callousness, they would sometimes put Maoris carried off from one tribe on shore amongst another and maybe hostile tribe. Slavery was the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... wandering demon of Drunkenness finds a ship adrift,—no steady wind in its sails, no thoughtful pilot directing its course,— he steps on board, takes the helm, and steers straight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... adventures, after his wound obliged him to leave Jamestown. He visited this country again; made a voyage to the Summer Isles; fought with pirates; joined the French against the Spaniards; and was adrift, in a little boat, alone, on the stormy sea, during a night so tempestuous that thirteen French ships were wrecked, near the Isle of Re; ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... Hiram could manage the machine—I even doubt with something wrong with it, as there surely was, if he could keep it adrift," decided Dave. ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... heard the call, but as his name had not been mentioned he dared not take it upon himself to move so much as one of his tightly braced feet. He seemed to feel that if he did so it would be at the risk of his life; and the thought of being cast adrift on that raging sea filled him ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... palms and the tiny block-house; and seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes of gray water, he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that he had been strapped to a raft and cast adrift. People came for hours at a time and stood at the foot of his cot, and talked with him and he to them—people he had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had thought were dead. One of them he could have sworn he had seen buried in a deep trench, and ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... had never seen you at all," replied Philip, uncourteously, and restoring his money to his pocket; "your fraud upon Mr. Stubmore, and your assurance that you knew me, have sent me adrift upon the world." ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... often disgraced and misused, vested the government of the Church in the presbyterate; and the national sentiment approved of the change. But there was no necessity for upsetting the whole cathedral system, and rooting out the whole cathedral staff, because the bishop was turned adrift. Had the Canonries been spared, an immense boon would have been secured for the Reformed Church. Had the stipends attached to them not been alienated, the Church would have possessed, at all its most important centres, a staff of clergymen chosen for their ability and worth, for their learning ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... what did I then see?.... The extreme rapidity of the movements had deranged the accessories added to the turn-out of both the colonel and Captain B***; the false tail of the colonel's horse had come adrift, the centre part, made of a pad of tow, was hanging down nearly to the ground and the hairs were spread over the horse's crupper in a sort of peacock's tail. As for Captain B***'s calves, they had slipped round to the front, and could be seen as large lumps on his ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... also the push lateral. A good example of the latter style of operation is afforded by the dowager who is fortunate enough to have an eldest son to use as a pushing machine. Handled with tact, a young heir, not yet cut adrift from the maternal apron-string, may be turned to excellent account. There is, or was, a sentimental ballad entitled, "I'll kiss him for his mother." One might reverse the sentiment in the case of Madame Mere. Of her the dowagers with daughters to ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... freightage of the hold, falls into a prolonged slumber, probably caused by the foul air in that part of the vessel. When the brig is four days at sea, a majority of the crew mutiny; and after killing many of those who have not joined them, Captain Barnard is set adrift in a small boat, without food and with only a jug of water. Young Barnard is permitted to remain on the vessel. There is a dog that plays a leading part in the mutiny episode by acting as a messenger between Barnard and Pym, who had no ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... that his words were falling upon deaf ears, and were perfectly useless. She had cut herself adrift from her aunt and uncle, whom she cordially disliked, leaving them a letter to tell them that as she was now her own mistress, she never meant to trouble them or Mr. Greenbank again, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... the interjacent seas of Egypt and Syria. Could they be transported to Egypt by land? No; for it was not possible to spare a sufficient escort; besides, this plan would have included the separate difficulty as to food. Finally, then, as the sole resource left, could they be turned adrift? No; for this was but another mode of saying, 'Let us fight the matter over again; reinstate yourselves as our enemies; let us leave Jaffa re infectâ, and let all begin again de novo'—since, assuredly, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... him and those foremost scouts, was eagerly signaling to him with his broad-brimmed hat. Three of the black dots along the gently rising slope far ahead had leaped from their mounts and were slowly crawling forward, while one of them, his horse turned adrift and contentedly nibbling at the buffalo grass, was surely signaling that there was ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... grief enfeebled was I turned adrift, Helpless as sailor cast on desert rock; Nor morsel to my mouth that day did lift, Nor dared my hand at any door to knock. I lay, where with his drowsy mates, the cock From the cross timber of an out-house hung; How dismal tolled, that night, the city clock! ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... consort was brought to bed of another prince, on whom the unnatural sisters had no more compassion than on his brother; but exposed him likewise in a basket, and set him adrift in the canal, pretending this time that the sultaness was delivered of a cat. It was happy also for this child that the intendant of the gardens was walking by the canal side, who had it carried to his wife, and charged her to take as much care of it as of the former; which was as agreeable to her ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... lives! secrets, known only to ourselves, that change the face of all nature before our eyes, we are sent adrift on every passing current, to explore the truths of experience for ourselves, and sad lessons some of them are, which we read through our gathering tears, and learn ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... to some focus of rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace; O, say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, Hast thou not found one shore where those tired, drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with thee indeed! But that I mean to hear thee howl on the rack, I would debase this sword, and lay thee prostrate At this thy paramour's feet; then drag her forth 310 Stained with adulterous blood, and— —mark you, traitress! Strumpeted first, then turned adrift to beggary! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Adrift in taintless seas she dreaming lies, The island city, time-worn now, and gray, Her dark wharves ruinous, where once there lay Tall ships, at rest from far-sea industries. The busy hand of trade no longer plies Within her ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... river, which was granted; but they had no sooner left the shore than they drew their pistols, overpowered the crew, and made them go up eighteen miles to meet another government boat coming down loaded with stores, tied the boats together and burned them, setting the crew of each adrift in their own yawl, and nobody knew it till they reached Memphis, two hours later. Being able to hear nothing of the wounded, we pushed on to Helena, ninety miles below, and here dangers thickened. We saw the guerrillas burning cotton, with our own eyes, along the shore, we ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... "Because I am sick of fiddling do you suppose I am going to send you adrift? We shall settle down for the winter. Some capital. Which one ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... for once; but in the meantime I had taken another notion, and become so obstinately fond of it that I would have carried it out, I believe, in the teeth of Captain Smollett himself. This was to slip out under cover of the night, cut the Hispaniola adrift, and let her go ashore where she fancied. I had quite made up my mind that the mutineers, after their repulse of the morning, had nothing nearer their hearts than to up anchor and away to sea; this, I thought, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one day I awoke to the fact that I had a special right to one of the finest men who had gone out to do his share, and a special place at his side. To cut a long story short, I won through the frantic opposition of my family, cut myself adrift, and came out here to see for myself what Billy was doing that gave him a satisfaction he had never found in his peaceful easy living; in spite of the hunger I had always known was wearing out his soul for me." She looked out across the country dreamily, before she finished. "I shall never ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... determined to adopt this course. The cargo of the pinnace was accordingly transferred to the hold of the Hoboken. A short summary of their history was written, corked up in a bottle, and fastened to the mast of the Mary, which was then cut adrift. A tear gathered on the cheeks of the young men as they saw their old friend in adversity dropping slowly behind, and they did not withdraw their eyes from it till every vestige of its hull was lost in the shadows ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... a little way in silence he turned to me with the jolliest twinkle in his eyes and asked me why the boat ought to be called the Mayflower. I was so surprised, I asked him if that was a riddle, and he said no, but he wondered if I wouldn't feel that it was the Mayflower because I was adrift in ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... landowners keep taking to philanthropy, to converting themselves into philanthropic knights-errant, and spending millions upon senseless hospitals and institutions, and so ruining themselves and turning their families adrift. Yes, that is ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Sometimes they came stealing through the creeks in "dugouts," as we did on their side of the water, and occasionally an officer of ours was fired upon while making his rounds by night. Often some boat or scow would go adrift, and sometimes a mere dark mass of river-weed would be floated by the tide past the successive stations, eliciting a challenge and perhaps a shot from each. I remember the vivid way in which one of the men stated to his officer ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... society went selfishly on in its old channels, unmindful of the young life set adrift again in a sea of doubt and discouragement, with no hand held out to draw it back from the peril of shipwreck. The despairing mood that had settled down on Alec during the summer seized him again. He would work doggedly on during the day, thinking of Flip and his ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... instances on record showing that people have been planted on Pacific shores many hundred miles from their native land. It seems that the primitive Pacific Islanders have sent people adrift from their shores, thus adding a rational cause to those many fortuitous causes for the interisland migration of small ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... then. My name is Alonso de Guzman Calderon y Tellez. This same fellow that's talking to you now has been director of a circus in America; I've travelled through all the countries and sailed over every sea in the world; at present I'm adrift in a violent tempest; at night I go from cafe to cafe with this phonograph, and the next morning I carry around one of these betting apparatuses that consists of an Infiel[1] Tower with a spiral. Underneath ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... baredst sending back the gift; * Showing unlove for me withouten shift: An thou bear spite of Past, the Past forgive, * And for the Caliphate cast the Past adrift." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... being fought and won, and lost—the bells rung in William's victory, in the very same tone with which they would have pealed for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and had to shift for themselves. They, as well as old beliefs and institutions, had lost their moorings and gone adrift in the storm. As in the South Sea Bubble, almost everybody gambled; as in the Railway mania—not many centuries ago—almost every one took his unlucky share: a man of that time, of the vast talents and ambition of Swift, could scarce do otherwise than grasp at his prize, and make his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Haroun and the vizier could with difficulty restrain their laughter, as they shook their heads. "Yes," continued Yussuf, "that vicegerent of a tattered beard, and more tattered understanding, has issued a decree for closing the baths for three days, by which cruel ordinance, I was again cast adrift upon the sea of necessity. However, Providence stood my friend, and threw a few dirhems in my way, and I have made my customary provision in spite of the wretch of a caliph, who I fully believe is an ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Bethlehem, besides the smaller houses, were all suppressed. The sick people were sent back to their own houses; the brethren and sisters were dispersed. One House contained one hundred blind men, all these were cast adrift; another contained a number of aged priests—these were turned into the streets. Eight schools perished at the Dissolution. For a time London had ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... Liu speedily remarked laughing, "have cast me adrift; they made me knock about, until I found my ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was once more in the busy street before the bank, it seemed clear to his boyish mind that, being now cast adrift upon the world and responsible to no one, there was no reason why he should not at once proceed to the nearest gold mines! The idea of returning to Mr. Peyton and Susy, as a disowned and abandoned outcast, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... getting a scare from something big and flimsy that was drifting loose, I got my hand on the cord quite close to the studs, and reached them. I lit the little lamp first of all to see what it was I had collided with, and discovered that old copy of Lloyd's News had slipped its moorings, and was adrift in the void. That brought me out of the infinite to my own proper dimensions again. It made me laugh and pant for a time, and suggested the idea of a little oxygen from one of the cylinders. After that I lit the heater until I felt warm, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... man Philip Selwyn is. He permitted Alixe to sue him for absolute divorce—and, to give her every chance to marry Ruthven, he refused to defend the suit. That sort of chivalry is very picturesque, no doubt, but it cost him his career—set him adrift at thirty-five, a man branded as having been divorced from his wife for cause, with no profession left him, no business, not much money—a man in the prime of life and hope and ambition, clean in thought and deed; an upright, just, generous, sensitive man, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... which he was sorry, and that was that he could not discharge Hanson, the overseer, that very day. He believed his mother was afraid of him; but the man was under contract for a year, and could have claimed damages if he had been turned adrift without good and sufficient reason. It was not the damages that Marcy cared for, but he was restrained from urging Hanson's dismissal through fear of setting ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... touch, which showed Chalmers that, without the apology, his captain had meant to cut him adrift, sans hesitation, and yet contained a pretty little compliment to his footer, embarrassed Chalmers more than a little; but Acton offered his forward tea and muffins, and five minutes afterwards Chalmers was finding out what a nice fellow Acton really could be. The next day Chalmers smoothed his ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... the highest degree beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body, Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Adrift on Time's returnless tide, As waves that follow waves, we glide. God grant we leave upon the shore Some waif of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you have had greater experience, and paid more for it. What will you do with the fair blonde, though. I suppose the matrimonial compact will send her adrift." ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the covers are off, neatly folded and stowed aboard; the picketing wires are cast adrift, and the Pilot is once more in his seat. The Aeroplane has been turned to face the other end of the field, and, the Observer swinging round the propeller, the engine is awake again and slowly ticking over. Quickly the Observer climbs ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... a lot of trouble dragging a squaw all over the north," he advised Sam, critically. "Of course, we can't turn her adrift here. Wouldn't do that to a dog. But it strikes me it would even pay us to go out of our way to Missinaibie to get rid of her. We ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... he set me to make a pudden, for because our cook was hurted. I done my uttermost, but she all fetched adrift like in the bag, an' the more I biled the bits of her, the less she favoured any fashion o' pudden. Moon he chawed and chammed his piece, and Frankie chawed and chammed his'n, and—no words to it—he took me by the ear an' walked me out over the ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... in makin' the by-laws of this camp myself, 'long with John Gale, and they stip'lates that any person caught robbin' a cache is to be publicly whipped in front of the tradin'-post, then, if it's winter time, he's to be turned loose on the ice barefooted, or, if it's summer, he's to be set adrift on a log ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... remained steadfast to its ideals even at the cost of Calvary his manliness would have responded as to the touch of a kindred spirit, but the attempt to fit that willing sacrifice into a dogmatic creed left him adrift and rudderless. Suddenly from somewhere in his memory came the words, "Then what becomes of the justice of God?" It was Reenie Hardy who had asked that question. And he recalled his answer, "I don't know nothin' about the justice ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... an island of magic, unsubstantial, liable to go adrift and plunge into the canon. Even in the forest path, where the great tree trunks assure one of stability and long immunity, this feeling cannot be shaken off. Our party descended the winding staircase in the tower, and walked on the shelf under the mighty ledge to the entrance of the Cave of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of words that should fittingly convey the effect of her beauty, even upon those who having seen it often seemed on each occasion to behold it for the first time. Of her, as of every beauty that has graced the world since Helen set fire to Troy, and Semiramis sent dead lovers adrift down the river of Assyria, and Cleopatra charmed Caesar and Antony and Heaven knows who besides, it might be said that she had the familiar features of womankind; but what it was that made those features so marvellous, ah! there was the task ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... horse made a mere blot on the yawning expanse of land that stretched away from them in all directions. A lone eagle in the sky or a mariner adrift on a deserted sea could not have seemed more isolated than Lawler and Red King. In this limitless expanse of waste land horse and rider were dwarfed to the proportion of atoms. The yawning, aching, stretching miles of level ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer |
