"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... hard and careless, suspicious and wilful. He hated restraint of any sort, and fought against it like an untamed creature, even while he knew it was kindly meant, and dimly felt that he would be the better for it. He made up his mind to be turned adrift again, to knock about the city as he had done nearly all his life; a prospect that made him knit his black brows, and look about the cosy little room with a wistful expression that would have touched a much harder heart than Mr. Bhaer's if he had seen ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... to sit in it yourself—that's where the shoe pinches,' he sneers. I left the saloon, got my rags together, and was on the quay with all my dunnage about my feet before the stevedores had turned to again. Yes. Adrift—on shore—after ten years' service—and with a poor woman and four children six thousand miles off depending on my half-pay for every mouthful they ate. Yes, sir! I chucked it rather than hear Captain Brierly abused. He left ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... breezes of time blown their blossomy faces Forever adrift down the years that are flown? Am I never to see them romp back to their places, Where over the meadow, In sunshine and shadow, The meadow-larks trill, and the ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley
... Laddie made little boats and set them adrift in the blue water. Rose and Vi played with their dolls, for they had each brought two or three of them. Mun Bun and Margy dug in the sand with sticks which they picked up on the ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... Glass-coach, haste too, O haste; much time is already lost! The august Glass-coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs itself into the new Berline; two Body-guard Couriers behind. The Glass-coach itself is turned adrift, its head towards the City, to wander where it lists,—and be found next morning tumbled in a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave new hammer-cloths; flourishing his whip; he bolts ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... the captain and me was more emphatic than elegant. He dared not risk letting go of us, however, or of running us under, for fear of incurring the risk of heavy damages. I would not consent to be landed. So about the twentieth of June we were set adrift in Bellingham Bay and, tired and sleepy, landed on ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him originally to Fontenoy's side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the mutineers—he and his comrade here," the captain answered. "Then those who had revolted, and seized the ship, ordered into small boats all who would not throw in their lot with them. So these two, with only a little food and water, were put adrift in the storm. It was almost certain death, but the boat lived through it, and we ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... wealth, his wanton, spendthrift way of life had brought him many debts, and she was the only child of one of the richest merchants in England, whose dower, doubtless, would be a fortune that many a royal princess might envy. Why not again? He would turn Inez and those others adrift—at any rate, for a while—and make her mistress of his palace there in Granada. Instantly, as is often the fashion of those who have Eastern blood in their veins, d'Aguilar had made up his mind, yes, before he left ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... State out of the Union with a show of legality, the lawful Governor and his official associates made provision for a State convention to be chosen by the people, which they expected to control, but which, having a Unionist majority, played the boomerang on them by sending them adrift and taking the affairs of the State into its own hands. In this it had opposition. The most progressive men of the State insisted that, after it had settled the question of Missouri's relations to the Union, with reference to which it was specially chosen, it was functus officio. They ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... ashore, captain. If we left them in the water, one might break adrift and float out beyond the trees. Some redskin or other would make it out, and we should have a troop of them on our trail, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... vessels, a messenger was despatched to their homes, and in a short time Mr and Mrs Morton, Mrs Merryweather, and a considerable number of friends who formed the picnic party on that memorable day when Harry and David went adrift in a boat, were collected at the Green Bank Hotel. If Harry had been looked upon as a hero on the distant day of which we speak, much more ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... son to a subaltern in an English regiment just home from the Low Countries. "My birthday," Laurence Sterne tells us, "was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke and sent adrift into the wide world with a wife and two children." The life of the new baby was one of perpetual hurry and scurry; his mother, who had been an old campaigner, daughter of what her son calls "a noted suttler" called Nuttle, had been the widow of a soldier before she ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... unwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, would recall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and would think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling tendency to dislike and fear him be a part of that misfortune in her, which had turned her father's love adrift, and left her so alone? She dreaded that it might be; sometimes believed it was: then she resolved that she would try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded herself that she was honoured and encouraged by the notice of her father's friend; and hoped that patient ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... world to pick out a tall, blond, willowy man like Pollen! On the verge of middle age, too! Perhaps it was this very willowiness, this apparent placidity that made him attractive. This child, Mary Rochefort, quite alone in the world, largely untrained, adrift, imperiously demanding from an imperious husband something to which she had not as yet found the key, might very naturally gravitate toward any one presenting Pollen's appearance of security; his attitude of complacence in the face of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he contemplated such a possibility. He could easily imagine his feelings upon being cast helplessly adrift in the midst of a raging gale, with his tried and true chums hidden from his sight by the rain ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... from where he stood with his back to the great door, "So you spoke in our old land on the day when our Jarl Hauk bade you confess the wrong you had done, before you were set adrift on the sea. It had been better had he slain you, as some would have had him slay, if it were but for the saving ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... the Outer Hebrides," said Gerald, with the eagerness that belonged to authorship, "so that there could be any amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has been set adrift with his daughter-Francie Vanderkist to wit-and floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies. Little Fely was a ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the average reader to say that icebergs are more numerous in warm weather, but such is the fact. Of course they are formed in winter, but it takes the summer sun to set them adrift and send them floating on the ocean, a grand sight to look at but a fearful menace ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... our anchor, and with our last remaining bit of steam, we reached a place shallow enough for anchorage. It was literally the last gasp of the engine that put us in safety, for a moment more and we should have been adrift on the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... sparkled faintly, like a glow-worm, but whether far or near, he could not tell; he only knew how blest must be the owner, sitting with wife and children around his secure hearthstone,—how wretched his own life, cast adrift in the darkness,—wife, home, and future, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the shelter of the hill, on the lee foot of which the village shelters from the westerly winds, the Mona went over suddenly in a gust which put her gunwale in the wash and kept it there. The dipper came adrift and rattled over. Yeo eased her a bit, and his uncanny eyes never shifted from their fixed scrutiny ahead. Our passenger laughed aloud, for his wife had grasped him at the unexpected movement and the noise. "That's nothing," he ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... and look upon her as being of another sort, and yet count her out of half their plans and pleasures, and she runs home, not knowing whether to be pleased or hurt, and pulls down half a dozen of your books and sits proudly at the window. Her poor foolish mother had some gifts, but she went adrift very soon, and I should teach Nan her duty to her neighbor, and make her take in the idea that she owes something to the world beside following out her own most satisfying plans. When I was a young woman it was a most blessed discovery to me—though I was not any quicker at making ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in taking him out to my place was to slip him twenty dollars or so, and head him adrift westward, and so out of things. But after we got home and I put the proposition up to him, the beggar began to assert himself and get bold and saucy—tried to blackmail me for an unheard of amount—threatening ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... still our 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 all that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sense of being adrift was intensified by the appearance of Mrs. Ballinger's drawing-room. To a careless eye its aspect was unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs. Ballinger's way of arranging her books would instantly have detected the marks of recent perturbation. Mrs. Ballinger's province, as a member of ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... these things, yet the sun knows them not. They are local and only earth phenomena, yet the benefaction of the sun is as if it shone for us alone. It is as great as if this were the case, and yet the fraction of his light and heat that actually falls upon this mote of a world adrift in sidereal space is so infinitely small that it could hardly be computed by numbers. In our religion we appropriate God to ourselves in the same way, but he knows us not in this private and particular way, though we are all ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... this position in the Transvaal it may be allowed that their difficulties are great. They cannot, it is true, complain of lack of warning. They did not, it is also true, after trying their influence and finding it of no avail, cut adrift when they might have done so, and by their example have so stripped the reactionaries of all support that there could now be no question of their standing out; but they may have honestly believed that they would ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... "I think it likely that you will be more true to yourself than any of us. Doubtless you were born to be the head of a domestic household, and if you followed your own inclination you would be that if you were adrift with your family on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Now I am going away to see what further suggestions my nature has to offer me. What ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... &c. 24. bring in head and shoulders, drag in head and shoulders, lug in head and shoulders. Adj. irrelative[obs3], irrespective, unrelated; arbitrary; independent, unallied; unconnected, disconnected; adrift, isolated, insular; extraneous, strange, alien, foreign, outlandish, exotic. not comparable, incommensurable, heterogeneous; unconformable &c. 83. irrelevant, inapplicable; not pertinent, not to the, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... things about you! He hates you! I only made him my enemy for your sake—and now you won't let me cut adrift from him. That's just like all women! Once they get their claws on money there's ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... 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, which is essential to maintaining long-term ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Timid by nature, a cautious lover of compromise, self-baffled in a brilliant flutter for truth, what had he to do in a vulgar conflict of opinion, in a common, healthy play of free thought and speech? Peering off into immensity until he had become utterly adrift in theology, the minister found himself too feeble to stand upon the moral basis of some practical creed. His regular parish duties afforded but slender occupation; he had the gift of speaking extemporaneously, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Bigley just then. "No. Yes. There she is, sir!" he said, pointing to the east. "She's broke adrift, and is floating yonder half a ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... said he, "never have I seen so well-favoured a company"; and Horn answered proudly, "We are of good Christian blood, and we come from Southland, which has just been raided by pagans, who slew many of our people, and sent us adrift in a boat, to be the sport of the winds and waves. For a day and a night we have been at sea without a rudder; and now we have been cast upon your coast, you may enslave or slay us, if but, it please thee, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... ugly; but he was used to all this, for nobody loved him. This was how the world treated Anne Lisbeth's boy, and how could it be otherwise. It was his fate to be beloved by no one. Hitherto he had been a land crab; the land at last cast him adrift. He went to sea in a wretched vessel, and sat at the helm, while the skipper sat over the grog-can. He was dirty and ugly, half-frozen and half-starved; he always looked as if he never had enough to eat, which ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... arm around the neck of each of his friends, and drawing their heads together near his mouth. "At night, when everything is quiet, one of us will just unbit the cable, and let it run out. Then another shall sing out that the vessel is going adrift. That will make a row. Then we will try to do something. You, Herman, and I, will offer to carry a line to another vessel—the ship, for instance. Carboy—who don't know any more about a vessel than a kitten does of the ten ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... of faithful work with small pay, I was, at the age of sixteen, turned adrift on account ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... 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 burst ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... last night at half past ten underneath the mosquito-bar within the tent, it was light enough to thread a needle. We have mending to do each night, and dragging clothes behind the boat makes a satisfactory kind of progressive laundry. At dusk we had seen an empty scow floating down river, adrift from Athabasca Landing. In the middle of Grand Rapids she broke amidships, but held together until in the darkness ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... words. But to put them upon paper with all the cumulative evidence needed to carry conviction,—if conviction could indeed be conveyed without the reiteration of words and the persuasiveness of the voice,—to do this and send the paper adrift, to fall into Archdale's hands or not as the fortunes of war should determine, perhaps to fall into other hands,—it was impossible, for Elizabeth's sake it was impossible. "I don't see how we can reach him," he said at last. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... Picture to yourself a man on a vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match, in his hand; he is alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded by the man who held the match. "At the first disobedience, we will quit you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... Barroux burst into a frank laugh: "No, no, I can't cast Taboureau adrift at this moment—people would make too much sport of it—a ministry wrecked or saved ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... opportunity of indulging his speculations on great characters was now at an end. He was banished from the table of lord Tyrconnel, and turned again adrift upon the world, without prospect of finding quickly any other harbour. As prudence was not one of the virtues by which he was distinguished, he had made no provision against a misfortune like this. And though it is not to be imagined but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the reading of the book, teachers should tell to the children stories describing Eskimo life, and the experiences of explorers and pioneers in the North. Grenfell's Adrift on an Ice-Pan is suitable, for example. Holbrook's Northland Heroes and Schultz's Sinopah, the Indian Boy, while not belonging to the land of the Eskimos, contain stories of allied interest. Let the children bring to class pictures of scenes in ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... in particular do you mean?" asked J.W., who was finding himself adrift. He had been quite willing in the Institute days to be an admirer of Phil Khamis, and to forget that Phil was of alien birth; but this was something ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... if rumour speaks true, and the great Earl of Warwick has placed King Henry once again on his throne, then perchance I may retrieve the fallen fortunes of my house. My father and brothers laid down their lives for his cause; his foes took possession of our fair lands, and I was turned adrift on the wide world. But tell me, ere we journey farther, which Rose you and your house favour; for I would not bring trouble upon any, and my roving life has taught me that the House of ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... loneliness, his doubts, his very helplessness and indecision. His wife had been like an island around which he sailed and cruised, sure in his consciousness that he could return at any time to that safe mooring. He had returned to find the island gone, himself adrift on a boundless ocean, and he did not know which way to turn. The cays and islets, the interesting rocks and the questionable coral reefs supplied him with not the slightest semblance of shelter, ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... conditions when I, as an expert in stock-market affairs, was called in for assistance. Here was this sound, sturdy institution standing for everything that was best and self-supporting in American finance adrift on the Wall Street shoals, and it seemed almost a hopeless task to attempt its rescue. But it was a task eminently worth while, and I undertook it with all the energy I ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... hand by suspicion, distrust and cruel curiosity. Then, indeed, she would need a friend—someone to believe in her and to love her. Of what use to save the life tossed up by the storm, only to set it adrift again? As Miss Farwell meditated in the twilight the conviction grew that her responsibility could end only when the life ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... safety. Sylvia dear, I wish I hadn't meddled; I'm meddling some more I suppose when I say to you, don't give Howard his conge for the present. It is a horridly common thing to dwell upon, but Howard is too materially important to be cut adrift on ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... say. As for impudence—if he really has been impudent—will you let me talk to him, sir? I'll engage he asks pardon and promises not to offend again. But think, before in your anger you turn him adrift—where can the old man go, but to the workhouse? What can he have saved, on twelve shillings a week? For every twelve shillings he's earned Lady Killiow three to five pounds, week by week, these forty years; and not one penny of it, I'll undertake ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ter myself, "I'm a darlin'; A chap with a woman like that, To set here a-grumblin' and snarlin', As sour as a sulky young brat— I'd better jest keep my helm steady, And not mind the fog that's adrift, For when the Lord gits good and ready, I reckon it's ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the noblest hearts, or speaks lightly of the mighty influence that has moulded human events and has upheaved the world. It has, in its arrogance, cut adrift and swung off from the two grand foci of all truth, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... thee for thy moment's end. Thou art God's minister, not God's oracle: Chain up thy tongue a little, or, by His wounds, If thou canst read this wide world like a book, Thou hast so little to fear, I'll set thee adrift On God's great sea to find thine own way home. Why, 'tis these very tyrannies o' the soul We strike at when we strike at Spain for England; And shall we here, in this great wilderness, Ungrappled and unchallenged, out of sight, Alone, without one struggle, sink that flag Which, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... a Forsyte than the discovery that something on which he has stipulated to spend a certain sum has cost more. And this is reasonable, for upon the accuracy of his estimates the whole policy of his life is ordered. If he cannot rely on definite values of property, his compass is amiss; he is adrift upon ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the familiar 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 ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that, though there was a watch on the quarter-deck with loaded arms, he was not discovered by them till the noise of his oars in the water gave notice of his escape, after he had put off from the ship, when it was too late either to prevent or pursue him. Besides, as their boats were all adrift, it was some time before they could contrive the means of getting on shore to search for their boats. By this effort, besides regaining his liberty, the Indian was in some measure revenged on those who had confined him, both by the perplexity they were in for the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... with a disposition to be careful and attentive, they made him a nurse, or rather a sub-nurse under the special orders of a responsible nurse. I really believe it was done at first to avoid the alternative of sending him adrift, or transferring him to the insane ward of the hospital. In this congenial pursuit he showed such watchfulness and skill, that by and by they found they had got a treasure. Two months after that he began to talk about medicine, and astonished them still more. He became the puzzle of the establishment. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Briganteen all the Aforesaid Money and Continued all the Rest Of the Cargo on Board of her, and the said Spanish Privateer Ordered the Depon't And four of his men on board the said Sloop and put some of their men on board The said Briganteen and turned her Long boat adrift and the said Sloop and Briganteen were Ordered to Keep Company with One Another and Steer for the Havannah and the Spaniards plundered said Briganteen both of Rum and Sugar And on the 26th of said Septem'r, said Briganteen being in the Old Streights of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... lady fell sick and died. She divided her fortune between her two nieces, and as they were now independent, they married their respective lovers; but the old lady forgot to mention me in her will, and I should have been turned adrift on the world had it not been for Donna Teresa, who immediately appointed me as her own attendant. I was as happy as before, although no more doubloons fell into my hands, after the marriages took place. It appears that Don Perez was so much afraid of offending ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sudden puff of wind, strong enough to flurry the water into wrinkles. It lifted the gentleman's hat, so that he saved it only by a violent snatch which made the boat rock. As he jammed the hat down he broke or displaced some string or clip near his ears. At any rate his beard came adrift on the side nearest to me. The man was wearing a false beard. He remedied the matter at once, very cleverly, so that I may have been the only witness; but I saw that the boatman was in the man's secret, whatever it ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... enormous, chaotic mass of forms then known as molluscs, insects, worms, and microscopic animals. Had he continued to teach botany, we might never have had the Lamarck of biology and biological philosophy. But turned adrift in a world almost unexplored, he faced the task with his old-time bravery and dogged persistence, and at once showed the skill of a master ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... 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 ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... to teach me all about that," he said, again pressing her hand to his lips. "You won't cast me adrift yet, will you, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... hard, The boldest attempt of a desperate bard! The Muse he perceived was capricious and coy; Though many were courting her, few could enjoy. And he saw without reason, from season to season, Your humor would shift, and turn poets adrift, Requiting old friends with unkindness and treason, Discarded in scorn as exhausted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fray, the Christian army was weakened by its sufferings to such an extent that it was virtually brought to a standstill. Even King Richard, with all his impetuosity, dared not venture to cut adrift from the seashore, and to march direct upon Jerusalem; that city was certainly not to be taken without a long siege, and this could only be undertaken by an army strong enough, not only to carry out so great a ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Precisely at this critical moment it happened that an old half-pay officer passed, recognised the emperor, and saluted him. Perhaps it was with some purpose of applying a remedy to this unfortunate rencontre, that the party dismounted at a point where several roads met, and turned their horses adrift to graze at will amongst the furze and brambles. Their own purpose was, to make their way to the back of the villa; but, to accomplish that, it was necessary that they should first cross a plantation of reeds, from the peculiar state of which they found ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... found three feet water in the hold. The pumps were choaked; by 9 A. M. they were cleared, and by this time we had eight feet water in the well, and three on the gun-deck; the ship rolled very much, and the chests, guns, and water-casks, being all cast adrift, were dashing from larboard to starboard with the greatest fury. At 10 A. M. the ship labouring so much, and her being eight streaks of her main-deck under water, abreast of her main-hatchway, so that we had very little prospect of her living two minutes above water, it was thought ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... themselves, and this suspicion gathers strength from various circumstances related on Schwatka's journey. Be this as it may, I take my stand on far higher ground. Of course such things have happened. Strong, shipwrecked mariners, suddenly cast adrift on the ocean, have endeavored to extend life in this way when they were in hourly expectation of being rescued. But how different the case in point! The crews of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror', when they abandoned their ship, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... a fair maiden, were on the Quay to see young William embark. The tide had already turned, and the captain was about to give the word "to cast off and let all go;" to send the vessel, as it were, adrift, loose and unfettered upon the waters, to struggle as a thing of life with the billows of the Atlantic, but animated and controled by the energies of men. Just at this moment William appeared at the end of the Quay, walking slowly to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... for anything," cried he, excitedly. "I am ready to write or speak against the abuses I see everywhere around me. I am ready to cut myself adrift from the calling I have adopted, if it must be. I will not leave a single corner of my innermost heart concealed, but will lay open my convictions as a man ought ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... fast. The captain levelled his night-glass, and I heard him tell Kite, in a low voice, that they were full of men. The word was now passed to clear away all the guns, and to open the arm-chest, to come at the muskets and pistols. I heard the rattling of the boarding-pikes, too, as they were cut adrift from the spanker-boom, and fell upon the deck. All this sounded very ominous, and I began to think we should have a desperate engagement first, and then have ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... play the devil 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was born anew, rising from his dark confinement to life again. The hierophant enclosed him in a little boat and set him adrift, pointing him to a distant rock, which he calls "the harbor of life." Across the black and stormy waters he strives to gain ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... language is part of our inheritance, one can only reply that beauty is almost always dumb. Male beauty in association with female beauty breeds in the onlooker a sense of fear. Often have I seen them—Helen and Jimmy—and likened them to ships adrift, and feared for my own little craft. Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance? As she passed him his cup there was that quiver in her flanks. Bowley saw what was up-asked Jimmy to breakfast. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... sure of getting work when you reach Fall River?" asked Polly, feeling all the thrill of a great lonely world, for two such little helpless beings to be cast adrift ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... derelict, adrift; misspent, misemployed, wasted; irreclaimable, incorrigible, abandoned; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... 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
... flame and your kisses fire, And who shall resist a strong desire? Not I, whose life is a broken boat On a sea of passions, adrift, afloat. And, whether I came in love or hate, That I came to you was written by Fate In every hue of the blood-red sky, In every tone ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... was drowned, and the May Queen was wrecked, and we were adrift on the ocean. Adrift in a cockle-shell of an open boat more than six hundred miles from land! No—no! ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... looking lower into shore he beheld the Jean in travail at the Duglas mouth. The tide had come fully in while he was absent, the delta that before had been so much lagoon and isle was become an estuary, where, in the unexpected tide and rush of the river, the logs of fir and oak were all adrift about the sides of the vessel. Every hand was busy. They poled off as best they might the huge trunks that battered at the carvel planks and pressed upon the twanging cable. Forward of the mast Black Duncan stood commanding in loud ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant offence to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence. He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift, she was not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use his own words, "set her adrift to take care of herself." Here was a recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very charitable ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... more puzzling. The object belonged, Arthur assured her, to the vegetable kingdom, the color was white, and he had often met it within a dozen yards of the railway station. "A daisy," was the first and natural solution, but she was, he assured her, very far adrift. "A telegraph post," she next announced, but she was again unsuccessful. At this point I left them; but after an hour had passed Gabrielle ran up to my room to tell me that she had guessed it—a polka dot upon one of ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Monarchy), to delegate so much of it as would enable the fire to be laid and lighted by the same power. We fancy, however, that even since the Stockmarian reconstruction, we have heard of guests finding themselves adrift in the corridors of Windsor. There used to be no bells to the rooms, it being assumed that in the abode of Royalty servants, were always within call, a theory which would have been full of comfort to any nervous gentleman, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... could have gone through the whole of the arithmetic in his sleep. Oh, boasted intellect of man! How little is it thou canst do when the delicate and feeling heart is out of tune! How impotent thou art! How like a rudderless ship upon a stormy sea! Poor Burrage was helpless and adrift! And Michael sat for hours together alone, in his little room. He was literally afraid to creep out of it. He struggled to keep his mind steadily and composedly fixed upon the fate that awaited him—a fate which he had marked out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... gone to my husband's people; it was the best arrangement. We were lucky that it was possible; so many children had to be sent to strangers and hirelings. Since an unfortunate infant must be brought into the world and set adrift, the haven of its grandmother and its Aunt Emma and its Aunt Alice certainly seemed providential. I had absolutely no cause for anxiety, as I often told people, wondering that I did not feel a little all the same. Nothing, I knew, could exceed the conscientious devotion ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... pouring through the eastern opening down the gorge or cwm itself, and soon the light vapours floating about the pool were turned to sailing gauzes, all quivering with different dyes, as though a rainbow had become torn from the sky and woven into gossamer hangings and set adrift. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... in two years, was a prominent manufacturer in a New England village. The early death of my mother had left me to his care when I was but ten years old, and we failed to understand each other, drifting apart, until a final quarrel had sent me adrift. No doubt this was more my fault than his, although he was so deeply immersed in business that he failed utterly to understand the restless soul of a boy. I was in my junior year at Princeton, when the final break ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... all 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, before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... set adrift in a ship at sea, to shift for yourself, would it not be mere common-sense to try and learn how to manage that ship, that you might keep her afloat and get her safe to land? You would try to learn the statutes, laws, and commandments, and testimonies, and judgments ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... mimic seas for swans to sail upon, and summer-houses for people to lounge in and look at the swans from. On the point of land furthest from the acclivity stands the Castle of Miramare, half at sea, and half adrift in ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... I heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, and no doubt in part responsible for it, was the knowledge of the fallibility of that seemingly perfect mechanism which rode so steadily through the air; of the quick response that ingenious arrangement of inanimate matter would make to an eternal ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... attracted the attention of his guard, who threatened him with instant death if he did not return. They loaded their pistols as quickly as possible, and fired after him, but luckily missed their aim. James succeeded in reaching the opposite side of the river, where he set the boat adrift, lest some one should take it back and enable them to pursue him. He bent his course toward Philadelphia, and on arriving there, went directly to Friend Hopper's house. He had become so haggard and emaciated, that ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Heart's Delight! The winds of the sunrise know it, And the music adrift in its airy halls, To the end of the world they blow it— Music of glad hearts keeping time To bells that ring in a crystal chime With the cadence light of an ancient rime— Such music lives on the winds of night That blow from the Castle of ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... blessed Saint Catherine of Sienna!—may God forgive me that I spoke so lightly, and made you do a great sin and a great blasphemy. This was her nunnery, in which there were twelve nuns and an abbess. My aunt was the abbess, till the heretics turned all adrift." ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... out as if heading for the main. But the main and his own heathery moors lay far distant, a blue-grey line in the haze to the southward. Perhaps his spirit regained them as his body slowly sank. The children watched it sink until only the antlers showed above water like a forked bough adrift on the tideway. They drifted so for a few seconds; then dipped out of sight, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Parliament would be in 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. 'This plan of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... it was time to think of her departure, for she had exhausted all the sewing-work of the house. Mrs Prothero could not bear to turn the friendless, homeless girl adrift on the world. She ventured upon the subject ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... was over the 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 ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the river; The ridge of the rapid sprays and skips: Loud and low by the water's lips, Tearing the wet pines into strips, The saw mill is moaning ever. The little grey sparrow skips and calls On the rocks in the rain of the water falls, And the logs are adrift in the river. ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... very thick, with small snow, and as disagreeable and dangerous for people adrift upon floating ice as can well be imagined. If the women, however, gave their husbands a thought, or spoke of them to us, it was only to express a very sincere hope that some good news might shortly arrive of their success. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... New Orleans. There the old manager had found his final resting place and she had no definite desire to go elsewhere. Adrift in the darkness of the present, the young girl was too perplexed to plan for the future. So she remained in the house Barnes had rented shortly before his death. An elderly gentlewoman of fallen fortunes, to whom this semi-rural establishment belonged, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... himself adrift and established himself in rooms in one of the small streets about Connaught Square, where he waited for his schemes to accomplish themselves. He still retained his mastership at St. Peter's, although he hoped ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... flat-bottomed teradas with poles.[23] Sometimes a sudden rise of the river will raise the level of these generally stagnant waters by a yard or two, and during the night the huts and their inhabitants, men and animals together, will be sent adrift. Two or three villages have been destroyed in this fashion amid the complete indifference of the authorities. The tithe-farmer may be trusted to see that the survivors pay the taxes due from their ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... 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
... Sandy Scott's twa-yir-auld gimmer, marterdum for that." "An' my braxsied wether," quoth a forester; "the rack for that, and finally the auld spay-wife's bantam cock, eyes and tongue cut out and set adrift again, for that." Now we set to work to clear his hole for "rough Toby" (a long-backed, short-legged, wire-haired terrier of Dandy Dinmont's breed) to enter; in he went like red-hot fire, and "ready to nose the vary deevil ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... mercy, declared that in view of his great clemency and their humble confession, he would spare their forfeited lives, and would only punish them by depriving them of their estates. He took their mansions, their estates, their property, and turned them adrift upon the world, with their wives and their children, fugitives and penniless. Thus between one and two thousand of the most ancient and noble families of the kingdom were rendered houseless and utterly beggared. Their friends, involved with them in the same woe, could render no assistance. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... but the wind coming to blow hard, the Smeaton's boat and crew, who had brought their complement of eight men to the rock, went off to examine her riding ropes, and see that they were in proper order. The boat had no sooner reached the vessel than she went adrift, carrying the boat along with her. By the time that she was got round to make a tack towards the rock, she had drifted at least three miles to leeward, with the praam-boat astern; and, having both the wind and a tide against her, the writer perceived, with no little anxiety, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... upon certain litigation in which Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, under the firm name of the Abbey-Monohan Timber Company, was suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the loss of certain booms of logs blown up and set adrift at the mouth of the Tyee River. There was appended an account of the clash over the closed channel and the killing of Billy Dale. No one had been brought to book for that yet. Any one of sixty men might have ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... aboard the steamship, he saw a sneaking submarine slowly edging toward her. This made him shout all the louder, thinking thereby to warn the captain of the ship of his danger. His efforts were vain, however, and in a short time the ship had gone to the bottom and the crew was adrift in the lifeboats. The sunken ship proved ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... In a few seconds the bomb would burst and shatter the airship. The bomb-thrower grabbed a tool and climbing into the rigging below hacked away at the bomb-throwing tube until the whole equipment was cut adrift and fell clear of the vessel. Almost instantly there was a terrific explosion in mid-air. The blast of air caused the vessel to roll and pitch in a disconcerting manner, but as the airman permitted the craft to continue its upward ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... things. And for a minute or two she was passive, shewing a pale, tired face. But then there swept over her such a sense of what she had, and of what she had escaped, that she could only lay her head down on his shoulder and be still; a shiver running over her as she remembered other souls adrift. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... when Gisela was eighteen and a fat Lieutenant of Uhlans, suing for the hand of the youngest born, and vehemently supported by the Graf, had just been turned adrift. The Graf dropped dead in his club. He left a surprisingly small estate for one who had presented so pompous a front to the world. But not only had his sons been handsomely portioned when they entered the army, and Mariette when she married, but the excellent count, to relieve the increasing monotony ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... you do then, brother? And what shall I do? for I am almost as bad as you. The people where I lodge are all gone into the country but a maid, and she is to go next week, and to shut the house quite up, so that I shall be turned adrift to the wide world before you, and I am resolved to go away too, if I ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... no power in earth or hell to effect a divorcement after Christ and the soul are united. Other kings have turned out their companions when they got weary of them, and sent them adrift from the palace gate. Ahasuerus banished Vashti; Napoleon forsook Josephine; but Christ is the husband that is true forever. Having loved you once, He loves you to the end. Did they not try to divorce ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... between 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 ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... was not suspected, but I knew very well which one it was; but when suspicion fell on Selincourt, I just kept silent. For some reason he could not clear himself, was dismissed, and I was promoted. But the promotion did me little good; the firm went bankrupt in the following year, and I was adrift myself." ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... 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 timber-heads; 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 of going over. Hold on, hold on, won't ye? cried ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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 ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Street boarding-house, she wore a faded black bonnet, garnished with faded artificial flowers of dirty pink. A plaid shawl was about her shoulders. But this day of misfortune had set Mrs. Hooven adrift in even worse condition than her daughter. Her purse, containing a miserable handful of dimes and nickels, was in her trunk, and her trunk was in the hands of the landlady. Minna had been allowed such ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... near them. 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 ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... only that to the world; and so you would be cut adrift from both sides, as all women are who move from where they rightfully belong to where they are ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... split when they got ashore; and there was mutiny in the air, with the steward and the quarter-master of the Lady Jermyn for ring-leaders. Santos nipped it in the bud with a vengeance! He and Harris shot every man of them dead, and two who were shot through the heart they washed and dressed and set adrift to rot in the gig with false papers! God knows how we made Madeira; we painted the old name out and a new name in, on the way; and we shipped a Portuguese crew, not a man of whom could speak English. We shipped them aboard the Duque de Mondejo's yacht Braganza; the schooner Spindrift had ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of London was in dismay. Half the firms of Bristol and Liverpool were threatened with bankruptcy. In Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, it was said that three artisans out of every ten had been turned adrift. Civil war seemed to be at hand; and it could not be doubted that, if once the British nation were divided against itself, France and Spain would soon ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a cavern of the high rock, and hastily dressed herself: the steps held on right to the boat. Peeping out, half-dead with terror, she saw there four men, two of whom had just leaped from their horses, and turning them adrift, began to help the other two in running ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... shouted. "Be careful—that's pretty strong language. Don't try me too far, or you may find yourself adrift once more. I have been too patient. But I have other ways of finding out what I wish to know, and I shall verify what you have told me." He strode angrily from the room, leaving Natalie staring out upon the bleak fall scene, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... now pass rapidly over the six years which elapsed from the date of Ben's first being set adrift in the streets to the period at which our story properly begins. These years have been fruitful of change to our young adventurer. They have changed him from a country boy of ten, to a self-reliant and independent street boy of sixteen. The impressions left by his early and careful home-training ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... not certain," said Rainbow Pete. "She might be pleasant-looking on the pillow with her hair adrift." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Binks, always treats a merchantman like gentlemen on the high seas, and I never knew one on 'em to turn their backs on friends or foes. What a pity they ever cut adrift from the Old Country! Howsoever, matey, it can't be helped, and you had better up with the port studding-sails, hang out all the rags, and make ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... commonly known by the name of "French Somerville," from having passed part of his early life in France, and from his exhibiting traces of French taste in his mode of living, and the arrangements of his house. In fact, it was in his pleasure-boat, which had got adrift, that I had made my fanciful and disastrous cruise. All this was simple, straightforward matter of fact, and threatened to demolish all the cobweb romance I had been spinning, when fortunately I again heard the tinkling of a harp. I raised myself ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving |
