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More "Afloat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and bubbles raced out to the gleams beating the air from the sunlit river. He saw one tiny fleet caught; a mass of yellow scum bore down and, sweeping through bubbles and eddy, was itself struck into fragments by something afloat. A tremulous shadow shot through a space of sunlight into the gloom cast by a thicket of rhododendrons, and the boy caught his breath sharply. A moment more, and the shape of a boat and a human figure quivered on the water running under him. The stern of a Lewallen canoe swung into ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... his defense of the drunken sailor, together with his own vigorous disavowal of any heroism in the affair, won for him a halo. After months of tedious anchorage in the dull harbor of seclusion, he found himself once more afloat on a sea of approval, tasting again the sweet savor of adulation, and spreading his sails to catch ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... praised!" cried he, "the last obstacle is vanquished and we are afloat." As he spoke the island could be perceived advancing down stream, slowly it is true, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... to reason, and why, the old lady said, she was unable to understand, for the like had never happened before. Dixie didn't make any excuses, but set at the head of the table and dished out that stuff as if it was the best afloat. 'Won't you pass yore plate for more beans?' she wanted to know, and 'Won't you try some of the butter with the cornbread?' I reckon I made a mistake by speaking of what a fine spread she got up the last time, for she kind o' tilted her nose in the air, an' said she 'lowed the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had recognized me, he stopped, saying, 'You are the very man I was seeking. Come hither;' and he took me on one side: 'Here is a strange story afloat,' said he; 'this Curd has brought all sorts of ashes on my head. Wallah! by Heaven, the Shah has run clean mad. He talks of making a general massacre of all that is male, within and without his harem, beginning with his viziers, and finishing by the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... committee had a benign indulgence for humanity— provided of course that humanity had a purse—an indulgence which some of the English hotels would not have done badly to imitate. There was a story afloat concerning the English quarter, that a tired little English lady, of no importance to look at, probably not rich, and probably not handsome, came to the most respectable hotel in Petershof, thinking to find there the peace and quiet which ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... with it squalls of wind and rain came and buffeted them till they had to forsake the paddles for the bailing-vessels to keep the boat afloat. Taking down the sails they spread them flat to catch the pouring rain, and then poured this precious fresh water—true water of life to them—into their calabashes. But when morning came no land could be seen anywhere. It was as though the island had been a land of enchantment and mirage, ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... an insurance paper. No, that won't do. But Mutual comes pretty near the idea. If we could get something like that, it would pique curiosity; and then if we could get paragraphs afloat explaining that the contributors were to be paid according to the sales, it would be a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... behind us at those flashing crests of alabaster, until they grew small in the distance, and finally were wholly lost to our sight. With them disappeared the last vestige of the solid earth, and we were again afloat ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... vessels I would, whenever I could get an opportunity of sneaking away unnoticed; and, the more I saw of ships and sailors, the more firmly I made up my mind to go to sea as soon as I saw a chance of getting afloat, in spite of the very different arrangements Uncle George had made for my future walk in life—arrangements that were recalled to my mind every quarter in the letters my relation periodically wrote to me after the receipt of the Doctor's ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... so deftly and silently that even a seal may fail to detect his swift approach. Its blades at both ends are beautifully finished off with bone. I see his gun is carelessly left in the round man-hole in which he sits when afloat. It may be loaded; I hope the ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... successful—and every distant object was seen with great distinctness. The snowy Pin Punjaul range, in its southern boundary looked magnificent, rising abruptly from the level and beautiful plain. On board the boat again, I continued the journey towards Srenuggur. We had not been long afloat before a sudden squall came down from the hills and blew the roof of the boat off; it took a long time to repair the mischief, but fortunately all the matting was blown on to the bank, it was eventually ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... such suddenness. 'It will redouble the rumours that are afloat, if, after being supposed ill, you are seen going off by ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... said, "Sam has been quarrelling with me every minute while I'm doing my best in that horrid tub of water. If anybody thinks it's a comfortable pose, let them try it! I wish—I wish I could have the happiness of seeing Sam afloat in this old fish-scale suit with every spangle sticking into him and his legs ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... nights are all past over Of our dreaming, dreams that hover In a mist of fair false things: Night's afloat on wide ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... more potent for good to the race when its relation to the other phases of essential education is more clearly understood. There is afloat no end of discussion as to what is the "proper kind of education for the Negro," and much of it is hurtful to the cause it is designed to promote. The danger, at present, that most seriously threatens the success of industrial training, is the ill-advised insistence in certain ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... you are a mean coward to set us afloat in a hostile country without giving us our arms,” said Simpson, who had once before asked for the weapons, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... keep the boat afloat until he reached Riverbank, but to fix her up would take more money than he had. So he had hunted a job in his own ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... jomp on water, jus' de sam you see some otter An' he's pass on place w'ere Paul is tryin' hard for keep afloat, Den we see Napoleon ketch heem, try hees possibill for fetch heem But de current she's more stronger, an' de eddy get ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... the two friends: they did not dine: they had no appetite! Juve and Fandor went over and over in their minds the deplorable events of which, all said and done, they were the victims. They gazed at each other full of self-pity. They felt they were two derelicts afloat on the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... our risks heretofore. For why? Our bold and reckless enemy, Relaxing not his plans, has treasured time To mass his monstrous force on all the coigns From which our coast is close assailable. Ay, even afloat his concentrations work: Two vast united squadrons of his sail Move at this moment viewless on the seas.— Their whereabouts, untraced, unguessable, Will not be known to us till some black blow Be dealt by them in some undreamt-of quarter ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... was strong as wind could be, And blew their ladder right out to sea! Soon the three wise women were all afloat In a leaky ladder, instead of a boat! And every time the waves rolled in, Of course the poor things were wet to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... naturae, but the general tendency of our law is to favor appropriation. It abhors the absence of proprietary or possessory rights as a kind of vacuum. Accordingly, it has been expressly decided, where a man found logs afloat and moored them, but they again broke loose and floated away, and were found by another, that the first finder retained the rights which sprung from his having taken possession, and that he could maintain trover ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fighting in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!—never before! Good ships and good men on both sides,—and a storm and the night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead! No stabbing! No submarines! ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... of Danae, who was the daughter of a king. And when Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and himself into a chest and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew freshly and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy billows tossed it up and down; while Danae clasped her child closely to her bosom, and dreaded that some big wave would dash ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... I would have a tame seal myself if he could go about without setting things afloat. A wet seal is unpleasant to pat and fondle, and if he climbs on your knees he is positively irritating. I suppose even a seal would get dry if you kept him out of water long enough; but can you keep a seal out of water while there is any within five miles ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... interested, and the most extravagant stories were set afloat, not only concerning the trouseau of the bride, but the bride herself. What ailed her? What made her so cold, so white, so proudly reserved, so like a walking ghost? She, who had been so full of vigorous life, so merry, so light-hearted. Could it be the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... man that can make a seaman, Miles," he said, "for it's a gift that comes nat'rally, like singing, or rope-dancing. I dare say Rupert will do very well ashore, in the gentleman line, though he's no great catch afloat, as all will admit who ever sailed with him. The lad don't want for stuff; but it's shore stuff, a'ter all; and that will never pass muster in blue water. I dare say, now, this Imperor-Gineral, Bonaparte, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bertrand, "this may turn out to be a very grave matter, and you must keep silent about it. It won't do to get the town all stirred up about it and all manner of rumors afloat. It must be looked into quietly first, by responsible people, and you must keep all your opinions and surmises to yourselves until the truth can ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... fame to a woman," said another. "Like the apples of the Dead Sea, fair to the sight and ashes to the touch." Here is another and he has digged wells of wealth and fame and power and pleasure. He seems afloat upon a very sea in which all the streams of human power and glory and wisdom mingle. He tastes them all only to dash the cup from his lips in loathing and disgust as he cries, "Vanity of vanities! All is ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... man's home life, about his ambitions and plans for the future, about his friends and intimates at college. Crawford, without being in the least aware that he was being catechized, told a good deal, and Captain Shadrach's appraising regard, which had learned to judge men afloat and ashore, read more than was told. The appraisal was apparently satisfactory for, after the young man had gone and the Captain and Mary were saying good night in the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat. And he said with a smile, "Our ship, I wis, Shall be of another form than this!" It was of another form, indeed; Built for freight, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... belonged to that higher region where nobody ever thinks at all, and everybody is more or less devout in seeming at any rate, because disbelief is vulgar, and religion is an "affaire des moeurs," like decency, still the subtle philosophies and sad negations which have always been afloat in the air since Voltaire set them ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... flashed o'er the white sea of faces, And a rending shout went skyward that outroared The blanching breakers—"'Tis the heart of Spain! The great San Filippe!" Overhead she towered, The mightiest ship afloat; and in her hold The riches of a continent, a prize Greater than earth had ever known; for there Not only ruby and pearl like ocean-beaches Heaped on some wizard coast in that dim hull Blazed to the lanthorn-light; ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... time now, a ship had been a means of keeping afloat on water, of going from place to place. All its brave strakes, its plunging bows, its healing beams, were wood, such as one makes a house of, or a tinker's cart. All the miracle of sails; the steady foresail; the sensitive jibs; the press canvas delicate as bubbles; the reliable ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... were afloat, and then they were picked up by a passing vessel, rather weak and very much cramped, but otherwise in good shape. They said nothing of their adventures, save to explain that they were experimenting in a new kind of boat. About a month later, for the ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... appears before a jury of his country for redress. Will you deny him this redress? Is character valuable? On this point I will not insult you with argument. There are certain things to argue which is treason against nature. The Author of our being did not intend to leave this point afloat at the mercy of opinion, but with His own hand has He kindly planted in the soul of man an instinctive love of character. This high sentiment has no affinity to pride. It is the ennobling quality of the soul; and if we have hitherto been elevated ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... famous Corots, a sequence of panels, representing Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night, which cost Lord Leighton less than 1,000 francs each, were sold for 6,000 guineas for the four, at Christie's, in July, 1896. Still another small Corot, a picture of a boat afloat on a still lake, was also in this room. One of the Constables that hung there is literally historic—for it is the sketch for that famous Hay Wain which, exhibited in Paris, at once upset the classical ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... and it's the worst sea I ever saw. I expect to see her masts go out of her, before long. Nothing could stand such straining as this. You had best turn in at once. Unless I am mistaken, it will be all hands to the pumps, before long. If she hadn't been one of the tightest crafts afloat, she would have been making water at every seam, by ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... the banks of ice of varying height which skirt many parts of the Antarctic shores. Piedmont. Coastwise stretches of the ancient ice sheet which once covered the Antarctic Continent, remaining either on the land, or wholly or partially afloat. Pram. A Norwegian skiff, with a spoon bow. Primus. A portable stove for cooking. Ramp. A great embankment of morainic material with ice beneath, once part of the glacier, on the lowest slopes of Erebus at the landward end ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... coal supply she was fitted with sails, and Daubeney assured his fair visitor that the Blue-Bell could ride out a gale as comfortably and safely as any craft afloat. Altogether Miss Talbot congratulated herself on Fairholme's discovery, and she could not help hoping that their strange errand to Marseilles might eventuate in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Islands they have a curious way of catching sharks by setting a log of wood afloat with a rope attached, a noose at the end of it; the sharks gather round the log, apparently out of curiosity, and one or another is apt soon to get his head into the noose, and is finally wearied ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... Bulwarks," and "All in the Downs." The captain was all at sea about it, and none of the men would say anything, for by all accounts 'twas the best pipe at a sea-song as was to be heard. For my part, I knowed pretty well what was afloat. One night a man comed for'ard from the wheel, after steering his dog-watch out, and "Well I'm blessed, mates," says he on the fok'sle, "but that chap aft yonder with the lady—he's about the greenest hand I've chanced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... air-bus? It is impossible to advise you how to select a plane without knowing whether you want one for long-distance journeys (with non-starting attachment), for stunting, or merely for gadding about and dropping in on your friends. There is a sad story afloat of a man who bought an air-bus the other day for world-touring and only discovered the insufficiency of cupboards and the want of a bathroom after starting on his maiden trip to Patagonia ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... the brim of the huge basin, poking their reluctant yachts to sea. The boy Victor perfected a wonderful scheme for using a long stick as a submarine. He thrust his arm under water and from a distance knocked his sister's sailboat about till its canvas was afloat and it filled and sank. All the while he wore the most distant of expressions, but canny little Bettina soon realized who had caused this catastrophe and how, and she went for Victor of the U-stick with finger-nails ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... nerve-currents. Life had never looked to her as it did that evening. It was the swan's first breasting the water,—bred on the desert sand, with vague dreams of lake and river, and strange longings as the mirage came and dissolved, and at length afloat upon the sparkling wave. She felt as if she had for the first time found her destiny. It was to please, and so to command,—to rule with gentle sway in virtue of the royal gift of beauty,—to enchant with the commonest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... a sickening sound of gurgling water. The Croonah was afloat, but only for a few seconds. There was no time to lower another boat, and all on board knew it. There were not many remaining, for the passengers had all left the ship—the stokers, the engineers. Amidships the captain stood, surrounded by his ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... for the patent medicine ads, Ayers tells me, he wouldn't be able to keep afloat for want of ready cash. He says a patent medicine may be an abomination before the Lord, but that a patent medicine advertising agent looks to him like a very present help in time of trouble. The agent comes in and beats him down until ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... she was quite full. We hauled her out once more, and found the oil-cloth had been cut by the jagged ice, so there was nothing for it but to remove it altogether and put on another. This was done, and soon our waggon-box was once again afloat. This time I reached in safety the farther side; but there a difficulty arose which we had not foreseen. Along this farther edge of ice the current ran with great force, and as the leather line which was attached to the back of the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... almost always unwell; he was something of a sailor, but thought it a horrid bore to keep watch. Strange as it may appear, this officer left the ship a few months afterwards, and was made commander, post captain, and retired admiral without serving afloat! We named him ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... forevermore. His "leviathans afloat" he lifted from the "Annus Mirabilis"; but in what court could Dryden sue? Again, Waller in another poem calls the Duke ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... inopportune moment I was rudely interrupted. The crowd parted and fell this way and that without my perception, and a hand clapped upon my shoulder brought me to earth from those middle regions of the aether, where I had seemed to be afloat. It was as if, looking up at the stars, I had stumbled ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea. Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring, And waves are on the meadow like the waves ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... go sailing on the Nile? Come, then, and imagine yourselves, on a clear warm January day, afloat on the river of which you have so often heard. What a sensation we should create if we could go sailing up the Hudson some sunny morning, our broad lateen-sail swelling in the breeze, and the Egyptian ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... moment she was afloat—out on the broad sea of life, without a home; a disowned, disinherited girl! She left home this morning, a comfortable, stately, dear old home of wealth, elegance, and affection. She must not return to it to-night. She was but yesterday an heiress. To-day she is ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... from the British. During most of this time there had been comparative peace on the western border, excepting those occasional murders, raids, and massacres perpetrated by the different Indian tribes, and instigated no doubt by Girty and the British at Detroit. Now all kinds of rumors were afloat: Washington was defeated; a close alliance between England and the confederated western tribes had been formed; Girty had British power and wealth back of him. These and many more alarming reports travelled from ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... number of cannon, all placed in position. In a moment a tremendous fire was opened upon the unhappy fugitives. Numbers of them were at once killed in the boats; some jumped into the water, and, pushing the boats afloat, made for the opposite shore; while others leaped into the river on the deeper side and tried to escape by swimming. But upon the other shore were enemies as bloodthirsty as those they left behind, ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... it, was magnificent, with water deep enough to accommodate the largest vessel afloat, and so safe that the South Pacific Directory recommended it to the best careening place for ships for hundreds of miles around. He would buy a schooner—one of those yacht- like, coppered crafts that sailed like witches—and go trading copra and pearling among the islands. He would ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... greatly interested in his brother's wonderful narrative, "how is it, that with all that weight resting upon you, and you standing in a boat, the boat didn't sink? I can't understand how, with that weight upon it, it remained afloat." ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... be?" he cried. "They cannot have gone down, for there has been no sea, and they were afloat after the yacht sank—I saw ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to have been chosen, in the great dominions of either monarch, for that pompous interview which took place, in 1538, between Francis I. and Charles V. It was also not easy to perceive how Louis IX., when in 1248 and 1270 he started for the Holy Land, set his army afloat in ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... as usual, surrounded by the inhabitants, who did not immediately discover any hostile intention: unfortunately, the sailors in the long-boats had suffered them to take the ground, and whilst they were endeavouring to get them afloat again, the natives were very troublesome, and pressed close in upon the sailors; on this, De Langle ordered the men in the rowing-boats to be ready to fire on the natives, but not to do it until he ordered them. Some altercation happening ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... paddlewheel rotated by clockwork mechanism, which, it was claimed, would run for eight hours when once wound up. The iron tips at the ends of the vessel were intended for ramming, and the inventor was confident he could sink the biggest English ship afloat by crushing in her hull under water. The boat was duly launched, but on trial of the machinery being made the paddlewheel, though it revolved in air, would not move in the water, the machinery being not powerful enough. This, says ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... two or three blankets and something for coffee, if you will. It looks pretty rough in there, and we might not get through before dark." Eddring swept a hand toward the submerged forest, which, shoreless and all afloat, appeared upon their right, stretching away in every direction as far as the eye could reach ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... and if you would be so good as to let the birds and stones and flowers alone now, and help me till we get the Little Planet afloat, I ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... breast, cold as the cloyster'd nun, Whose frost to chrystal might congeal the sun, So glar'd the stream, that pilots, there afloat, Thought they might safely land without a boat; July had seen the Thames in ice involv'd, Had it not been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... thirteen vessels, and eight vessels, complete, in a year has been no unfrequent task successfully performed. Among others, they built the barque W. T. Graves, which carried the largest cargo of any fresh water vessel afloat. The propeller Dean Richmond is another of their build, and is also one of the largest on the lakes; besides these, four first class vessels built for Mr. Frank Perew, deserve mention as giving character to Cleveland ship building. They are named the Mary E. Perew, D. P. Dobbin, ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... of tea I drank, what a lot of bread I ate, what a lot of thoughts I thought! And what a lot I slept! Night came on and still no boat.... Early morning came.... At last at nine o'clock the workmen returned.... Thank heaven, we are afloat at last! And how pleasant it is! The air is still, the oarsmen are good, the islands are beautiful.... The floods caught men and cattle unawares and I see peasant women rowing in boats to the islands to milk the cows. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... above water. For a while she was able to hold on. Then, with a sickening sense of helplessness, she felt herself torn from him, and whirled away like a leaf. The rank smell of the muddy water was in her nostrils, the fear of death in her heart. She struggled to keep afloat. Suddenly a blood-streaked face appeared, and Blake, bleeding from a cut on the forehead, caught her with a strong grip and drew her to him. A few more seconds of whirling chaos, and she felt land under her feet, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... being questioned, he said he had met that man and carriage, within a fortnight, in four different States; that at each time he had inquired the way to Boston; and that a thunder shower like the present had each time deluged him, his wagon and his wares, setting his tin pots, etc., afloat, so that he had determined to get marine insurance done for the future. But that which excited his surprise most was the strange conduct of his horse, for that, long before he could distinguish the man in the chair, his own horse stood still in the road and flung back his ears. "In ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... with which both I and all mine are sore beaten already, and now upon the coming of this cruel Turk fear to fall in far more, that I may, with the same laid up in remembrance, govern and stay the ship of our kindred and keep it afloat ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... shoes and stockings, into the water he dashed, following after the floating box in which Trouble was riding. As for the little fellow himself, he had been overjoyed, at first, when he found that he was afloat. But as the water came leaking through the cracks in ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... trying to roll out of reach of the skipper, who was down on his knees flaying him alive with a roller-towel. "I had to undress in the water to keep afloat. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... (still talking to himself) This Lovel here's of a tough honesty, Would put the rack to the proof. He is not of that sort, Which haunt my house, snorting the liquors, And when their wisdoms are afloat with wine, Spend vows as fast as vapours, which go off Even with the fumes, their fathers. He is one, Whose sober morning actions Shame not his o'ernight's promises; Talks little, flatters less, and makes no promises; Why this is he, whom the dark-wisdom'd fate Might trust her ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to get his revolver and an electric torch. He then descended with Doria to the water and they were soon afloat again. The boat ran at full speed for a few minutes; then her course was changed and she turned in under the cliffs. Mark soon saw a solitary gleam of light, like a glowworm, at sea level in the solid darkness ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... escaped or exchanged prisoners; radio direction-finding; efficiency of cryptography; interception of enemy radio, telegraph, telephone, and mail communications; espionage; censorship; propaganda; efficiency of communications systems, ashore and afloat, which include all means of interchange of thought. In this connection it will be recalled that information, however accurate and appropriate, is useless if it ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... rapidly, but she was outnumbered by British destroyers, which poured such an amount of steel into her thin sides that she went under, her guns firing till their muzzles touched the water and her crew cheering as they went to their deaths. A few managed to keep afloat on wreckage, and during a lull in the fighting, which lasted from nine o'clock till ten, boats were lowered from the British destroyers Goshawk and Defender to pick up ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... our praise to them: they eat Quiet's wild heart, like daily meat, Who when night thickens are afloat On dappled skins in a glass boat Far out under a windless sky, While over them birds of Aengus fly, And over the tiller and the prow And waving white wings to and fro Awaken wanderings of light air To stir their ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... squire, who had lost forty pieces on that occasion, insisted on having his revenge the night after; when, strange to say, a hundred and fifty more found their way into the pouch of his Excellency the Count. Such a sum as this quite set the young nobleman afloat again, and brought back a pleasing equanimity to his mind, which had been a good deal disturbed in the former difficult circumstances; and in this, for a little and to a certain extent, poor Cat had ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hear a boat shove off from the starboard side, or you are a dead man. Your money is stolen; and in five minutes' time the yacht will be scuttled, and the cabin hatch will be nailed down on you. Dead men tell no tales; and the sailing-master's notion is to leave proofs afloat that the vessel has foundered with all on board. It was his doing, to begin with, and we were all in it. I can't find it in my heart not to give you a chance for your life. It's a bad chance, but I can do no more. I should ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... can't ye, she'll float next tide; by which words I was fully convinced they were my own countrymen. I all this while lay very quiet, as being fully sensible it could be no less than ten hours before the boat would be afloat, and then it would be so dark, that they could not easily perceive me, by which means I should be at more liberty to hear their talk, and observe all their motions: not but that I prepared for my defence: yet, as I had another ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... more familiarly than favorably known in financial circles of Boston, as the man who had put afloat more wild-cat stocks than any other speculator on the street. It might be supposed that his connection with any scheme would be enough to wreck its prospects, yet whatever he took hold of floated for a time. There was always a feeling among his victims that at length he had come to the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... to possess all the qualities of every singer in perfection, and as an actress to be the very personification of grace and power. Stories of the romantic attachments of foreign princes and English lords were afloat in all directions; she was going to be married to a personage of the loftiest rank—to a German prince—to an ambassador; she was pursued by the ardent love of men of fashion. Among other stories in circulation was one of a duel between two imaginary rival candidates for a ticket of admission ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... gas and aircraft presents the possibility of attaining strategic effects by chemical means. Many rumours were afloat, towards the end of the war, regarding the use of gas by enemy aircraft, and there was apprehension amongst the civil populations, which has been reflected in numerous public utterances. Evidence on the ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... only in books. Books do not tell of running for trains through blinding snowstorms; writers do not expatiate on the delights of waking on cold winter nights and finding your piano and parlor furniture afloat because of bursted pipes, with the plumber, like Sheridan at Winchester, twenty miles away. They are dumb on the subject of the ecstasy one feels when pushing a twenty-pound lawn-mower up and down a weed patch at the end of a wearisome ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... bankruptcy. To cut costs the government has frozen wages and reduced overstaffed public service departments. In 2005, the deterioration in housing, hospitals, and other capital plant continued, and the cost to Australia of keeping the government and economy afloat continued to climb. Few comprehensive statistics on the Nauru economy exist, with estimates of ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... hundred officers left the United States Navy for the South; but, as in the case of the Army, they were followed by very few men. The total personnel of the regular Confederate navy never exceeded four thousand at any one time. The irregular forces afloat often did gallant, and sometimes even skillful, service in little isolated ways. But when massed together they were always at sixes and sevens; and they could never do more than make the best of a very ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... rocks of Kembe Island about 8, and no sooner had we got afloat, than, in the twinkling of an eye, we were swept, broadside on, right across the river to the north bank, and then engaged in a heavy fight with a severe rapid. After passing this, the river is fairly uninterrupted by rock for a while, and is silent ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... bugle note. None cowered at the high alarm, The steady fleets were still afloat, And England saw her soldiers arm, And readily, with sober grace. The close-set ranks ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... thing more have I to call your attention to. There is a gossip afloat about the Werthers. I perceive it in the air, as ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... of this and with just cause, so long as $2,000 of the sainted Hovey's money are sunk annually in the struggle to keep the Standard afloat, while Mr. Hovey's will expressly says: "In case chattel slavery should be abolished before the expenditure of the full amount, the residue shall be applied toward securing woman's rights," etc. Mr. Pillsbury told the Hovey ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... I found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, and least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in the harbour of the city of New York, in the United States of America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good steamship 'RUSSIA,' CAPT. COOK, Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more could I ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... with his companions, and looked with keen eye at the ranks of their assailants. There was a great stir among them. Some detachments went off to the village; the horsemen rode up and down; there was evidently something afloat. At last a party brought some thick boards and a row of empty carts. The upper parts of them were lifted off, and the lower placed in a row, the poles away from the castle, the hind wheels toward it. Next, boards were nailed together, and made into pent-houses, which being fastened to the back of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... deep, half-serious, half-mirthful impression on these three friends, and had taken them into a certain airy region, lifting up, as it is so pleasant to feel them lifted, their heavy earthly feet from the actual soil of life. The world had been set afloat, as it were, for a moment, and relieved them, for just so long, of all customary responsibility for what they thought ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only other noble of prominence who did not approve the 11th of March letter, was at this period attempting to "swim in two waters," and, as usual in such cases, found it very difficult to keep himself afloat. He had refused to join the league, but he stood aloof from Granvelle. On a hope held out by the seigniors that his son should be made Bishop of Liege, he had ceased during a whole year from visiting the Cardinal, and had never spoken to him at the council-board. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the ice is nearly at an end," remarked Victor. "This south wind, if it continues a few days, will set our present pathway afloat. Go along!" he shouted, excitedly, to his horses, following the exclamation by the lash of his whip. They dashed ahead with the speed of lightning, while the ice cracked in a frightful manner beneath the runners of our sleigh for several rods. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the shore. Then, still trumpeting, he pushed me into the water and as I fell into the stream I saw a boy lying flat on the bottom of the river. He had not altogether touched bottom but was somewhat afloat. I came to the surface of the water to take my breath and there Kari was standing, his feet planted into the sand bank and his trunk stretched out like a hand waiting for mine. I dove down again and pulled the body ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... which had washed the boat off the raft catch her broadside, it might roll her over and over. By great exertions the mate got her round, head to the sea, and there he and Nub were able to keep her. But what had become of the raft? In the darkness it could nowhere be seen. Perhaps it was afloat near them, or it might, deprived of their weight, have been turned over and knocked to pieces by the seas. Happily, most of the articles on which they depended for existence were in the boat; but their mast ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... above a slough which was not more than two hundred feet wide. And beyond that was an island thickly overgrown with cane, oak, and hickory. The upper end of that was sandy, matted with driftwood, some of it partially afloat again. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... first good impressions. The next day proves cloudy and foggy, and we spend it lazily, re-reading and answering letters, or wandering about the town, absorbing its streets and shops. The season is fairly afloat, and all sail is set. At the angle of two thoroughfares, a stretch of ground has been brushed together for a park or promenade, and this, sprinkled with low, flat-topped trees and a band-stand, naturally attracts us first. Booths and cafes and nicknack stalls reach around its ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... that they were not to fight, stood aloof and disregarded their admiral's signal to engage. The entire casualties among our men exceeded a thousand. Many of the ships were completely riddled by shot, and on some of them the men were employed day and night at the pumps to keep them afloat till they could cross the Channel to our own harbours. Two seventy-fours, five fifty-fours, two gun-ships, and two frigates remained in our hands, but all were so battered that not one of them could ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... agreed Fred, as he glanced at the boat tossing about helplessly, now wallowing in the trough and again rising to the crest of a wave. "But perhaps it may keep afloat till the storm is over. We'll cruise around and look for it to-morrow or ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... gave her Hungarian Majesty that 200,000 pounds of Secret-Service Money;—advice sufficiently Walpolean: "Russian Partition-Treaties; horrible to think of;—beware of these again! Give her Majesty that cash; can be done; it will keep matters afloat, and spoil nothing!" That, till the late Subsidy payable within year and day hence, was all of tangible his Majesty had yet done;—truly that is all her Hungarian Majesty has yet got by hawking the world, Pragmatic Sanction in hand. And if ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fellows hanging there; now I can only see three. Mind there is another there to-morrow.' And sure enough there was another Greek dangling the next day. 'Captain Hamilton, of the CAMBRIAN, kept the Greeks in order afloat,' writes my author, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slight modifications. Nothing came of this any more than of the bill that he started going in 1909. In 1911 he again brought forward this pet measure toward which Congress had so often turned a cold shoulder. Senator George P. McLean set a similar bill afloat in the troubled waters of the Senate. Nothing happened, however, until the spring of 1912, when committee hearings were given on these bills in both branches of Congress. Representatives of more than thirty organizations interested in conservation appeared and eloquently sought ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... first novel has been read, somewhere under the seasoned age of fourteen years, the beginner equipped with inherent genius for novel reading is afloat upon an open sea of literature, a master mariner of his own craft, having ports to make, to leave, to take, so splendid of variety and wonder as to make the voyages of Sinbad sing small by comparison. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... what I have made myself. Oh, the bitter pangs of an accusing conscience! I need a Saviour mighty to save. I must seek Him. I will. I am on the sea of existence, and I can never get off from it. I am afloat. No anchor, no rudder, no compass, no book of instructions, for I have put them all away from me. Saviour of the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... only to be feted from one house to another, among that class of people who are every where alike. As soon as they appear in society, their reputation as authors sets all the national and personal vanity in it afloat. One is polite, for the honour of his country—another is brilliant, to recommend himself; and the traveller cannot ask a question, the answer to which is not intended for an honourable insertion in his repertory of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... their first tour proven that the Stanhope Boy Scouts began to talk of other outings which might be arranged later on; and which will be treated of in the next volume of this series, to be called "The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat; or, the Secret ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... have more than a hundred ships. This is to create productive capacity out of which may come many hundred ships, when they are wanted. The faith men have in the maritime greatness of England rests not simply on the fact that she has afloat a few hundred frail ships, but rather on this more pregnant fact, that England, from Pentland Frith to Land's End, is one gigantic work-shop,—and that, whether she turn her attention to the clothing of the world or the building of navies, there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... oars, with whom I descended from the ridge on which I was perched, towards the shores of the lake, where there was a sort of boat, or rather toll-house, at which the pilgrims paid a certain sum before they were permitted to embark for the island. In a few minutes we were afloat; and while sitting in the boat I had time to observe my ferrymen: one was a stupid countryman, who did not speak; the other was an old man with a Woollen night-cap under his hat, a brown snuff-colored coat, a nose begrimed with snuff, a ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... had been ordered to California; that Colonel John D. Stevenson was coming out to California with a regiment of New York Volunteers; that Commodore Shubrick had orders also from the Navy Department to control matters afloat; that General Kearney, by virtue of his rank, had the right to control all the land-forces in the service of the United States; and that Fremont claimed the same right by virtue of a letter he had received from Colonel Benton, then a Senator, and a man of great influence ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... he told them the object of the voyage and his intentions towards them. At first they seemed somewhat incredulous, but when they were shown some of the gold their doubts vanished, and they one and all swore to be honest and true to him and to obey him faithfully whether afloat or ashore, in fair or ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... they are his forevermore. His "leviathans afloat" he lifted from the "Annus Mirabilis"; but in what court could Dryden sue? Again, Waller in another poem calls ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... accept a permanent office, because he believed that he could serve his mistress better as an unassuming, unnoticed counsellor. Berenike had told Barine that the relations between Cleopatra and Archibius dated back to their childhood, but she had learned no particulars. Various rumours were afloat which, in the course of time, had been richly adorned and interwoven with anecdotes, and Barine naturally lent the most ready credence to those which asserted that the princess, in her earliest youth, had cherished a childish love for the philosopher's son. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sorts of queer and absurd ideas afloat as to the shape of the earth. Some people thought it was round like a pancake and that the waters which surrounded the land gradually changed into mist and vapor and that he who ventured out into these vapors fell ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... if you want to know, a false date on a letter, a single stroke of the pen wrong—that was my whole crime. No, God be praised, I can tell right from wrong yet a while. How would it fare with me if I were, into the bargain, to sully my honour? It is simply my sense of honour that keeps me afloat now. But it is strong enough too; at least, it has ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... with a cover to it, just like a little ark, and this she covered with a kind of pitch, so that not a drop of water could come through. Inside the cradle she made a soft bed, and laid the baby there while he was fast asleep, and set the ark afloat in the water where the bulrushes were growing. She knew that presently the great princess, Pharaoh's daughter, would come down to bathe in the river, and would notice the queer little ark ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman
... M.P.s are afloat on the seas, the debates of the West to control, And the thought of their scheme's a magnificent dream which may calm our disconsolate soul: For if ever the Yanks should return them with thanks and consider their presence a bore, We have plenty of cranks in the Radical ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... when Europe as well as the United States shall be at peace it would not be proposed that more than six or eight of these vessels should be kept afloat. When Europe is in war, treble that number might be necessary, to be distributed among those particular harbors which foreign vessels of war are in the habit of frequenting for the purpose of preserving order therein. But they would be manned in ordinary, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... son of Danae, who was the daughter of a king. And when Perseus was a very little boy, some wicked people put his mother and himself into a chest and set them afloat upon the sea. The wind blew freshly and drove the chest away from the shore, and the uneasy billows tossed it up and down; while Danae clasped her child closely to her bosom, and dreaded that some big wave would dash its foamy crest over them both. The chest sailed ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... the white glare of the motor lamps; people were passing, grooms with dogs and guns and fluffy bunches of game-birds, several women in motor costumes, veils afloat, a man or two in shooting-tweeds ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... half-decked; but she had good high sides, and was provided with water-ways, so that unless the gale should prove of unusual violence, they had no reason to fear for their safety. Though Andrew had lived near the sea, he had seldom been afloat, and Simon had never even seen the ocean before. At first he had been highly pleased with its appearance, but now that he saw the dark leaden foam-topped waves rising up, he began to look as if he would rather have been safe on shore; but he was a ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... tranquility and became a scene of bustle and excitement. Moreover, to the astonishment of the Bosekop folk, the sailing-brig known as the Valkyrie, belonging to Olaf Gueldmar, which had been hauled up high and dry on the shore for many months, was suddenly seen afloat on the Fjord, and Valdemar Svensen, Errington's pilot, appeared to be busily engaged upon her decks, putting everything in ship-shape order. It was no use asking him any questions—he was not the man to gratify impertinent curiosity. By-and-by a rumor got about ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... fate was perhaps as sad as well might be, and as foul a blot to the purism of these very pure times in which we live. Not long after those days, it so happening that some considerable amount of youthful energy and quidnunc ability were required to set litigation afloat at Hong-Kong, Mr Romer was sent thither as the fittest man for such work, with rich assurance of future guerdon. Who so happy then as Mr Romer! But even among the pure there is room for envy and ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... evening. We were talking about Clarian and his picture, at the time,—as, indeed, we had been doing for a month,—and when I mentioned the purport of the note, curiosity rose to the tiptoe of expectation, and numerous surmises were set afloat. I could have satisfied their queries as to the subject and character of the picture, for Mac and I had seen it only a few days before, but Clarian expected us to be secret about it; so I only listened and smiled, while the eager talk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the day glad were they all; And when they were at the shore almost, Every ship his anchor let fall, With their tackles they launched many a long boat And over ha[t]ch threw them into the stream; A thousand shortly they saw afloat. With men of arms ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... ships is lying, eight battleships being among the number. We and another transport are anchored in the middle of the roadstead, awaiting the arrival of the other members of the expedition. It is said that over 100,000 will arrive from Egypt. The greatest warship afloat, and one that figured largely in the bombardment of the Dardanelles two months ago, the "Queen Elizabeth," lies a short way off on our starboard. The whole is shut in by steep hills, rough and rugged, some of which must be over ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... simplicity of law which the good Saxons had under Alfred and his successors. The gap is vast, and there is no danger whatever of our becoming too simple; yet this fanatical aim will be so surely imputed to us (in days when such men as Lord John Manners in Politics and the Puseyites in Church are afloat) that it is not needless to disown it even to candid and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... time to cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so many privations; ague and dysentery undermined ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... lords; and, in a word, the first tumult of the restoration being over, the troops of the Allies withdrawn, and the memory of recent sufferings and disasters beginning to wax dim amidst the vainest and most volatile of nations, there were abundant elements of discontent afloat among all those classes who had originally approved of, or profited by, the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... of light breezes and calms rendered the passage very tedious; but the boats were constantly out, chasing the vessels along shore, and Jack usually asked to be employed on this service: indeed, although so short a time afloat, he was, from his age and strength, one of the most effective midshipmen, and to be trusted, provided a whim did not come into his head; but hitherto Jack had always been under orders, and had always ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... want to see. Hit us suddenly five nights ago. Them palms was bent double with the wind. Lord only knows why my mansion yonder didn't go. After while sort a felt we were driftin'. When mornin' broke there was my kingdom afloat in the ocean cut in two, me alone on this bit and the biggest half gone off ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom, in recruiting labor, was to land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat always lay on its oars several hundred feet off shore, while the recruiter's boat, also lying on its oars, kept afloat on the edge of the beach. When I landed with my trade goods, leaving my steering sweep apeak, Otoo left his stroke position and came into the stern sheets, where a Winchester lay ready to hand under a flap of canvas. The boat's crew was also armed, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... brook, wading to and fro without the bother of taking off his shoes and stockings, and filled his hat with rocks and sunk it to the bottom for a wharf, keeping his hat-band to tie an unhappy frog to a bit of bark, and setting him afloat as the captain of a slave-ship. When, at length, the struggling creature freed himself from his bonds and leaped into the pool, Dicky played that he was a drowning child, and threw Lubin into ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and sank, and their men climbed on bridge and piling, or leapt into the stream to reach the ships that yet were afloat. Then the storm stayed for lack of rocks within reach, as it would seem, for I saw men hoisting more into the towers as fast as crane and windlass ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... insurrection the Psariotes had been the scourge and terror of the Ottoman coasts. The services that they had rendered in the Greek navy had been priceless; and if there was one spot of Greek soil which ought to have been protected as long as a single boat's crew remained afloat, it was the little rock of Psara. Yet, in spite of repeated warnings, the Greek Government allowed the Turkish fleet to pass the Dardenelles unobserved, and some clumsy feints were enough to blind it to the real object of an expedition whose aim was known to all Europe. There were ample ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... as the friend of their curate, the prejudice which had slowly but surely penetrated the mind of every man against him, and interpreted his simplest action in the worst light. There were some rumours afloat of misdemeanours during his college life; it mattered not whether they were true or false, they were received and encouraged by the credulous. He was a Welshman too, full of evil qualities, and clothed with invulnerable pride, which last idea was unfortunately confirmed ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... Wee' he went to sea In an open boat; and while afloat The little boat bended, And ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... lunching at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly at my side, and An kept bringing us melons, which grew so monstrous every time a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud. I dreamt I was afloat on a raft, hotly pursued by my tailor, whose bare and shiny head—may Providence be good to him!—was garlanded with roses, while in his fist was a bunch of unpaid bills, the which he waved aloft, shouting to me to stop. And thus we danced down an ink-black river until he had chiveyed ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... they had a taste Of aught to eat, for the cans stayed shut, and a peek-a-boo shirtwaist Was all they had to bale the brine that came in the leaky boat; And their tongues were thick and their throats were dry, and they barely kept afloat. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... impossibility in building and manning any number of ships, but his difficulty would have consisted in forming thorough seamen as distinguished from what we call smooth-water sailors. Napoleon replied that he had provided for that also; he had organized exercises for them afloat, not only in harbor, but in smaller vessels near the coast, by which they might have been trained to go through, even in rough weather, the most arduous manoeuvres of seamanship, which he enumerated; and he mentioned among them the keeping a ship clear of her anchors in a heavy sea. The ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... impossible to get the two brigs afloat; and, as their sails had been landed, it would have been impossible to navigate them. They were therefore burnt; and another smaller vessel, which was so placed that Hastings would not expose his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... that Bonaventure, too, has come back?" the young maidens whisper, one to another; for the news was afloat. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... nonsense?" Why didn't I tell him he had nothing to do with it, yet awhile? Why didn't I hold up to him those awful examples I could have cited, where poor young fellows that could just keep themselves afloat have hung a matrimonial millstone round their necks, taking it for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Southern coast to which any foreign ship would think of going with a cargo or for the purpose of receiving one. The naval strength of the Union is as capable of vast and effective development as its military strength; and there is no reason why we should not have afloat, and ready for action, by the beginning of autumn, fleets sufficient to close up the Confederate ports as thoroughly as the Allies closed those of Russia in 1854-6, and the advanced guard of other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... that these people haven't got a King at all. They have somehow managed to keep the rumour afloat. ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... her visits might have come to the knowledge of that stern, prying, and questioning old gentleman whom she called sire. It may be too, that she feared, if seen haunting Mr. Carlyle's office, Captain Thorn might come to hear of it and suspect the agitation, that was afloat—for who could know better than he, the guilt that was falsely attaching to Richard? Therefore she chose rather to go to East Lynne, or to waylay Mr. Carlyle as he passed to and from business. It was little she gathered to tell ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... to, and in a moment more the captain and his man were afloat and rowing toward the opening of the reef with all their might. Those left behind waited anxiously ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... at his blunders again. He telegraphed to me that a conspiracy was afloat to enact a kind of petticoat government. He meant to tell me some gossip about Madame PATTI-CAUX. Then he wanted me to believe that the "smaller catechism" talked about at Rome was the catechizing of SMALLEY of the Tribune, concerning GUSTAVE FLOURENS. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... United States, Commodore Porter placed him at school at Chester, Pa., where he was taught, among other studies, the elements of military and naval tactics; but in 1816 he was again afloat and on board the flag-ship of the Mediterranean squadron, where he had the good fortune to meet in the chaplain, Rev. Charles Folsom, an instructor to whom he became ardently attached, and to whose teachings he attributed much of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... they never rested. Many counties also that were confined to London by work, were grievously oppressed on account of the wall that they were building about the tower, and the bridge that was nearly all afloat, and the work of the king's hall that they were building at Westminster; and many men perished thereby. Also in this same year soon after Michaelmas went Edgar Etheling with an army through the king's assistance into Scotland, and with hard fighting won that land, and drove ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... hour brought them to the point. The boat lay just afloat, bumping on the sand as each little wave lifted and left her. They sprang out of the canoe into shallow water and threw out the anchor, and then waded to the boat. She had about four inches of water in ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... of July—hot, sultry and threatening rain—had been more quiet than usual. Not a rumor had been set afloat; and the monotony was only broken by a group of officers about the "Spotswood" discussing Bethel, Rich Mountain and the chances of the next fight. One of them, with three stars on his collar, had just declared ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... BRADLEY AT TWIN LAKES or Jolly Schoolgirls Afloat and Ashore A tale of outdoor adventure in which Billie and her chums have a great variety of adventures. They visit an artists' colony and there fall in with a strange girl living with an old boatman ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... consumption, and every other disease, except sudden death—from sun-stroke. But, aside from this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the hedges, the various plants and vines, that is only expressed and set afloat at a high temperature, which is delicious; and, hot as it may be, a little breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard in the treetops, and which is an unobtrusive benediction. I hear a quail or two whistling in the ravine; and there is a good deal of fragmentary conversation going on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sing your praise of the bounding craft; And the merry sloops afloat, But for easy space, both fore and aft, ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... profession to which he had always been devoted, it was the ambition of Lord Hardwicke's life to continue his naval career, and to complete a period of active service afloat which would have entitled him to promotion to flag rank. He was encouraged in this desire by all his friends, even by those who, like John Wilson Croker, had opposed his return to active service. In a letter written by that gentleman to Lady Hardwicke in 1849, he said: 'I never was very favourable ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... de Montausier came to see me at my country-house; she told me of the general rumour that was afloat at Court. The news, said she, of my retirement had begun to get about; three bishops had gone to congratulate the King, and these gentlemen had despatched couriers to Paris to inform the heads of the various parishes, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... and bank paper afloat in the United States since the 1st January, 1862, is conceded to be only temporary. The Government is engaged in crushing the greatest rebellion known to history; in doing this, the national expenditures are six or seven fold what ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades, High over arch'd, embower; or scatter'd sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd Hath vex'd the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris, and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcasses And broken chariot wheels; so thick ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... course of the night two of the pumps were for some time rendered useless, one, however was repaired, and we continued baling and pumping the remainder of the night and every effort was made to keep her afloat.[73-1] Daylight fortunately appeared and gave us the opportunity to see our situation and the surrounding danger. Our boats were kept astern of the ship; a small quantity of provisions and other necessaries were put into them, rafts were made, and all ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... things in his past life that it gave him especial pleasure to recall; and that the faculty of receiving such sharp impressions had now died out in himself, but must at my age be still quite lively and active. Then he told me that he had a little raft afloat on the river above the dam which he was going to lend me, in order that I might be able to look back, in after years, upon having done so, and get great pleasure from the recollection. Now, I have a friend of my own who ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waxed rich fast, and in the spring of the year wherein the story begins was getting the ship ready for the first cruise of the season, meaning to be afloat early; for then there was less trouble with the wild Norse Viking folk, for one cruise at least. Then happened that which set all things going otherwise than he had planned, and makes my ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... there was no lecture. The Baroness was made to understand that visitors at a country house in England could not be made to endure such an infliction; but she succeeded in levying a contribution from Mrs. Montacute Jones, and there were rumours afloat that she got a sovereign out ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... and I made as queer a ship's company as ever went afloat together; and our little craft—with its cargo that would have bought a whole fleet's lading—was such an argosy as never before had sailed the seas. Nor did even Columbus, when he struck out across the black ocean westward, start upon a voyage so ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... morning saw me afloat again. As I was getting away from the shore a man called out to me: 'Your boat is worth nothing! If you try to pass the third bridge you will go ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... came a new thing. Naani, the daughter of the Master Monstruwacan of that Redoubt had shown to all that she was Sensitive; for she had perceived odd vibrations afloat in the night; and concerning these she told her father; and presently, because their blood moved afresh in their bodies, they had heart to discover the plans of the ancient instruments; for the instruments had long ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... our infantry and artillery, ably assisted by the little "pepper-boxes" afloat, soon put our dusky enemies to flight; and we marched straight into town, with colors flying, over trenches, barricades, and other obstructions hastily thrown ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... much fretting guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her mind. Could the nameless one be Robert Fulmort? Though aware of the anonymous nature of brother's friends, the secrecy struck her as unusually guarded; and to one so used to devotion, it seemed no extraordinary homage that another ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rumours afloat. Some said that the prisoner of Zenda was dead; some, that he had vanished yet alive; some, that he was a friend who had served the King well in some adventure in England; others, that he had discovered the Duke's plots, and had therefore ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... soon made, and ere many days he was afloat upon the heaving ocean, bound for New York, where he was informed he could procure a sailing vessel direct to Australia, at a cost much less than he could by ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... gleam of a lantern at night. All colour was intensified, though all was suffused with the triumphant rose, which steeped sky and air and earth till they seemed infused with some impalpable wine; and the procession moved through an atmosphere full of refractions and bright edges afloat in the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... precise instructions from Castlereagh, the objects prescribed to him being, (1) the capture or destruction of the enemy's ships, either building or afloat at Antwerp or Flushing, or afloat in the Scheldt; (2) the destruction of the arsenals and dockyards at Antwerp, Terneuze, and Flushing; (3) the reduction of the island of Walcheren; (4) the rendering of the Scheldt no longer navigable to ships of war. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... had the two strong, friendly forces been swept from Jinnie's daily life that as yet she had not the power to think with precision. Lafe she had had every day for almost three years, and Theodore King—oh, how she loved him! Rumors were afloat that no power could save Lafe—her dear, ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... afloat, and one day a Mexican officer called at the camp obviously in pursuit of Apaches from whom he had recently taken twelve horses: but unfortunately the men had escaped. The presidente of Casas Grandes had been advised of the killing of two Americans ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... surplus in the Treasury to great national objects for which a clear warrant can be found in the Constitution. Among these I might mention the extinguishment of the public debt, a reasonable increase of the Navy, which is at present inadequate to the protection of our vast tonnage afloat, now greater than that of any other nation, as well as to the ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... answered, "but any one could lose a hat, simply by looking over the edge of the shaft." Then, as if in proof of the forlorn hope which he himself did not believe; "Harry 's a strong man. Certainly he would know how to swim. And in any event he should have been able to have kept afloat for at least a few minutes. Rodaine says that he heard a shout and ran right in here; but all that he could see was ruffled water and a floating hat. I—" Then he paused suddenly. It had come to him that Rodaine might have helped ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... ashore than afloat,' said Pierston, 'especially in the Channel, with these winds and those heavy blocks ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... session of 1792 rumours were afloat as to a reconstruction of the Cabinet. Early in that year, when the debates on the Russian armament somewhat shook Pitt's position, it was stated that the King desired to get rid of him. Gillray heard of the story, and visualized it with his usual skill. He represented the Marquis ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... had Alaska become American soil than thousands of our adventurers were afoot and afloat for the north. They were the men of "the days of gold," the men of California, Fraser, Cassiar, and Cariboo. With the mysterious, infinite faith of the prospector, they believed that the gold streak, which ran through the Americas ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... who desired neither to toil nor to spin, but only to emulate Solomon in his glory with the least possible exertion. The joyful witness of their ease would willingly have sacrificed to them any amount of the facile industrial or agricultural prosperity about them and left them slumberously afloat, unmolested by dreams of landlord or tax- gatherer. Their existence for the fleeting time seemed the true interpretation of the sage's philosophy, the fulfilment of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... doubly incapable—by education as well as by temperament—of gaining her own living. She was now employed as daily governess in the family of a city tradesman—people, who though they were kindly-natured enough, had as much as they could do in keeping their own fortunes afloat without giving any substantial aid to others, and who had therefore engaged her at the lowest possible salary, such as was barely sufficient to keep her and her ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... convinced of this, Captain Gancy calls out, "Boys, it's no use trying to keep her afloat. Drop the pumps, and let us ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... when she was at her bath, her mother's back was turned, and little Miss Flossie turned her slipper into a boat and set it afloat in her little bath-tub. Then she pushed it about and made believe it was sailing. By and by it got full of water and sank, crew and all. This made her cry, and that made her mother look round. Flossie's shoe-boat was taken from her, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... small free states—Norway, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and Portugal—maintaining their homes free, and bearing their flags in triumph for long ages. We will learn from themselves how they kept their freedom afloat amid the perils of centuries. We will salute them as brethren subject to common dangers, and interested in one policy—localisation ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the ordnance of the Benbow can penetrate armor that would defy the attack of the guns of the Empress. It should be said, however, that the heavy artillery of the latter vessel is capable of penetrating any armor at present afloat, and is carried at a much greater height above the designed load water line than in any existing battle ship, either in the British or foreign navies. The armor being of less weight, too, enables the new ship, and others of her class, to carry an auxiliary armament of unprecedented ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... Means, he was largely the author of the tariff bill of 1890 which bears his name. It was slow work getting the bill through Congress, and it did not become a law till October. The most amazing misrepresentations of it were set afloat, and it had not time to vindicate itself before the Congressional elections came on in November, when the party that had carried ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... and spent that day—and a large part of many days there-after—in working at the wreck, Martin Hastings, inspecting known weak spots, searching for unknown ones, patching here and there, trying all the schemes teeming in his ingenious and supremely sensible mind in the hope of setting the wreck afloat again. He could not comprehend why the old man remained alive. He had seen many a human being go who was in health, in comparison with this conglomerate of diseases and frailties; yet life there was, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... name go before the convention, Spinney. You must walk out of this room and deny the rumors that are afloat. I propose to have two of these men go with you and stay with you. And if you deny half-heartedly, or if you attempt any more sneak tricks, or if your name is not put into nomination to-day, I'll stand out and declare what is in these affidavits. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... been a weak sister," Graham commented; while he struggled with a wanton desire for a match so that he could strike it and see how Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to keep afloat. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... them. Some stopped to gaze, and perhaps, carried a pleasant recollection of the bubbles onward as far as the street-corner; some looked angrily upward, as if poor Clifford wronged them by setting an image of beauty afloat so near their dusty pathway. A great many put out their fingers or their walking-sticks to touch, withal; and were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bubble, with all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished as ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... poppy, noons of poppy, Scarlet leagues along the sea; Flaxen hair afloat in sunlight, Love, come down the ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... forward and endeavored to lower her voice. She was a kind-hearted woman who delighted to see every one happy and normal. "I'm very worried about those two, my dear," she answered. "There are all sorts of stories afloat,—one to the effect that Martin has gone off with a chorus girl, another that Joan only married him to get away from her grandparents and a third that they quarreled violently on the way home from church and have not been on speaking terms since. I daresay there ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... palings, a few with elder bushes and barbed wire to fill up the gaps, while at least two ended in moraines of old meat tins and shards of crockery. And between these containing banks wound the canal, shallow and waveless, with noisome weeds trailing on its surface afloat amid soot and iridescent patches or pools of tar. In the cottage gardens not a soul was at work, nor, by their appearance, had a soul worked in them for years past. The canal, too, was deserted, save for one long monkey-boat, black ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... far as eye could reach, the lights of innumerable boats were seen, studding, like rubies, the surface of the stream. Vessels of all kinds,—from the light coracle, built for shooting down the cataracts, to the large yacht that glides to the sound of flutes,—all were afloat for this sacred festival, filled with crowds of the young and the gay, not only from Memphis and Babylon, but from cities still farther ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... thousand pounds. Old Scholey ran in at breakfast time to say she had slipped her moorings and was coming out. I jumped up and made but two steps to the platform. If ever there was a perfect beauty afloat she is one; and there she lies at Spithead, and anybody in England would take her for an eight-and-twenty. I was upon the platform for two hours this afternoon looking at her. She lies close to the 'Endymion,' between her and the 'Cleopatra,' just to the ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... however, that the lady thought that, if I were going to speak at all, this was the time. She must have known that certain sentiments were afloat within me, and she was not unreasonable in her wish to see the matter settled one way or the other. But I did not feel like taking a bold step in the dark. If she wished me to ask her to give herself to me, she ought to offer ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... had not happened. You know it rained last night, or if you do not know it, I am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in the usual place, and going to take her up after I arose this morning, I found her in the same place, 'tis true, but, quantum mutatus ab illo! afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house, and as silent and still as the rats that had eat my pocket-book. Now you know if chance had had any thing to do in this matter, there were a thousand other spots where it might have chanced to leak as well as this one, which was perpendicularly ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... difficulty in keeping afloat, and it seemed to all those anxiously watching that he might go under before help could reach him. Again the engine-room bells clanged, and this time the signal from the bridge was "Stop"; the boat, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... thousand passengers, there being no steamer there for them to take a passage home on, and so they had to come here for a start. This filled the little town to overflowing, but as the ship that had arrived was the Georga, one of the largest afloat, all could go if they only could endure ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... leading to Fredericksburg was a large open field extending to the bluff near the river; on the right was a dense thicket of pines and undergrowth. In this we had to form. The Seventh experienced some trouble in getting into line, and many camp rumors were afloat a few days afterwards of an uncomplimentary nature of the Seventh's action. But this was all false, for no more gallant regiment nor better officered, both in courage and ability, was in the Confederate service than the "Bloody Seventh." But it was the unfavorable nature of the ground, the difficulties ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
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