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In the nick of time   /ɪn ðə nɪk əv taɪm/   Listen
In the nick of time

adverb
1.
At the last possible moment.  Synonym: just in time.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"In the nick of time" Quotes from Famous Books



... to his responsibilities as leader of at least a part of the mob, he had turned, and followed by a dozen men, had hurried back to the rescue, arriving in the nick of time. Standing in the open door of the house to which the justices had retired, the rescued sheriff just behind him in the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... poor jolly was put on sentry," continued the lieutenant, bolstering up Mr Smythe with his arm and just saving him in the nick of time from coming to grief again over a ringbolt on the deck, "the sergeant told him he would have to call out when the bell was struck, thinking, of course, he knew all about it. The poor fellow, though, as you are aware, was quite ignorant of the custom; so, as soon as the sergeant's ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... it some time. Hank, you're on board just in the nick of time. I found out what the trouble was with the carriage of the gun and repaired it while you were amusing yourselves out there. Get in lively, now, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... said the music-loving bishop, "here comes a harper in the nick of time, and now I care not how long they tarry. Ho! honest friend, are you come to play at ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... shouted Mr. Bouncer, as he dashed across the street. "Come on, Pet! Here we are in the thick of it, just in the nick of time!" ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... something supernatural about this!" said he to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should think that He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nick of time? Did anyone ever see the like! But there, this ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... life, my friend. You know he came with us that night, borrowed a horse and the burnous you wouldn't wear, and kept out of sight till the last minute. He was close behind you when we charged, lost you in the melee, and found you again just in the nick of time. I was cut off from you myself for the moment, but I saw you wounded, saw him break a way through to you and then saw you both go down. I thought you were done for. It was just then the tide turned in our favour and I managed ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... skill did not fail to present itself soon—as indeed it seldom does to such a hero of romance as young Otto was. Fate seems to watch over such: events occur to them just in the nick of time; they rescue virgins just as ogres are on the point of devouring them; they manage to be present at court and interesting ceremonies, and to see the most interesting people at the most interesting moment; directly an adventure is necessary for them, that adventure occurs: ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... as they walked on, that Diodoros had always been born to good luck; and it was clear that this had never been truer than now, when Galenus had come in the nick of time to restore him to life and health, and when he had won such a bride as Melissa. Then she sang the praises of Agatha, of her beauty and goodness, and told her that the Christian damsel had made many inquiries concerning Alexander. She, the speaker, had not been chary of her praise ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823) was one of the most successful writers of this school of exaggerated romance. Her novels, with their azure-eyed heroines, haunted castles, trapdoors, bandits, abductions, rescues in the nick of time, and a general medley of overwrought joys and horrors,[219] were immensely popular, not only with the crowd of novel readers, but also with men of unquestioned literary genius, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best. "Mother Nature—Mother Nature," said the steward, pulling; and he was only stopped just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and seeing what was ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... of differences between herself and her sons-in- law—as an apple of discord in the Romany camp. She employed her grandchild, Leonora, to open relations in a friendly way with Lavengro, and then to persuade him to eat of a "drabbed" of poisoned cake. Lavengro was grievously sick, but was saved in the nick of time by the appearance upon the scene of a Welsh preacher, Peter Williams, and his wife—two good souls who wandered over all Wales and the greater part of England, comforting the hearts of the people with their doctrine, and doing all the good they ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... my good fellow," cried Will, with a laugh, slapping the native on the shoulder; "you have just come in the nick of time to take care of us all, for, besides having utterly lost ourselves, we are quite ignorant of forest ways in this region—no better than ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... they would dine, he politely inquired in what names he should engage their seats. Then, for an instant, a horrible confusion nearly overcame the Baron. He—a von Blitzenberg—to give a false name! His color rose, he stammered, and only in the nick of time caught his companion's eye. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... secret. There were only a few little unavoidable words afloat, by which the curious public of Ottawa could surmise why Honor Edgeworth had so coldly rejected her handsome suitor at the last moment, and why Guy Elersley had come back in the nick of time, to be ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... "But you came along in the nick of time. When you gave me that message to the effect that the money was all right, I knew that the affairs of the subway had been so arranged that the stock would not go down and the widows and orphans would not suffer. I was willing then to appear in court, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... for a murder I never committed. Tom came along just in the nick of time, and—Well, Fan, perhaps you saw some of the Ten Milers before you ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... The cavalry arrived in the nick of time. A battle was imminent that might have ended in a massacre. Within striking distance of Brown's island Colonel Sumner encountered General Whitfield, a Southern Member of Congress, at the head of a squadron of avengers, two hundred and fifty ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... down and made a dart with his hook, and so earnestly that he would have gone overboard had not Dick caught him in the nick of time. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... said Betty gleefully, noting with pride how splendid he looked in his uniform. "You don't seem at all glad to see us. Mrs. Watson," remembering her manners in the nick of time, "this is a friend of ours from Deepdale—Allen Washburn. He didn't know ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope

... not a man. Lightfoot, wild with love and anxiety, had shot past Old Mok just as he laid down his bundle of arrows, and, when she saw her husband's peril, had leaped forward with arrow upon string and slain his latest assailant in the nick of time. Now, with arrow notched again and a face ablaze with murderous helpfulness, she hovered near, intent only upon sending a second shaft into ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... already? Why, I've come in the nick of time. About the play? I have just been speaking with the author; he is at the theatre and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Richmond jail. I understand that his friend, Mr. Merry, has gone yonder to visit him. Our country is degenerated to be no more than a scheming-ground, a plotting-place, for other powers. You come back just in the nick of time. You have saved this administration! You bring back success with you. If the issue of your expedition were anything else, I scarce know what would be my own case here. For myself, that would have mattered ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... and:—"How so?" quoth he. "O husband mine," replied the lady, "he was taken but now, all of a sudden, with a fainting fit, so that I thought he was dead: and what to do or say I knew not, had not Fra Rinaldo, our sponsor, come just in the nick of time, and set him on his shoulder, and said:—'Gossip, 'tis that he has worms in his body, and getting, as they do, about the heart, they might only too readily be the death of him; but fear not; I will say a charm that will kill them all; and before I take my leave, you will see your boy ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... that curved beside and between two cellars, each deeper than the last. He knew instantly that he could not survive these, and, with every ounce of his strength, drove across the broken river to the head of the chute. Making it in the nick of time, he plunged in, with the water sucking at his thighs, and the sinews in his arms burning like fire. There followed a swift descent through cellars of dwindling depth, till he floated into the long, spume-flecked swells at the foot of the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... near being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, crawled back into ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... And then, just in the nick of time, there came riding around one side of the stampeding cattle a group of the Rocky Ranch cowboys. They had succeeded in reaching the head of the bunch of steers, and now had a chance to turn the excited cattle to ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope

... with him," announced Frank, as two figures were discovered coming toward them. "Why, if we'd made all the arrangements ourselves we couldn't have done better, Bob. Here comes our reinforcements just in the nick of time. And if Eugene and his backers are still up yonder in the cliff dwellers' homes, they have stayed a little while ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... It came in the nick of time, as H. came an hour or two after it arrived, and with many apologies told me he was quite penniless. The poor old fellow was quite overcome when I told him of how matters stood, and it was characteristic that as soon as he got his breath again, he wanted to know ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... at which she should have spoken, but she did not. She, who had prided herself that she would make a race of it—she, who had always been able to slip out of a predicament in the nick of time—stood mutely by and let Transley and her father interpret her silence as consent. She was not sure that she was sorry; she was not sure but she would have consented anyway; but Transley had taken the matter quite out of her ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... propos of that," pursued Charlie, having gulped down his coffee, "you are just come up here in the nick of time, for there's a glorious ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... hero that didn't open the door 'in the nick of time'!" raced through Billy's grimly humorous mind, as he dodged the savage thrust of a knife the man had drawn and turned and scuttled across the court with the other on his heels. Through the arches he darted and then down into the garden, sprinting as he had ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... them—the scouts. But for Stannard the hostiles would have gotten away, not only with Mrs. Bennett, but with Harris. Harris made a hare-brained attempt to rescue her single-handed. He only succeeded in running his own neck into a noose. Your wisdom, and God's mercy, sent Stannard just in the nick of time, and there's the whole ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... off the cross-gun of young Paul. He had seen everything in the story and had taken aim at the said Indian just in the nick of time. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... meal is over, they discuss a bottle of Champagne and the situation. The Texan cannot remain in Chicago, for there he will surely be detected. He must be off to Cincinnati by the first train; and he will arrive in the nick of time, for warm work is daily expected. Has he any money about him? No, he has left it behind, with his Sunday clothes, in the prison. He must have funds; but the worthy gentleman can lend him none, for he is a loyal man; of course he is! was he not the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... orders in the nick of time. We are to go to Key West. I am to join the others on the ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... But in the nick of time the Liberal Administration fell, and Lord Salisbury's Cabinet reversed their decision. It is interesting, in reading the Blue Books on Indian questions, to watch the emotions of party principles, stirring beneath the uniform mask of official responsibility—which the most reckless of ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... fellow," said Debray, "you have come in the nick of time. There is madame overwhelming me with questions respecting the count; she insists upon it that I can tell her his birth, education, and parentage, where he came from, and whither he is going. Being no disciple of Cagliostro, I was wholly unable to do this; so, by ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... summit of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not very heavy. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... quite a talent for turning up unexpectedly in the nick of time," he added, with a peculiar smile, as he turned and walked off towards the huts, around which the men who had sided with Antonio were by that time assembling. Among them Lawrence, to his ineffable joy, found Manuela and Mariquita. He was too wise, however, in the presence of the colonel to ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... astonished and outraged lap. She would have sat on the candy box, too, and would, in all probability, have ruined it and her dress as well, had not Grace, with rare presence of mind, whipped the box out of danger just in the nick of time. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope

... reached the end of the rope, so that this happy event came just in the nick of time. Frank hurriedly fastened that ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... with some dexterity, flung himself between them, just in the nick of time to avert from Mole the fair Circassian's ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... complete loss of temper on both sides. Ste. Marie, from his bed, cheered them on, but there came a commotion in the ivy which draped the wall below, and the two birds fled in ignominious haste, and just in the nick of time, for when the cause of the commotion shot into view it was a large black cat, of great bodily activity and an ardent ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... fright, her being wholly obsessed by the one thought of escape, Sally flew on down the drive until, on the point of leaving the grounds by the gate to the highway, she pulled up perforce and jumped back in the nick of time to avoid disaster beneath the wheels of a motor-car swinging inward ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... high as you can, fellow!" ordered Hal. Just in the nick of time he remembered Captain Foster's instructions, and spoke in English instead of Spanish. But his gesture was eloquent enough for ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... leader had cheering and example, what were these set against this final ordeal: a blistering thirst of three days and two nights? Happily a water-hole, not bereft of all moisture, was found in the nick of time. A few birds flew about it in the evening, but Sir George Grey's hand shook so that he could take no aim. He headed a last desperate spurt for Perth; the reaching of succour, or the arrival of death. Which would ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... my abstracted sheet with the aid of the rod. It took a long time, and laid me open to dire penalties for disturbing the public peace. But it had to be done, and fortunately for me a row at the other end of the room called the monitor away in the nick of time. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... Just in the nick of time the Regent surrendered the town to Duke Philip, not, we may be sure, without many regrets for having recently refused him Orleans. He realised that thus, by returning to its French allegiance, the chief city of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... huge Martian war-hound, nor did I need a second look to know that it was Woola—my faithful Woola who had thus well performed his arduous task and brought the succoring legions in the nick of time. ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... blown up. He saw the three men who had destroyed it running away, and he chased them into a wadi and machine-gunned them. They held up their hands and were astonished to find they had surrendered to a General. These men were captured in the nick of time. But for the appearance of General Shea they would have destroyed another dump, which we ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... between their legs, the remaining dogs ran away with frightened yelps. The driver had come in the nick of time. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood

... languishing for hard-hearted nymphs, nymphs languishing for hard-hearted swains; sheep-cotes, rustic dances, junketings, anadems, and true-love knots; monsters invented for the perpetual menace of chastity; chastity undergoing the most surprising perils, but always saved in the nick of time, if not by an opportune shepherd, then by an equally opportune river-god or earthquake; episodes innumerable, branching off from the main stem of the narrative at the most critical point, and luxuriating in endless ramifications. Beauty, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... charges and freight. Ruin stared in the face every Texan drover whose cattle were unsold. Only a few herds were under contract for fall delivery to Indian and army contractors. We had run from the approaching storm in the nick of time, even settling with and sending my outfit home before the financial cyclone reached the prairies of Kansas. My last trade before the panic struck was an individual account, my innate weakness for an abundance of saddle horses asserting itself in buying ninety head and sending ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... at the time I knew him, had passed the meridian of his life; "he had," as he used to say himself, "given up battering," and had luckily a small annuity fallen to him by the demise of a considerate old aunt who had kindly popped off in the nick of time. And on this independence Tom had retired to spend all that remained to him of a merry life at a pleasant little sea-port town in the West of Ireland, celebrated for its card-parties and its oyster-clubs. These latter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various

... Both Mr. Hawker and Mr. Pickles were flying low at the time of their accidents, and so their machines were smashed; fortunately Mr. Brock was comparatively high up in the air, and though his machine rocked about and banked in an ominous manner, yet he was able to gain control just in the nick of time. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys; (Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... about to surrender, when the noble young Brave, Ipecacuanha, dashed forth, and sprang into the fray, rescuing the maiden just in the nick of time. Holding the paleface, who lay limp and gasping in his left arm, the young Indian madly fought the other two of his own tribe with his strong right arm. Apparently he, too, had a tomahawk, for he fearfully brandished an imaginary weapon, and did it so successfully, that ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells

... how the poor ladies, wives of four Emperors, who had been left behind in the palace almost starved to death when the international troops guarding the Forbidden City forbade all ingress and egress through the pink gates, until the I.G. saved them, in the nick of time, by applying to the Allied Generals, might be ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... down this man, at last, sir," gulped Fitzroy, flustered, but making valiant effort at control, "as you see, sir, only in the nick of time." ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... in the nick of time. The Koeln flagship of the German commodore, was soon staggering off in a blaze, and was later sunk with her total complement of 380 officers and men. The Ariadne, steaming at high speed across the bows of the British ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... replied Dick Rover. "Our greatest trouble was with some mutineers who got drunk and wanted to run things to suit themselves. They might have got the best of us, but a warship visited the island just in the nick of time and rescued us." ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons. We all knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... waters murmured like the streams of windward Hawaii! We lost our way over and over again, though the "innocent" young men had been there before; indeed, it would require some talent to master the intricacies of that devious trail, but settlers making hay always appeared in the nick of time to put us on the right track. Very fair it was, after the brown and burning plains, and the variety was endless. Cotton-wood trees were green and bright, aspens shivered in gold tremulousness, wild grape-vines trailed their lemon-colored foliage along the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... flatter a minister or a monarch; be haughty, be humble, threaten, repent, weep, grasp your hand, or stab you whenever he saw occasion—but yet those of the army who knew him best and had suffered most from him, admired him most of all; and as he rode along the lines to battle, or galloped up in the nick of time to a battalion reeling from the enemy's charge or shot, the fainting men and officers got new courage as they saw the splendid calm of his face, and felt that his will made ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... rather a taking adventurer, like Bothwell in "Old Mortality." Readers regret the necessity which kills Kennedy. The whole fortunes of Vanbeest Brown, his duel with the colonel, and his fortunate appearance in the nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a modest instrument; ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... harsh and bony finger against one of the steps of our stairs, and in the aperture of our doorway appears an idiot, clad in a suit of gray tweed, who bows low. "Come in, come in, M. Kangourou. How well you come, just in the nick of time! I was actually ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... trembling with excitement as they stood together in shelter, with fixed bayonets and kukris, waiting to make the rush. The bugle was being raised to the holder's lips to sound the advance, when a thrill of joy surged through the British leaders' breasts, for the help they needed came in the nick of time. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... he had been offered, and had accepted an important appointment abroad in connection with this craft—one which made a profound appeal to him. Despite the stormy outlook in the diplomatic world he felt convinced that he would be able to squeeze through in the nick of time. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... visitors. The political atmosphere was distinctly ruffled. Revolution was in the air. Sir Jasper sniffed the coming changes; and was tactician enough to avoid being engulfed in the threatened maelstrom by slipping back to England with his young charges in the nick of time. Others of his compatriots, not so fortunate or so discreet, found themselves ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... perambulator alone in a field where there was a bull. The animal became enraged by the red blanket in the perambulator, and Heaven knows what might have happened if a gentleman had not been walking by in the nick of time, and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... arrived in the nick of time. It was a "crowning mercy" indeed, the beginning of the end, and when (a few days later), over a repaired bridge, came a troop-train, gingerly advancing, the battalion of British troops that it disgorged at Gungapur Road Station found disappointingly little to do in a city ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... lamp. As she beholds him under the door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and his house from ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... could hold the balance in such an essay as Dream Children. Great-grandmother Field is just in her place, upright, graceful, and the best of dancers; and Alice's little right foot plays its involuntary movement in the nick of time; and when Uncle John died, the "children fell a-crying" at the narrative and asked about the mourning which they were wearing. It is all just important enough, just trivial enough, to carry its fragile burden of sentiment—so much, and no more. The charm is complete. Conceive ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... is it so very easy to die. There comes many a time in life when it would seem quite according to the fitness of things, just the proper ending to the romance, to lie down and die; but, unfortunately, or rather fortunately, dying is a thing that we cannot do so just in the nick of time; and indeed"—and Uncle John's face assumed its strange smile, which seemed to take you, as it were, suddenly behind the scenes, to show you the wrong side of the tapestry,—"and indeed," he continued, "when I look back on the times in my life ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... representative?" he demanded abruptly. "And, how did it come that he arrived just in the nick of time?" ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... in the grove, within sight of the walls of Agpur, where he himself had purposed to make a hopeless stand over Rajah Partab Singh's dead body, in defence of Partab Singh's wife and son, and where Charteris had appeared in the nick of time to save him. The place could not be held, there was no hope of that, even if it were properly provisioned, and the letter was dated two days ago. If Sher Singh were indeed a traitor—and his conduct would need a good deal of explanation if it was to be ascribed ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... glass, and flowers. A draught-screen concealed the door of ingress from the pantry where the business of serving was carried on by the khansaman assisted by a group of white-robed domestics. Agitated whispers from behind the screen were infallible indications of mistakes retrieved in the nick of time; otherwise, the occasional blow of the ice hammer, or the rolling of the ice machine on the outer door-mat were the only sounds audible from ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... if he warn't," he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd been in ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... immediately charged home with the first of those wild, high rebel yells that rang throughout the war. The stricken and astounded Federal front caved in, turned round, and fled. At the same instant the last of the Shenandoahs—Kirby Smith's brigade, detrained just in the nick of time—charged the wavering flank. Then, like the first quiver of an avalanche, a tremor shook the whole massed Federals one moment on that fatal hill: the next, like a loosened cliff, they ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... you must leave me here a little! You came in the nick of time, and you brought me a message. It always comes, if you ask for it! And I shall say a prayer for the Little Master himself, as Sintram called him, before I go. He has his points, you know. He is uncommonly shrewd and tenacious and brave. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... shortly after the arrival of the second ship from Police Terminal—and believe me, that ship came in just in the nick of time!—the dead Abzar city which the criminals were using as their main base for this time line, and from which they launched the air attack against us, was located, and now word has come in that it is entirely in the hands of the Paratime Police. Personally, I doubt ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... forgot to introduce you to HARRY," said the ex-Bride. "You must know one another. I was going to marry him when you, darling, turned up just in the nick of time, like a dear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... "In the nick of time, Ralph!" exclaimed Lord Tamerton, clasping his hand warmly. "We are trying to create a mediaeval atmosphere in keeping with our surroundings, and as host I was about to announce in the approved manner of Chivalry that the Champion of to-morrow's hunt shall ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... taking a library in this fashion, a sense of spaciousness of joy in it, which one is almost always sure to miss in libraries—most libraries—by staying in them. The only way one can get any real good out of a modern library seems to be by going away in the nick of time. If one stays there is no help for it. One is soon standing before the card catalogue, sorting one's wits out in it, filing them away, and the sense of boundlessness both in one's self and everybody else—the thing a library is for—is fenced off ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... gale, of fury rare even on that tempestuous coast, burst upon the British fleet. "It blew a perfect hurricane," says the unfortunate Admiral, "and drove us right on shore." One ship was dashed on the rocks, two leagues from Louisbourg. A shifting of the wind in the nick of time saved the rest from total wreck. Nine were dismasted; others threw their cannon into the sea. Not one was left fit for immediate action; and had La Motte sailed out of Louisbourg, he would have had them all ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... Heigho,"—he added a moment later as if to free his mind from unpleasant thoughts,—"I'll be glad when we are safely up in the hills yonder. Do you know, old man, I feel as though we're getting away just in the nick of time. My back hair and the pricking of my thumbs warn me that your dearly beloved spooks are combining to put up some sort of a spooking job on us. I hope Yee Kee has a plentiful supply of joss-sticks to stand 'em off, if they get too busy while we ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... of a kind common in his day, and common almost up to our own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a dozen instances, and which immediately brings up to the mind a vision of grand-ducal gardens, where, among the clipped ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... for the ingenuity of one of our opponents; for, whilst all were busily engaged in searching among the grass, a red-faced yokel stole up unawares, with an innocent expression on his face, raced poor "Podder" down the pitch, produced the ball from his trouser pocket, and knocked off the bails in the nick of time. "Out," says Peregrine, amid a roar of laughter from the whole field; and Mr. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... know what he meant," Jim said, angrily. "But I know what he did—and what he'd have been responsible for if Lal Chunder hadn't happened along in the nick of time. Great overgrown calf! Upon my word, ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... you did it!" insisted Mr. Swift, "and you did it in the nick of time. Now I wouldn't for a moment think of offering you a reward for saving my son's life. But I do feel mighty friendly toward you—not that I didn't before—but I do want to help you. Alec, I will go into this business with you. We'll take a chance! I'll invest ten thousand ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton

... out of the cloud of War. The time had produced the man. The storm had burst just in the nick of time to save the drooping theatrical interests which he controlled, and the fruit which these had borne steadily for the best part of five long years had been truly phenomenal. A patriot to the backbone, the bewildered proprietor obtained absolute exemption from the Tribunal, turned the first ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... temperament," he said, "wreck the lives of others. Brian has just stepped out in the nick of time." ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... depths of misfortune. Sorra a soul but himself and a boy escaped by climbing to a ledge on the topmost peak of one of the icebergs just in the nick of time to see the ship cracked like a walnut between your fingers. And the worst was ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... not recognize Sam Weller, making his first appearance in "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club"? And who has not revelled in the lively scene in the White Hart when Mr. Pickwick and his friends arrived in the nick of time to prevent the ancient but still sentimental Rachael from becoming Mrs. Jingle? It is not difficult to understand why that particular instalment of "Pickwick" was the turning-point of the book's fortunes. Prior ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... outbreak he would for a few hours dazzle the imagination of the members of the local theosophical society with poetical rhapsodies about harlots and street lamps, and then sink into weeks of melancholy. A fellow theosophist once found him hanging from the window pole, but cut him down in the nick of time. I said to the man who cut him down, 'What did you say to one another?' He said, 'We spent the night telling comic stories and laughing a great deal.' This man, torn between sensuality and visionary ambition, was now the most devout of all, and told ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... he had arrived at Cabul in the nick of time, for an envoy from the Shah of Persia was already at Candahar, bearing presents and assurances of support. The Dost made no concealment to Burnes of his approaches to Persia and Russia, in despair of British good offices, and being hungry for assistance from any ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... harnessed a Suffolk Punch to my light gig, the same Punch which I had offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at H—- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... as the shades grew thicker, Four eyes waxed brighter, and two pulses quicker; Ten minutes more of quiet talk unbroken, And heaven alone can tell what might be spoken! But it was not to be, for fates unequal Compelled—but this anticipates the sequel. Just in the nick of time, King Arthur rose From his sedate post-prandial repose, And called for lights. Along the shadowy aisles His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered from each silver sconce. The scene was changed, the dreamer's ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... dearly bought. According to the tradition accepted in Asia Minor two hundred years later, a horde of Scythians under King Madyes, son of Protothyes, setting out from the Bussian steppes in pursuit of the Cimmerians, made their appearance on the scene in the nick of time. We are told that they flung themselves through the Caspian Gates into the basin of the Kur, and came into contact with the Medes at the foot of Mount Caucasus. The defeat of the Medes here would necessarily compel them to raise the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... ESTELLE visits the Colonel in order to save her Private lover. He is proved to have broken his arrest, and is sentenced to death. ESTELLE offers to marry the Colonel if he will pardon the Private. The latter's discharge arrives in the nick of time, and as he is thus beyond the reach of the Colonel's vengeance, he graciously pardons him, and joins his hand to that of ESTELLE. He remarks—or ought to—"Bless you, my children." Every body suddenly finds out that every body else is noble ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... their great superiority over writers of the same class half a century ago, is mainly due to use. Sir Walter Scott, who, like most men of genuine power, had great generosity, once observed to a brother author, 'You and I came just in the nick of time.' He foresaw the formidable competition that was about to take place, though he had no cause to fear it. I think in these days he would have had cause; not that I disbelieve in his genius, but that I venture to think he diffused ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... look out for these here young ones," said Sam. "This one would have been roasted sure, if I hadn't a-happened along in the nick of time." ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... a quandary! But you haven't told me yet how you happened to meet Wool and to come here just in the nick of time!" ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... Capt. Noah, and the Ark was turned in the direction pointed out by the faithful lookout. Then Mr. Jonah leaned over and pulled in the life-preserver as the Ark slowly came alongside, and just in the nick of time, for the ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory

... giving the comfortable mother that admonition which the policeman had so narrowly escaped? I know not what would have happened if the merry goddess, seeing things rushing to this dreadful climax, had not stopped the train in the nick of time at a wayside station and caused a breathless lady, pushing parcels before her, to clamber in. The mother's surprised stare was of necessity diverted to the new-comer. A parcel thrust into Priscilla's hands brought her back of necessity to ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... same rating on board the 'Victorious,' seventy-four, but he had great difficulty in getting leave for my mother to accompany him, and if another woman who was to have gone hadn't fallen ill just in the nick of time, he would have had to sail without her. I was smuggled on board instead of a monkey shipped by the crew, which fell overboard and was drowned. It was some weeks before the captain found out that I wasn't the monkey he had given the men leave to take. When the first lieutenant ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... brought the doctor in the nick of time to perform an inestimable service to the Motor Maids and to all those who knew and loved ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... step she perceived that he eagerly sought occasion to quarrel with her and seized every pretext for avoiding her. And now to add to her embarrassment, there was this unlucky Mikalai accident. It seemed just to have come in the nick of time so far as he was concerned, just as if he had actually agreed with Fatia Negra that the latter should rob him on the high road in the most artful manner so that she might not have the slightest hope left of being relieved from her anxieties by the assistance of her husband. The baron, ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... ones rebelled, and in the scuffle some one lurched forward against the driver at a critical turn in the road, throwing him against the wheel. The big car swerved almost into the ditch, was brought back just in the nick of time and sped on, while Death, who had looked into that tonneau, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... ladder, and effectually keeps at bay the aforesaid lover by a judicious use of the revolver, which had previously been turned against herself. Then finding himself worsted, the afore-mentioned desperate lover hies himself away, and your humble servant turns up in the nick of time, and rescues the almost despairing warbler, and returns her to the arms of—well—a waiting friend; quite a romance, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... "Last summer," he said, turning to Phil, "I was only two years old, and that Otter punished me so severely that but for Mother Beaver there, who came to my rescue in the nick of time, I should have been done for. But now—well, he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... admirable, judicious door—stopped the coming sermon, in the nick of time, by opening again. Herr Grosse's squat figure and owlish spectacles appeared on the threshold. And behind him (exactly as I had anticipated) ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... I was just in the nick of time; and my presence checked the effusion of blood for a little—but wait a wee. So high and furious were at least three of the party, that I saw it was catching water in a sieve to waste words on them, knowing as clearly ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... explained. "The old gentleman asked me why I did not address him in his own tongue, since I evidently understand it; and then went on to say that we arrived here just in the nick of time, as the villagers were about to torture him to death, to secure the favour of some god or devil of whom they appear to be particularly afraid. And I said that he might depend upon us to protect him so long as we have the power ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... person that's— (Turning round.) O Pamphilus, you are the very man I'm looking for. Well done, Charinus! both in the nick of time: I want ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... places in the Fijian Islands. And the name of the giant is Samu-yalo, that is, the Killer of Souls. He artfully conceals himself in some mangrove bushes just beyond the town, from which he rushes out in the nick of time to fell the passing ghosts. Whenever he kills a ghost, he cooks and eats him and that is the end of the poor ghost. It is the second death. The highway to the Elysian fields runs, or used to run, right through the town of Nambanaggatai; so all the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... game of tag her lover was playing, with death the penalty for tardiness. The slow, enticing movements were repeated again and again, Phil advancing very close, and stepping back in the nick of time. Always he barely avoided the clutching white arms that were extended, and little by little he ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... said she, "and just in the nick of time. He was on the inside in the campaign of '96, and I remember one night he came to dinner at our house and told us that the Republican party had raised ten or fifteen million dollars to buy the election. 'That's the end of silver,' he said, and he sold out that very month, ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair

... She rose in the nick of time and slipped away from him. But she didn't fly far. So Tommy followed. And he stole up very slyly; and once more, when he was quite near the old lady, he sprang ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey

... the sergeant, two or three dragoons were creeping under the wagon to fire from behind the wheels. I dropped a man standing at the horses' heads and then, in the nick of time and on second thoughts, made sure of the mare and hit her in the neck. She squealed, kicked, and plunged, and the other horse sharing her fears, they began to drag the wagon off. The sergeant and two or three men leaped at them and managed to quiet them, and then took them ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... minute's pregnant reflection, as an elderly gentleman, playing golf on a rainy day, takes his spectacles from his nose, and wipes the water-drops away, before venturing the decisive stroke of the game. Nothing escapes him; every thing is done in the nick of time. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, charge to the right or the left, or straight before them, dash through the enemy's front, or scour the flanks, or sweep the rear, perambulate squares, and perforate encampments, just as if the serried ranks of the Sikhs had been unsubstantial creatures of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... Prussian soldiers:[Footnote: See Jean-Christophe—I, "Revolt."] she wrote to tell him that she was going to be married: she gave him news of his mother, and sent him a basket of apples and a piece of cake to eat in her honor. They came in the nick of time. That evening with Christophe was a fast, Ember Days, Lent: only the butt end of the sausage hanging by the window was left. Christophe compared himself to the anchorite saints fed by a crow among the rocks. But no doubt the crow was hard put to it to feed all the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... I believe, were going to murder the old man in the hammock, if we had not come in the nick of time. What have you done ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... the bull-fighter, who, standing 20 or 30 yds. from the bull, draws its attention to him by means of violent gestures. As the bull charges, the banderillero steps towards him, dexterously plants both darts in the beast's neck, and draws aside in the nick of time to avoid its horns. Four pairs of banderillas are planted in this way, rendering the bull mad with rage and pain. Should the animal prove of a cowardly nature and refuse to attack repeatedly, banderillas de fuego (fire) are used. These are furnished with fulminating crackers, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... doubt that the brave dog would have, eventually, paid the penalty for its rashness—for the wolf had mauled it badly, and it was beginning to show signs of exhaustion through loss of blood—had not Savanich arrived in the nick of time. A couple of thrusts from his knife stretched the wolf on the ground, when, to his utmost horror, it suddenly metamorphosed ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... there was a fierce, deep, growling bark, a rush, a man's deep voice as if encouraging a dog, and Marcus was free, to stand there breathless and giddy, listening to the retreating steps of his foes and the shouts to the dog of Serge, who had come to his help in the nick of time. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... was able to tell us a different story. He had, in fact, fallen through the outer crust, and was well on his way through the inner one as well, when he got hold of a loop of rope on his sledge and saved himself in the nick of time. Time after time the dogs now fell through, and time after time the men went in. The effect of the open space between the two crusts was that the ground under our feet sounded unpleasantly hollow as we went over it. The drivers whipped up their dogs as much as they could, and with ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... recapture the ground they had yielded. Back fell the British before a countercharge they could not withstand, back beyond the rail fence. Nor was there refuge even there, for, shattered and spent, they were smashed to fragments in a flank attack driven home in the nick of time by the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... two men had sat down beside Le Heup at the dining table, he had questioned them and they had told him a graphic story of how they had been chased by a great pack of wolves and how they had managed to escape with their lives by climbing a tree only just in the nick of time; and, moreover, how the ferocious brutes had kept them there all night long, and how, consequently, they had been ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... as well as well can be," she said, "and as jolly as jolly can be, and you have just come in the nick of time to make everything perfect. Molly, do tell Mrs. Willis about our fancy ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... Count Metternich, behind the next tree, fired and killed the brute, so I was none the worse save for a good fright. It was high time to kill him, for he began charging at the beaters, and threatened to make it lively for us; and if Count Metternich had not, in the nick of time, sent a bullet into him, I doubt whether I should be writing this little account ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... prophecy of victory. Bradley ran up his Napoleons on the right in the nick of time, and, although only one of them could be brought to bear, it was enough; the grape raked the Confederate left, broke it, and the battle was over. In five minutes more their whole array was scattered, and the entire position open to galloping ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... true, Jim. And Palla Dumont escaped having her slender throat slit open only because a sotnia of Kaladines' Cossacks cantered up, discovered what the Reds were up to in the cellar, and beat it with Palla and another girl just in the nick of time." ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... ejaculated Bernard we have come in the nick of time Ethel he added. Yes said Ethel in ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford

... "You are just in the nick of time, Gamble," Gresham quietly stated with a deliberate intention of humiliating this child of no one. "Miss Polly has a subscription list which she wants you ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... said the old fairy: "we have a mortal here, just in the nick of time. He will do our bidding rarely, for 'tis the stout miller hard by, who fears neither fiend nor fairy, man nor witch, by his own confession. We'll put his courage to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... Jinny'd want any of us to suffer for her pleasure, Ju dear," she said gently. "I'm sure Mrs. Hudson has a good front room that we can get. I heard that Miss Snow had left and her room wasn't to be filled till next week; so we are just in the nick of time, you see." ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... Street, before a conscience-stricken factory; and he wept on his sack bed in the scullery because the prince and the princess, his august parents, would never know that he had died. A whit less gloomy were his imaginings of the said prince and princess rushing into the house, in the nick of time, just before life was extinct, and cutting him down. How they were to find him he did not know. This side-track exploration of possibilities was a symptom ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... I can be?" he mused. "I was saved in the nick of time: I was too exhausted to run farther," and at that moment he heard a beautiful strain of music, played ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... their little game, we do, by stoppin' their windpipes when we catch them. Come, don't shilly-shally any longer, Paul Bevan. He's here, and no mistake, so you'd better hand him over. Besides, you owe us something, you know, for coming to your help agin the redskins in the nick of time." ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Just in the nick of time! You've saved my life!" muttered Bob gratefully, when he recovered a little of his ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... her, two or three of the rabble behind her were in the act of poising themselves with great stones in their hands, and their muscles were stiffening for a cast when, just in the nick of time, the obstinate snap yielded, and with a jerk the umbrella ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... days later "L" Company supported in the nick of time by two platoons of "I" Company repulsed a savage counter-attack staged by the Red Guards, September 16th, on a morning that followed the capture of a crashing Red bombing plane in the evening and ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... "you're come back in the nick of time. I have finished now, and you may take the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... obstacle. It so happened that ninety Yankee seamen had been sent across country from New York by Captain Isaac Chauncey. These worthy tars had trudged the distance on foot, a matter of five hundred miles, with their canvas bags on their backs, and they rolled into port at noon, in the nick of time to serve Elliott's purpose. They were indubitably tired, but he gave them not a moment for rest. A ration of meat and bread and a stiff tot of grog, and they turned to and manned the boats which were to cut out the two British brigs when ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... obliged to you, Jack, for your good intentions, but had not the party from the ship arrived in the nick of time, you would in all probability have found the house a heap of ruins, and we all burned to cinders in the middle of it," answered ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston



Words linked to "In the nick of time" :   just in time



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