"Afloat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we lay-to till daylight, by which time the boat had drifted into heavy rollers under the high rocky land at the south-west head of the bay; the wind having risen so much that the boat was only kept afloat by keeping her head to the sea. As we could not observe any spot at which we could land without the risk of swamping the boat and wetting our firearms, we continued pulling towards the ship, the ebb tide assisting us until 2 p.m., when just as all hands were becoming thoroughly tired out, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... traces. There is a rumour upon the coast that Sharkey, the bloody pirate, was marooned in these parts last year, but whether he has made his way into the interior, or whether he has been picked up by some craft, there is no means of knowing. If he be once again afloat, then I pray that God send him under ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one, and slaves are so hard to get and so dangerous to deal in nowadays that it is sound business policy to take enough care of them to keep them alive. But I am safe in saying that the men engaged in the Mogador trade are about the worst brutes afloat in our time—not excepting the island traders of the South Pacific—and for an honest man to get afloat in their company opens to him large possibilities of being murdered off-hand, with side chances of sharing ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... know all that his little girl was thinking of; but he patted her fondly, and said, "Yes, there is a great deal to be thankful for, my dear; and I shall trust to you elder ones to give your Mamma no trouble while I am afloat." ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... francs, at sixty to ninety days' sight, they can sell in the exchange market for dollars, thus securing the money they have agreed to turn over to the railroad. In the meantime, during the life of the drafts they have set afloat and before they come due and have to be paid off, the bankers here can go about selling the bonds and getting back their money. Perhaps before the sixty or ninety days, as the case may be, are over, the syndicate may have sold out all its bonds and its foreign members have been put in ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... 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 |
