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Adrift   /ədrˈɪft/   Listen
Adrift

adjective
1.
Aimlessly drifting.  Synonyms: afloat, aimless, directionless, planless, rudderless, undirected.
2.
Afloat on the surface of a body of water.



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"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books



... whither thou knowest!—And as for us of the 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 course of the vessel was altered; dangling spars were cut away and thrown adrift, sail was taken in, and our friends on the shore could see that they were endeavoring to bring the ship to haven ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... sergeant, riding with two troopers midway 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 that there ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... square foot, a thimbleful of air will inflate a sizeable globe to that pressure. Jones was arranging tiny Dabney field robot-generators with tiny atomic batteries to power them. Each such balloon would be a Dabney field "plate" when cast adrift in emptiness, and its little battery would keep it in operation for twenty years ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... her face in her hands, entered the arbor, threw herself on the settee, and began sobbing with convulsive grief. Here was a situation for an unsophisticated youth like myself. Egad! my heart bounced about in my breast like a shot adrift in the cook's biggest copper. I approached the lady softly, and, grown wiser by experience, knelt before I took her hand. She started, screamed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... along with knees bent together, sores on every joint, and frequently an eye knocked out, the poor pony's back gets cruelly galled; when the bazaar is reached, he is hobbled as tightly as possible, the coarse ropes cutting into the flesh, and he is then turned adrift to contemplate starvation on the burnt-up grass. Great open sores form on the back, on which a plaster of moist clay, or cowdung and pounded leaves, is roughly put. The wretched creature gets worn ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... "Pie got adrift?" called out Joshua. "Seems to me you don' hook on to it very quick. Now that looks good," he added, when she came out. "That looks like cookin'! All I meant was, 't Ephraim ought not to be doin' his own cookin'—that is—if you can call it cookin'—but ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... was the dock at New York. She never was wrecked, and she never ran aground; but great was the excitement of The Boy when, as not infrequently was the case, on occasions of sweeping, Hannah, the up-stairs girl, set her adrift. ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... to poor adherents, as Goring bitterly observes. We learn that the English insist on the dismissal of Miss Walkinshaw. To discard Dumont, as Charles proposed, was to provide England with an informer. The heads of English gentlemen would be at the mercy of the executioners of Archy Cameron. To turn adrift Charles's Catholic servants was impolitic, cruel, and deeply ungrateful. This is the burden of Goring's necessary but very uncourtly epistle, probably ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... and darkness. Also, she felt that if she were tied down to some dull and exhausting employment, she would be settled and done for. In a few years she would be an old woman, with less wages or flung out diseased or maimed—to live on and on like hundreds of wretched old creatures adrift everywhere in the tenement streets. No, work had nothing to offer her except "respectability." And what a mocking was "respectability," in rags and filth! Besides, what had she, the outcast born, to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... she will be able to throw a submarine torpedo; her diver could attach a charge of dynamite to the keel of an anchored warship, or she could do great damage by hooking up cables through her diver's trap door and cutting them, and by setting adrift anchored torpedoes ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... in his base and tyrannous invasion of Port Royal. Before his attack on this quiet, peaceful station, he had shown greatest treachery at Somes Sound, Mt. Desert, where he stole Saussaye's commission and cast adrift in an open boat fifteen ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... 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, or from such notes as might be made upon the back of a letter half an hour before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... of quiet religious habit; the man deep down in him had never had a chance. He breathed hard as he tried to imagine the world opening to him, and almost dared to be glad for the doubt that had sent him adrift. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... sea wall (he cried) is downe, The rising tide comes on apace, And boats adrift in yonder towne Go sailing uppe the market-place.' He shook as one who looks on death: 'God save you, mother!' straight he saith; 'Where is ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... punt, where the dog sat in the stern in her usual self-possessed manner. Perigal struggled with the rope by which the punt was moored to the stump of a tree. Very soon, they were all adrift on the stream. They made little progress at first, merely scraping along the overhanging branches of pollard willows; now and again, the punt would disturb long-forgotten night lines, which, more often than not, had hooked eels that had been dead for many days. Mavis began ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... was the same suave, debonair old beau, he was beginning to have inner doubtings and despairs. And Joe, who had, as it were, taken up the pen when he had cast aside the sword, became for him a potential straw adrift on the downward current. ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... he took, together with half the number of the trading ships; but falling in with the outward bound fleet convoyed by thirteen ships of the line, he was obliged to burn four of the frigates, turn the fifth adrift, and part with all his prizes except fifteen, which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... may, by divine grace, lead me to realize heaven as my home, and that she has but preceded me in the journey. Oh my Mary, my Mary! how often we have longed for a quiet home, since you and I were cast adrift at Kolobeng; surely the removal by a kind Father who knoweth our frame means that He rewarded you by taking you to the best home, the eternal one in the heavens. The prayer was found in her papers—'Accept me, Lord, as I am, and make me such as ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... 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 ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... "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

... 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 in it. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... I didn't want to go out on deck alone— slip your raincoats on, girls, and come with me! There may be— I mean some one may have set us adrift purposely!" ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope

... economic crimes; and (c) keep afloat the large state-owned enterprises many of which had been shielded from competition by subsides 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 ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... wrecking expedition completely broken up, and only its leader was left to carry out, if he could, its objects. Even he had been set adrift in an oarless skiff, with the hope that he would be so long delayed in reporting to his employers as to allow time for the captured logs to be put underground before another demand for them ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... had never been sufficiently fervent to render her distress very poignant; but in the death of this devoted friend she was fully aware that at last she was set once more adrift in the world, without chart or rudder save that furnished by ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... more. We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed. You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get every thing that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough rivercraft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What have you got on the east bank ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... to his own Peri, or one of "the beautiful blue damsel flies" of that poem, he has given to his unfriendly critics a judgment of his own style, in a criticism made by Fadladeen of the young poet's story to Lalla Rookh;—"it resembles one of those Maldivian boats—a slight, gilded thing, sent adrift without rudder or ballast, and with nothing but vapid sweets and faded flowers on board." "The effect of the whole," says one of his biographers, speaking of Lalla Rookh, "is much the same as that of a magnificent ballet, on which all the resources of the theatre ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... modern industrialism at its sources, and my disablement did but a little accelerate a return already decided upon. I had got my conception of the East as a whole and of the shape of the historical process. I no longer felt adrift in a formless chaos of forces. I perceived now very clearly that human life is essentially a creative struggle out of the usage of immemorial years, that the synthesis of our contemporary civilization is this creative ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... tears were vain: the Saracens forced them aboard, and turned the little craft adrift ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... boat was found adrift in South Bay last night, containing one oar and a woman's hat. The hat belonged to Miss Randall, and as she is missing, it is feared that she either drowned herself or met ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... "The Gull adrift!" exclaimed Frank. "That explains it then. Our rowboat was washed away by the tide. The Gull pulled her anchor in ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... was that the mother of Jeekie, who knew her case to be desperate at home, where she was in no good repute, promised to attempt the journey in consideration of advantages to be received. Since she was to be turned adrift to meet her fate with as much food as she could carry, this she could do without exciting any suspicion, for who would trouble about the movements of a useless old thief? Meanwhile Jeekie gave her one of the robes which the Asika ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... bight of the dory-rodin'. I handed it to him so's he'd have somethin' to take up his mind. And, by time, he'd forgot all about it and let it drop! And the dory had gone adrift ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... was torpedoed every effort was made to get rafts and boats launched. Also the circular life belts from the bridge and several splinter mats from the outside of the bridge were cut adrift and afterwards proved very useful in holding men up until they could be got to the rafts. Weighted confidential publications were thrown over the side. There was no time to destroy other confidential matter, but it went down ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... unnecessary during the winter by the progress of recruiting, and which, from there being no funds applicable to their maintenance, it would become necessary to disembody. The men would be now taken from industrial employment at a time when labour is wanted, and would be turned adrift in the winter when there is less ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... consort gave birth to another prince, on whom the unnatural sisters had no more compassion than on his brother; but exposed him likewise in a basket, and set him adrift in the canal, pretending this time that the sultaness was delivered of a cat. It was happy also for this child that the intendant of the gardens was walking by the canal side. He carried this child to his wife, and charged her to take as ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... not only in thought but in all human relations, in love, friendship, faith in man, faith in God, faith in beauty; and while it was this profound dissatisfaction with less than the perfect form of every art, passion, thought, or circumstance, that set him adrift in life, making him seem untrue to duty, conviction, and himself, it was this also that formed in him the double existence of the poet and the philosopher, each supplementing and interpenetrating the other. The poet and ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... adrift in the wilderness. It was with mixed emotions that they said good-bye to the hospitable American and rode forth to new experiences and dangers. They were now tried adventurers; they knew their mettle; they also had a far more definite idea of what danger and experience meant than when they ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... proceed thence across the brow of the hill the following morning, while I remained behind with the tired men, promising to join him by breakfast-time. I next released the prisoners, much to their disgust, for they had not known such good feeding before, and dreaded being turned adrift again in the jungles to live on calabash seeds; and then, after shooting six guinea-fowl, turned in ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Natives who cannot become servants; but "greedy folk hae lang airms", and Kgobadi himself was proceeding with his family and his belongings in a wagon, to inform his people-in-law of his own eviction, without notice, in the "Free" State, for a similar reason to that which sent his father-in-law adrift. The Baas had exacted from him the services of himself, his wife and his oxen, for wages of 30s. a month, whereas Kgobadi had been making over 100 Pounds a year, besides retaining the services of his wife and of his cattle for himself. When he refused the extortionate terms the Baas retaliated with ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... was I turned adrift, Helpless as sailor cast on desert rock; Nor morsel to my mouth that day did lift, Nor dared my hand at any door to knock. I lay, where with his drowsy mates, the cock From the cross timber of an out-house hung; How dismal tolled, that night, the city clock! At morn my sick heart hunger scarcely ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... Mr. Wales, would use it to each other on every possible occasion. But, according to his own account, Mr. Forster was able to save the expedition from a very great disaster on 12th July. He says he came on deck and noticed the ship was adrift from her moorings; neither the officer of the watch nor the look-out had seen it till he called attention, and then, after a scene of the greatest confusion, the ship was fortunately brought up ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... hardly disappeared when both myself and my man were seized by the Indians of our crew, and for a moment I thought they were about to put us to death. Then they hit on another plan with regard to me, which was to set me adrift, naked as I was, in my tub. What they did with poor Tummas ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... wandering on the shore. Grim the fisher is certainly a historic character in his own town, and it has not been hard to combine the various callings of the worthy foster-father of Havelok and the troubles of both mother and son. A third local variant tells that Havelok was found at Grimsby by the fisher adrift in an open boat; and I have given that boat also a place in the ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... European quarrels. For a century that principle had been the pole-star of American foreign policy; no other people had such a wrench to make from their moorings before they could enter the war, and no other people can understand what it cost the Americans to cut themselves adrift from their haven of democratic pacifism in order to fight for the ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... over me, but I remembered how Lodbrok had told me that resistance to vikings, unless it were successful, meant surely death, but that seldom would the unresisting be harmed, even if the ship were wantonly burnt after plunder, and the crew set adrift in their boat. ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... Oak, Crowsfeather, and several others of the leading chiefs, remained near the still burning hut, with a strong party, to examine the surrounding Openings for foot-prints and trails. It was possible that the canoes had been sent adrift, in order to mislead them, while the pale-faces had ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... only person remaining dear to him, the only one for whom he had a single thought or care, the only person left to him to respect and to love. Her influence upon him was always for good. For the past year he had been striving to cut himself adrift from evil, to reform, to hold back from participating in any dishonest action—for her dear sake. Her soft-spoken words so often caused him to hate himself and to bite his lip in regret, for surely she was as entirely ignorant of the hideous truth as Mr. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux

... run away with us, for there were only forty men on board who knew how to go aloft except a few of the marines. The pilot made his appearance, and soon afterwards down went the bridles, and we were fairly adrift. We reached the Nore, and let go the anchors in a hail squall, and it was with the greatest difficulty we got the top-sails furled. The admiral, having proof positive that we were as helpless as a cow in a jolly-boat, took compassion on us and sent fifty more men from the flag-ship, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... scow back and forth. One of the small strands was broken. This was thought to be a small matter. Soon another was broken and then another. Still this was not of much consequence. One by one more were broken but unheeded because each was so small. Finally all were broken, and the boat went adrift. A little care does not seem to be of much consequence. But the Bible says to be "careful for nothing," and to "cast all your care ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... marriage would mean 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 ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... for a moment. They tell me you're just going to be married." Crocker was silent. Could he be expected to cut the ground from under his own feet at such a moment? "For the young lady's sake, I don't like turning you adrift on the world at such a time. I only wish that she had a more secure basis for ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... reached the 83rd parallel, a higher latitude than any to which man is known to have penetrated. Arctic authorities are still of opinion, that Parry's plan for reaching the pole might prove successful, if the expedition were to set out earlier in the season, ere the intervening field of ice is cast adrift by the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... was no longer the exterior world which seemed to me as if I were looking at it through the penumbra of an aquarium; it was I myself, an I composed of three, which was changing into something that was floating adrift in something, though what it was I did not know, composed of palpable fog and intangible water, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... Adrift alone on life's bleak ocean waste, Through starless nights and dreary sunless days; Wherever currents led o'er pathless maze, I plied the oars of aimless toil, and faced Defeat impatiently, nor ever traced One ray ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... the roar of their tumult almost bewildered her senses. Proverbially there is no situation more lonely to the feeling than the midst of a strange crowd; and Diana, sitting at her window and looking down into the busy street, felt alone and cast adrift as she never had felt in her life before. Her life seemed done, finished, as far as regarded hope or joy; nothing left but weary and dragging existence; and the eager hurrying hither and thither of the city crowd struck on her view as ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... Louise de Lascours, and sister of Diana de Lascours. When the crew of the Urania rebelled, Martha, with Ralph de Lascours (the captain), Louise de Lascours, and Barabas, were put adrift in a boat, and cast on an iceberg in "the Frozen Sea." The iceberg broke, Ralph and Louise were drowned, Barabas was picked up by a vessel, and Martha fell into the hands of an Indian tribe, who gave ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... an adventure of his own in the filibustering days that preceded our war with Spain; the faithful narrative of the voyage of an open boat, manned by a handful of shipwrecked men. But Captain Bligh's account of his small boat journey, after he had been sent adrift by the mutineers of the Bounty, seems tame in comparison, although of the two the English sailor's voyage was the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... the general character of Chaucer's pathos, than a comparison of the "Monk's Tale" from which this passage is taken, and the "Clerk's Tale," with their originals. In the former, for instance, the prayer of Constance, when condemned through Domegild's guilt to be cast adrift once more on the waters, her piteous words and tenderness to her little child, as it lies weeping in her arm, and her touching leave-taking from the land of the husband who has condemned her,—all these are Chaucer's ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... foundation is, as in the case of the earth's crust, pretty near the surface of things; the deeper we try to go, the damper and darker and altogether more uncongenial we find it. There is no knowing into what quagmire of superstition we may not find ourselves drawn, if we once cut ourselves adrift from those superficial aspects of things, in which alone our nature permits us ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... is hot and the mountains waken a little these motions seem accidents. And the perpetual motion of a glacier has something about it which is cruelly inevitable, bestial, diabolic. No, upon the mountains one is swung clear of one's fellow-creatures; one is adrift; it is another world; it gives fresh views of ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... Pontoise I saw much of Humphreys, who, in his bluff hearty way, did a good deal to cheer me. He talked freely of Raoul, and I liked to listen to his praises of my dead friend. However, the fortune of war was soon to cut me adrift from him. Things were going very badly for us just at that time, and Turenne could barely hold his own. The Duke of Lorraine had returned to help Conde, and the Spanish general, Fuensaldana, was hurrying with a strong army ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... his lawyer, he set aside a certain sum for this purpose, to be expended annually until the lad was old enough to earn his own living. In all ways Rogers was thoughtful and decent, far-sighted and provident. No one could accuse him of selfishness. He did not desert his woman, turn her adrift unprovided for, as many another would have done. No, thank heavens, he thought to himself as he leaned over the rail of the ship, fast making its way down the yellow tide, he had still preserved his sense of honour. So many men go to pieces out in the East, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... been possible for them to do so. It was comparatively easy to move her with setting-poles, but they could have done nothing with the unwieldy craft in the deep water. I therefore concluded that they had merely pushed her out into the lake, and then turned her adrift. It was probable that she had been driven ashore by the north-west wind somewhere in ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... canyon of despair, A prison for the soul of man, a grave Of all his dearest daring hopes! The world Wherein we live and move is meaningless, No spirit here to answer to our own! The stars without a guide: The chance-born Earth Adrift in space, no Captain on the ship: Nothing in all the universe to prove Eternal wisdom and eternal love! And man, the latest accident of Time,— Who thinks he loves, and longs to understand, Who vainly suffers, and in vain is brave, Who dupes his heart with immortality,— ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke

... he laughed. "What I'm to do when I'm turned adrift without you, Heaven only knows. It's curious—the effect imprisonment has on you. It takes away your self-reliance. It gives you a helpless feeling, like a baby. You want to be free—and yet you're almost ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... in the dinghy, and the dinghy was adrift. The yacht's screw chumed the water, and the beautiful vessel slipped away from them. As it receded a figure appeared at the stem. It was Mr ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... necessary to sacrifice one of the ships, and finally reduced the consolidated crews of both in the remaining transport to such a state of weakness, that without immediate assistance they must have perished even in port, or would have been driven adrift again, from total inability to take the necessary steps for their ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... plausible; but it may, again, be a sign of chieftainship, and a chief I have no doubt he is. Maybe he was sent adrift by some rival faction; but that can scarcely be, for he would not have survived a long journey; and, again, the canoe would ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... clearings of the pioneer, nor blossoms over the charred trail in the wake of the locomotive. Beginning at the bottom of the long spike, the flowers open in slow succession upward throughout the summer, leaving behind the attractive seed-vessels, which, splitting lengthwise in September, send adrift white silky tufts attached to seeds that will one day cover far distant wastes with beauty. Almost perfect rosettes, made by the young plants, are met with on one's ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... a number of rabbits did not make a horse. A lively but misleading illustration: he might as well have said that any number of sovereigns did not make a cheque for a hundred pounds. I suppose that I do not like the trouble, to start with; and then I do not like being adrift from my own beloved country. Then I cannot converse in any foreign language, and half the pleasure of travelling comes from being able to lay oneself alongside of a new point of view. Then, too, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... offspring were a fair example of these irresponsible people. Like a ship adrift without skipper or rudder, they were at the mercy of every adverse wind of misfortune. Each morning they went out with frantic energy to earn or in some way procure sustenance for one more day. Young Dave hounded the sponge fishermen until they gave him ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... failing which, I take it, neither gods nor men would tolerate you; and, in the next place, you are bound to welcome numerous foreigners as guests, and to entertain them handsomely; thirdly, you must feast your fellow-citizens and ply them with all sorts of kindness, or else be cut adrift from your supporters. [2] Furthermore, I perceive that even at present the state enjoins upon you various large contributions, such as the rearing of studs, [3] the training of choruses, the superintendence ...
— The Economist • Xenophon

... yourself to be carried off by the raft, and then losing it, and getting arrested, and running off with the Sheriff's skiff, and letting it go adrift with your coat in it, and shipping aboard some craft that your dear mother calls the Mantel-piece for a cruise down the river, instead of getting along home and relieving the anxiety of your distressed parents, to say nothing of that of your aged uncle. Yes, it does seem to me that in this ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... the shouts of his seamen fastened her to the tail of the Glory. In this condition she was carried triumphantly towards Launceston; but a storm arising, the Glory encumbered by the Fame, cast her adrift, when she was exposed to great danger. The prize-master ran her on shore, and the party wrecked, after fourteen days journey through the woods, reached George Town. The justification pleaded was that the plaintiff had conveyed ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... slowly, "that we've our three friends to thank for this. Looks to me as though somebody had cut the rope and set the canoe adrift, ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... belief. Had he been told of a love which remained steadfast to its ideals even at the cost of Calvary his manliness would have responded as to the touch of a kindred spirit, but the attempt to fit that willing sacrifice into a dogmatic creed left him adrift and rudderless. Suddenly from somewhere in his memory came the words, "Then what becomes of the justice of God?" It was Reenie Hardy who had asked that question. And he recalled his answer, "I don't know nothin' about the justice of God. All I know is the crittur 'at can't run gets ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... had ever been called to undergo, the gray bank again swung up toward the sky. The sun was sinking redly into the sea, and night was at hand—and what night might mean in their weakened and chilled condition, adrift on the great ocean toward which they seemed to be so resistlessly ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... sacred stream during life, the Hindoo's ambition is to yield up the ghost on its bank, and then to be burned on the Burning Ghaut and have his ashes cast adrift on the waters. On the Manikarnika ghaut the Hindoos burn their dead. To the unbelieving Ferenghi tourist there seems to be a "nigger in the fence" about all these heathen ceremonies, and in the burning of the dead the wily priesthood has managed to obtain ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... counter, I was quite abashed, for I did not in the least know what book I wanted. I knew it wasn't a Bible, for we had one at home, but further than that I could not go. Now, if knowing how to buy a book is a part of complete living, then, in that blond presence, I was hopelessly adrift. I had been taught that gambling is wrong, but there was a situation where I had to take a chance or show the white feather. Of course, I took the chance and was relieved of my money by a blond who may or may not have been able to solve radicals. I shall ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... deeds of gift, and such like things, under the impression that he is playing some sort of a round game; and then when he cannot pay the interest they take his wife and children away from him and turn him adrift into the world. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... and patient lips, stedfast and calm as the face of a marble king. Over his head the beautiful woman and her crimson flowers ever and anon brightened in the fitful leaping light, and shone like a beacon of lost hope upon a life that had been wrecked and cast adrift in a night of storm. He died as he had lived, in silence; and his death was the sacrifice of a martyr, the fall of a warrior at his post. Then the tempest broke over all the Piedmont lands, and the wind arose as a giant refreshed with his ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... of aching Love; But be thou for my wandering sail, Adrift upon these waves of love, Safe harbour ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... Srinjayas, the Chedis, the Kalikeyas, thus routed after being broken in battle by Drona with his shafts, beholding them thus driven from the field by those showers of fleet arrows shot from Drona's, bow, like vessels sent adrift by the awful waves of the tempest-tossed ocean, the Kauravas with many leonine shouts and with the noise of diverse instruments, began to assail the cars and elephants and foot-soldiers (of that hostile host) from all sides. And beholding those (fleeing soldiers of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "Is it enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn them adrift lower," as he is pleased to say, "than they found them?"[21] It is not enough. They need to be prepared for freedom. "Immediate emancipation," as he says, "solves only the simplest forms ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... for there's no time to lose. The tide is just at its turn; and if the wind comes from the north, the boys will be adrift. Come; get up, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... the painter loose and cast the dory adrift; then crawled back into the cockpit. No pang of compassion disturbed him as he abandoned the fisherman to the mercy of the sea; though the fellow lay still, uncouthly distorted, in the bottom of the dory, he ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... Miss Vance looked uneasy and perplexed. "She is not my maid. She is Fraulein Arpent. The Ewalts brought her as governess from Paris, don't you remember? They sent the girls to Bryn Mawr last week and turned her adrift, almost penniless. She wished to go back to France. I engaged her as assistant ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... 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 ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... ever lost? It is a very peculiar sensation—the feeling that you are adrift in a world that is strange. Miss Allen had never been lost before in her life. If she had been, she would have been more careful, and would have made sure that she was descending that peak by the exact route she had followed up it, instead of just taking ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... noise was probably falling avalanches. And once when Mackenzie and Mackay had gone ahead with the Indian interpreters, they came back to find that the canoe had disappeared. In vain they kindled fires, fired guns, set branches adrift on the swift current as a signal—no response came from the voyageurs. The boatmen evidently did not wish to be found. What Mackenzie's suspicions were one may guess. It would be easier for the crew to float back down Peace River than pull against ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... forget, sir, that he said, 'When one is a wanderer, one feels that one fulfills the true condition of humanity'? and that among his last words are these, 'The stream of travel is full of delight. Oh! who will set me adrift ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... smoke-stack white as snow, All the coals adrift adeck, half the rails below, Leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray— Out we took the Bolivar, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... first of these interpretations, they appear to have speedily abandoned it and to have adopted the second. Apparently they supposed that the civil authority in Connecticut might claim the right, and exercise the power, to forbid a bishop to come within the limits of the State, and to set him adrift with "the wide world before him where to choose," a veritable bishop in partibus, without home, habitation, or name. There can be little doubt that these fancies were pressed by, if they did not originate with, persons belonging ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... attempted no defence when he saw that Argall had hostile intentions; but the Jesuit Du Thet did his utmost to rally the men to arms, and was the first to fall a victim. Fifteen of the prisoners, including Saussaye and Masse, were turned adrift in an open boat; but fortunately, they managed to cross the bay and reach the coast of Nova Scotia, where they met with some trading vessels belonging to St. Malo. Father Biard and the others were taken to Virginia by Argall. Biard subsequently reached England, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... riding safely at their moorings, decked out in all their pride and glory and lined up alongside the Strand, three and four abreast from the Pepper Box to the Eden Gardens, one alone was left, all the others having been violently torn adrift and swept clean away to the four winds of heaven. Besides these were all the country traders moored to the south of the Pepper Box known as Coolie Bazar, extending as far as Tackta Ghat, which ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey

... 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 by shadows ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... above the Waukiecum's, and also as we had suspected, prevented his return as early as he otherwise would have been back. The dogs of the Cathlahmah's had bitten the throng assunder which confined his canoe and she had gorn adrift. he borrowed a Canoe from the Indians in which he has returned. he found his canoe on the way and Secured her, untill we return the Indians their Canoe- Sent Sergt. Gass and a party in Serch of one ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... it may be well for you to find out something of this boy. If you can prove to Aunt Eliza that he is of bad character, she will send him adrift." ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... obscured the surrounding sea and distant bergs glided by like spectres. A monstrous block on the starboard side had not been long adrift, for it showed ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... said 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 Bahama, Capt. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various



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