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Adrift   Listen
adverb
Adrift  adv., adj.  Floating at random; in a drifting condition; at the mercy of wind and waves. Also fig. "So on the sea shall be set adrift." "Were from their daily labor turned adrift."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books



... discovered, was left in charge of some of Ramon's mestizos at the mesa. As ill-luck would have it, almost the first thing that greeted their eyes when they emerged from the tunnel was the sight of the old Mexican whom Jack had bound and set adrift. He had been rescued from his predicament by a rancher about ten miles down the stream, and had made the best of his way back at once. His prayers, apologies and explanations for the loss of the horses may be imagined as he faced Ramon's wrath. ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... kindly air, however, she soon told him the truth. Her sister, that poor creature Norine, had just given birth to another child, her third, at Madame Bourdieu's establishment. A gentleman who had been protecting her had cast her adrift, and she had been obliged to sell her few sticks of furniture in order to get together a couple of hundred francs, and thus secure admittance to Madame Bourdieu's house, for the mere idea of having to go to a hospital terrified ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... Adrift in space! Blaine Carson worked frantically at the controls, his jaw set in grim lines and his eyes narrowed to anxious slits as he peered into the diamond-studded ebon of the heavens. A million miles astern he knew the red disk ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... descendant of "the Great Conde.'' But, surrounded by the vapid jealousies of the most useless people who had ever tried to rule a country, he, no more than his father, had the faintest chance to show the Conde quality in war. Adrift as a comparatively young man, his world about his ears, with no occupation, small wonder that in idleness he fell into the pursuit of satisfactions for his baser appetites. He would have been, there is good reason to believe, a happy man and ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... realised that—in obedience, it appears, to Heemskirk's orders given beforehand to the gunner— the tow-rope had been let go at the blast of the whistle, before he had time to cry out or to move a limb, he saw her cast adrift and shooting across the gunboat's stern with the impetus of her speed. He followed her fine, gliding form with eyes growing big with incredulity, wild with horror. The cries on board of her came to him only as a dreadful and confused murmur through the loud thumping of blood in ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... twixt them both they not a lambkin left; And when lambes fail'd, the old sheepes lives they reft; That how t'acquite themselves unto their lord They were in doubt, and flatly set abord. [Set abord, set adrift, at a loss.] The Foxe then counsel'd th'Ape for to require 325 Respite till morrow t'answere his desire: For times delay new hope of helpe still breeds. The good man granted, doubting nought their deeds, And bad next day that all should ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... thought he was that kind, eh? Well, he would show them! Having accepted the fate of the man on a desert island, Lans Treadwell meant to treat the natives he found there, fairly and nobly. In his mind he had cut himself adrift forever from the old life and its claims; Cynthia was the most attractive little savage on his isolated, safety isle—he would claim her virtuously and bravely; he would train her; educate her to be no unworthy mate for him in his god-like sacrifice ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... many as she wished to know. If the twenty years of oblivion concealed irregularity, immorality—well, was she not to blame for it? Was ever a better boy than Gerry, as she knew him, to the day they parted? It was her fault or misfortune that had cast him all adrift. As to that troublesome question of a possible wife elsewhere, in the land of his oblivion, she had quite made up her mind about that. Every effort had been made to find such a one, and failed. If she reappeared, it would be her own duty to surrender Fenwick—if he wished to go ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... from Calcutta to Dundee with jute. Dismasted in a cyclone ten days ago west of the Andamans; been adrift ever since. Fire broke out in cargo in the fore hold; had as much as we could do to keep it under; no time to rig a jury mast. Afraid of flames bursting through ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... gigantic scale, the Government would be compelled to place the military power of the state at their disposal, to evict the whole population in the queen's name, to drive all the families away from their homes, to demolish their dwellings, and turn them adrift on the highway, without one shilling compensation. Villages, schools, churches would all disappear from the landscape; and, when the grouse season arrived, the noble owner might bring over a party of English friends to see his 'improvements!' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... not the fact that he was separated from the boy that wore on Stephen Sanford, but rather the knowledge that a barrier had arisen between them. He had honestly expected that Allen would refuse to take him seriously when he cast him adrift. They had quarrelled before and nothing had come of it, so he had no reason to think that this would be any exception. He knew the boy's tastes, and while blaming him for his extravagances, he was proud to have him "live ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

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

... and drawing their heads together near his mouth. "At night, when everything is quiet, one of us will just unbit the cable, and let it run out. Then another shall sing out that the vessel is going adrift. That will make a row. Then we will try to do something. You, Herman, and I, will offer to carry a line to another vessel—the ship, for instance. Carboy—who don't know any more about a vessel than a kitten does of the ten commandments—will tell you ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... at first. I came down here by chance, and resolved to cut myself utterly adrift from my old life and see if I could not forget you. I was not very successful." He smiled down into her eyes. "And you were going away tomorrow. How perilously near we have been to not meeting! But how are we going to explain all this to our ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... 800,000 dogs have passed through the books, a few to be reclaimed or bought, the great majority to be put to death. A very large proportion of these have been veritable mongrels, not worth the value of their licences—diseased and maimed curs, or bitches in whelp, turned ruthlessly adrift to be consigned to the oblivion of the lethal chamber, where the thoroughbred seldom finds its way. And if as many as 500 undesirables are destroyed every week at one such institution, 'tis clear that the ill-bred mongrel must soon altogether disappear. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... himself, had again to make his escape. At first he only dismissed his military suite; afterward he separated from his faithful servant in the hope that separately they might more easily baffle their pursuers. Next he had to turn his horse adrift, as the poor animal was incapable of continuing his journey. Thus he made his way alone and on foot toward the frontiers of his native land. After a while, looking down from the top of a piece of elevated ground, he perceived a large body of Turks, from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... remain a Hindu, and their movement has made little headway. By retaining the tenet of the divine authority of the Vedas, Dayanand made it possible for educated Hindus to join his sect without absolutely cutting themselves adrift from their old faith. But Dayanand's contention that the Vedas should be figuratively interpreted, and are so found to foreshadow the discoveries of modern science, will naturally not bear examination. The following instances of the method are given by Professor Oman: "At one of the anniversary ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... dismantle the set, build a raft and set himself and the apparatus adrift upon the water in the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman

... darkened into deepest gloom, the canoe was taken out into the main current of the Columbia, and fire was set to the dry knots that made up the funeral pyre. In an instant the contents of the canoe were in a blaze, and it was set adrift in the current. Down the river it floated, lighting the night with leaping flames. On the shore, the assembled tribe watched it in silence, mute, dejected, as they saw their great chief borne from them forever. Promontory and dusky fir, gleaming water and ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... Jamaica left behind by the Spaniards on the conquest of the island by the English, 1655, escaped to the hills, and continued unsubdued till 1795; in Guiana they still maintain independent communities. To MAROON a seaman is to leave him alone on an uninhabited island, or adrift ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... game, for I believe he is the only Englishman who wishes a war with Flanders."[632] If that was his wish, he was doomed to disappointment. Popular hatred of the war was too strong; a project was mooted by the clothiers in Kent for seizing the Cardinal and turning him adrift in a boat, with holes bored in it.[633] The (p. 224) clothiers in Wiltshire were reported to be rising; in Norfolk employers dismissed their workmen.[634] War with Flanders meant ruin to the most prosperous industry in both countries, and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... delightful to him. He was, therefore, much more disposed—except in the face of absolutely conclusive evidence—to rationalise than to deny a vulgar error, to bring explanations and saving clauses to its aid, than to cut it adrift utterly. In this part of his work his distinguishing graces and peculiarities of style appear but sparingly and not eminently. In the other division, consisting of the Religio Medici, the Urn-Burial, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... always in a blithe humour, worked hard, and knew a great many good songs, I soon earned a good deal more than the rest. This, however, awakened my comrades' envy. They blackened my character to my master, so that he turned me adrift; and everywhere where I went or where I stood they cried after me, 'German cur! Cursed heretic!' Three days ago, as I was helping to unload a boat near St. Sebastian, they fell upon me with sticks and stones. I defended myself stoutly, but that malicious Nicolo dealt me a blow ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... destitution. The treatment that these poor persons received from the Boers in the course of their journey caused intense indignation, and profound sympathy was felt for the homeless ones who thus suddenly had been cast adrift from domestic ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... could obtain places as domestic servants, or employment as labourers and handicraftsmen (classes, it must be remembered, for all which the employ was diminished by the very ejectment in question), they who were turned adrift soon found themselves houseless and hopeless, and were reduced to prey upon that society which had so unwisely as well ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

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

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

... Also instruct in methods of throwing things to a drowning person or one who has just met with some mishap in a boat—such for instance as losing an oar. A board or a plank should not be thrown toward a person in the water but launched toward them. When adrift in an unmanageable boat cast anchor and wait for assistance. Never rock a boat for fun. A Scout who so far forgets herself as to do such a foolhardy act should be forbidden to go into a boat again for some time as a punishment. Most drowning accidents ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... the purser added six dark and dangerous-looking Spaniards. It developed later that by profession they were bull-fighters. Any man who is not afraid of a bull is entitled to respect. But being cast adrift with ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... morning, and for this purpose went to the river, but the canoe was not to be found. I did not secure it last night, and probably it broke adrift and went down," replied Jaspar, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... a majority! Picture to yourself a man on a vessel standing by the gun-room with a lighted match, in his hand; he is alone, but the rest obey him, for at the first disobedience he will blow up himself with all the crew. This is precisely what has been going on in America since she went adrift. The working of the ship was commanded by the man who held the match. "At the first disobedience, we will quit you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable of keeping their word; therefore, there ceased to be but one argument ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... the articles will be well read, for there's a heap of the vitals of South Africa in them; and even if they are to cut us adrift altogether, it's as well 'The Destroyers' should know a little about us, and the country. Constance Grey's name and introductions will take her anywhere in London, or I would have asked your ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... sharply outlined against the moonlit grass. Jernyngham looked very lonely as he rode out into the wilderness. He could hardly have been happy, Prescott thought, in his untidy and comfortless house at the farm; but, after all, it had been a home, and now he was rudely flung adrift. It was true that the man was largely responsible for the troubles that had fallen upon him, but this was no reason for refusing him pity, and Cyril had his strong points. He had staunchly declined to profit by a felicitous change ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... time a Stefanopoulos tried to sell Neopalia the people killed him, and turned the purchaser—he was a Frenchman, a Baron d'Ezonville—adrift in an open boat, with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... (the pity!) Who worked thee all the good, Away from thee,—destroyest in a mood Of Madness him, to death whom pipings dance! There goes she, in her chariot,—groans, her brood And gives her team the goad, as though adrift For doom, Night's Gorgon, Madness, she whose glance Turns man to marble! with what hissings lift Their hundred heads the snakes, her head's inheritance! Quick has the God changed fortune: through their sire Quick will the children, that he saved, expire! ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... attention; and I do intend to talk sensibly when I say that I think you are proposing to treat Ballindine very ill. The world will think well of your turning him adrift on the score of the match being an imprudent one; but it won't speak so leniently of you if you expel him, as soon as your ward becomes an heiress, to make way for ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... and Odessa (as they did, by the way, in the Crimean War, when twenty to thirty English and French ships were watching them), and when they could get a chance burnt some unfortunate little coasting craft, sending the crews of such vessels adrift in small boats to make the best of their way to the nearest land. In addition to the above-named services, the Turkish fleet was called upon constantly to transport large bodies of troops ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... across the two boys, their treatment of them would depend very much on the mood in which they happened to be. They would be inclined to rob them of everything worth taking, and might end the matter by shooting both or turning them adrift without guns or ammunition. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.' My dear Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent good sense that convicted you! By the way, I believe you claimed the horse which Morton found adrift on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the thin, sharply ground, flat oyster-shells to be found among the beach pebbles—a peculiarly cutting kind of weapon—and at every opportunity sending them skimming at one or other of the lads; making holes in their boat, when they had one—being strongly suspected of cutting two adrift, so that they were swept away, and never heard of again; and in divers other ways showing his dislike or hatred— displaying an animus which had become intensified since Mike had called in Vince's help to put a stop to raids and forays upon the old manor orchard ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... as poor as I am myself, Bob, and that is saying all that can be said on such a point. However, I've secured her now, and two years hence I'll claim her, if she has not a second gown to wear. I dare say the old man will be for turning her adrift with as little ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... or eighteen years after John Jenks "caved." The John Jenks of 183- had been ruined by his good nature, set adrift moneyless, in a manner, with even a spotted reputation to begin with; he "profited by his reverses," he was now a man of family—fifty, fat, and wealthy, and altogether the meanest and most selfish man you ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... from Zol. He gave the ruby capsule to Maya. She sleeps and will continue to sleep for twenty years unless the antidote which looks like curdled yellow flame is given to her. I have it. Grim Hagen may kill her or cast her adrift in space, but he cannot awaken her. That hound of hell can taunt her no more. She sleeps, until Gunnar ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... feet in length, with eleven feet beam. Two thirds of her length was decked over, with a trunk cabin, in which were transoms large enough for four berths, with a cook-room forward. She was handsomely fitted up, and Little Bobtail wondered how she happened to be adrift. He hoisted the mainsail, and in a few moments ran her into a little bay under the lee of Blank Island, where he anchored her. As she had an anchor it was evident that she had not broken away from her anchorage. Having ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic

... an instant and seemed to review and take account of what he had said. He was hopelessly adrift from the subject he had proposed to himself, launched for better or for worse upon the theme that was subliminal in him and had flowed up, on which he was launched, and almost rudderless, without construction and without control. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... simple reason that they are so numerous. Name them, indeed! Why, my pretty niece, Miss Magnet, what do you think of that main-boom now? To my ignorant eyes, it is topped at least a foot too high; and then the pennant is foul; and—and—ay, d—-me, if there isn't a topsail gasket adrift; and it wouldn't surprise me at all if there should be a round turn in that hawser, if the kedge were to be let go this instant. Faults indeed! No seaman could look at her a moment without seeing that she is as full of faults as a servant who has ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... camels, the other by horses, Ricketts started off towards the bridge of boats. Galloping on alone, he found that the gap in the bridge made by Thornton had not been repaired, which proved that the rebels had not crossed by that passage, at all events. He widened the gap by cutting adrift some more boats, and then had himself ferried across the river, in order to ascertain the exact state of affairs at Philour. He learnt that no tidings had been received of any British troops having been sent from Jullundur in pursuit of the mutineers, who, having ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... what he gathered from the cook, namely, that his favourite, Ellen, was being turned adrift with a matter of three pounds in her pocket, to go she knew not where, and to do she knew not what, and that she had said she should hang or drown herself, which the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... all bounds, till inundation rise Above the highest Hills: then shall this Mount Of Paradise by might of Waves be moovd Out of his place, pushd by the horned floud, With all his verdure spoil'd, and Trees adrift Down the great River to the op'ning Gulf, And there take root an Iland salt and bare, 830 The haunt of Seales and Orcs, and Sea-mews clang. To teach thee that God attributes to place No sanctitie, if none be thither brought By Men who there frequent, or therein dwell. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... quest of the Medusa. The inhabitants of the raft were all received on board, and were again very nearly perishing, by a fire which broke out in the night. The six boats which had so cruelly cast them adrift, reached the coast of Africa in safety; and after many dangers among the Moors, the ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... put Hudson and all the sick members of the crew in the shallop or small boat that the Discoverer carried and turn them adrift, and all the details of this were worked out by Greene and some other leading spirits among the mutineers. Hudson was seized and bound; the sick were told to get up from their bunks and take their ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

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

... she sobbed. "I hope you may never live to know such wretchedness as I have known! Better that you should die now! Better you had never been born! Why was I born? Why was I set adrift in this wretched, wicked old world? Not one thing in life has ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... coming to tennis to-morrow, at which he brightened up a little. I do not wish to be uncharitable—least of all to a charming young lady—but my opinion is that Miss Trix did not wish to set the curate altogether adrift. I think, however, that Lady Queenborough must have spoken again, for when Jack did come to tennis, Trix treated him with the most freezing civility and a hardly disguised disdain, and devoted herself to Lord Newhaven with as much assiduity as her mother could wish. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... said to Emma, "I really am afraid that John is adrift. I think I see the boat, but am not sure. Emma, go in quietly and bring out my telescope, which is over my bed-place. Do not let them see you, or they will be asking questions, and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... situation, the duties of which he performed satisfactorily to the last; and yet, on the abolition of the establishment, while the Principal retires in the full enjoyment of his ample salary, this senior Clerk and his fellows in calamity are cast adrift upon the world, to live or starve, and in the dearth of employment suitable to their habits and education, the unfortunate outcasts are left to perish, perhaps by the hand of famine in the streets, or that of despondency ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... as a boy throws away an unripe mango not to his taste, Hira at first suffered frightfully. It was not only that she had been cast adrift by Debendra, but that, having been degraded and wounded by him, she had sunk to so low a position among women. It was this she found so unendurable. When, in her last interview, embracing Debendra's feet, she had said, "Do not cast me off!" he had replied, "It has only been ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... the whole action passes, through a series of impossible occurrences, in a place which can only by courtesy be said to exist. The Enchanted Island, indeed, peopled, for a timeless moment, by this strange fantastic medley of persons and of things, has been cut adrift for ever from common sense, and floats, buoyed up by a sea, not of waters, but of poetry. Never did Shakespeare's magnificence of diction reach more marvellous heights than in some of the speeches of Prospero, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... the drinking-places in the city are filled until evening. In the afternoon many take their walks into the suburbs, and turn aside where a glass may be had. On all holidays the whole city is adrift, much of it in the surrounding country, and most of this drift lodges against the suburban beer-houses. In summer evenings there are frequent entertainments, some provided by the government,—as one ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... know," Enfield answered, slowly. "I wasn't taking as much interest in her movements just then as I had been. I cut adrift about the time she took Harlow in tow; I suppose she thought I was jealous, and perhaps I was. I don't know how they managed it, but he left very suddenly, and she was sick ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... was when he set me to make a pudden, for because our cook was hurted. I done my uttermost, but she all fetched adrift like in the bag, an' the more I biled the bits of her, the less she favoured any fashion o' pudden. Moon he chawed and chammed his piece, and Frankie chawed and chammed his'n, and—no words to it—he ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... for all our pains. Francos: My liege, I grasp the thought: a burden dark, Which now each year a golden tribute calls, Must be disposed of quickly, but so sly That watching nations may not fling a slur Upon our honor as we cast adrift This alien race to face the world alone. Caesar: Sweet Francos, truly thou hast quick discerned The thought which wisdom fathered in my mind. "Be wise as serpent, harmless as the dove," Should be our watchword as we scuttle ship, For there be those who speak with venomed ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... goody Liu speedily remarked laughing, "have cast me adrift; they made me knock about, until I found ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

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

... wholly separated from all our outward sensations, and inward thoughts, we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action to another; negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so we should neither stir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, without any direction or design, and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without attending to them. In which state man, however furnished with the faculties of understanding and will, would be a very idle, inactive ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... fallen in by themselves, and the boat gotten adrift at the same time," muttered Percival as they went on. "Both of these things were done by some one who wished to annoy us. Watch and see how some of the fellows look when ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

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

... used to explain the Ternary, 769-l. Balder killed by Lok, Evil Principle, in the Mysteries of the Druids, 430-m. Balder, torn to pieces by Hother, lamented by the Scandinavians, 595-u. Balder's body placed in a boat by Lok and set adrift on the water, 430-m. Ballot for membership, objection sufficient to exclude, 121-m. Banners of Royal Arch Degree represent Constellations, 409-l. Baphomet adored as an idol by the Templars is an absurdity, 818-l. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... spine—crept up, crept down, and then criss-crossed. But she must know of her mistake before we had gone so far that putting me ashore would be a serious inconvenience—for I knew he would put me ashore at the nearest point, if not, indeed, set me adrift in an open boat. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... be transported to Salonica. In pursuance of this agreement, only those were allowed to embark who were willing to rebel. Those who refused to break their oath of allegiance to their King were turned adrift. Some tried to gain the island of Thasos, but their boats were carried to the open sea and capsized, drowning many, the rest got back ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... pilgrim star to the tethered constellations. It is far adrift. It goes singly to all the winds. It offers thistle plants (or whatever is the flower that makes such delicate ashes) to the tops of many thousand hills. Doubtless the farmer would rather have to meet it in battalions than in these invincible ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... the Isiola River and cut across on a long upward slant to the left. In a very short time we had left the plains, and were adrift in an ocean of brown grass that concealed all but the bobbing loads atop the safari, and over which we could only see when mounted. It was glorious feed, apparently, but it contained very few animals for all that. An animal could without doubt wax fat and sleek therein: but only to furnish ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... Seattle Times touching upon certain litigation in which Fyfe was involved. Briefly, Monohan, under the firm name of the Abbey-Monohan Timber Company, was suing Fyfe for heavy damages for the loss of certain booms of logs blown up and set adrift at the mouth of the Tyee River. There was appended an account of the clash over the closed channel and the killing of Billy Dale. No one had been brought to book for that yet. Any one of sixty men might ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... fairly adrift upon the current of her articulate reflections, it was the habit of her companions—indeed, it was a sort of tacit agreement among them—simply to make a circle and admire. They sat about and looked at her—yawning, perhaps, a little at times, but on the whole ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... beside mine, "and looking through the nursery window, there sat Mary Mason with our little Chrissie on her knee. The two faces in the firelight looked so much alike that my heart gave a great thump, and I vowed that girl should never be set adrift again. This is the second time she has been cast upon my shore, and I ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth

... always be a child?" he thought. "It is not on my account that she came here, but on Rosas's. Our friends' friends are our lovers. Egad! on my word, I was almost taken in again, nevertheless! Compelled, in order to cut adrift again, to make another ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... hundredth time, I debated within myself whether I dare cast myself adrift from the round-faced, prosperous-looking cosmopolitan who sat before me so full of good humor ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... knows nothing of what we know. His father treated him shamefully, and set him cruelly adrift years ago; and, when he was hung, the poor fellow, in sheer disgrace, changed ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... at this theatre was for three months—from the seventh to the ninth month. On consideration the drama is of interest. O'Iwa is killed at Yotsuya. With the dead body of the wakato[u] Kohei she is fastened to a door, and from the rear the scoundrel sets them adrift. Fishing at Ombo[u]bori, Iemon sees them float by. From Yotsuya to Sunamura is a very great distance. It would occupy a woman's legs for the space of a day; or faint-hearted fellows, water drinkers, such ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... in the scented darkness. He was a man of limited imagination and little given to superstitions. Yet that night there came to him a presentiment. He felt that he was on the threshold of great events. Something new in life was looming up before him. He had cut himself adrift from the old—it was a very wonderful and a very beautiful figure which was beckoning him to follow in other paths. The triumph of the earlier part of the day seemed to lie far back in a misty and unimportant past. There was a new world and a greater, ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... baby. She didn't know the world and its beastly ways. I thought you were to be trusted to keep her out of the mud; I could have sworn you were. But you withdrew your protection just when she needed it most. You practically turned her out, cut her adrift. She might have gone straight to the bad for all you cared. And now, like the damned blackguard that you are, you are going to clear out and leave her to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... fragrance. "How strange!" she exclaimed, as she felt them crackle in her fingers. Poor child, they were artificial! But she would learn, ere long, that they fittingly symbolized the life of the great city in which she was now adrift. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... civilized. The reactions of most men to given sets of circumstances have become set in regular patterns and they cannot break that conditioning, or if personal danger forces them to change those patterns, they are afterward so adrift they cannot function at their highest potential. Teach a man to kill, as in war, and then you have to ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... Mrs. Williams. It may raise a mutiny amongst these horrid, profane sailors, but I really don't see how we are to get rid of them else. The bo'sun has cut adrift their ramshackle, old sieve of a boat, and she's now a quarter of a mile astern, half-full of water. And we can't give them one of the ship's boats to go and get their throats cut ashore. J. Perkins, Esquire, wouldn't like it. He would swear something awful, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... the slippers he left behind him a'n't Mr. Jennings's, I declare! Boarders must be warned an' watched, elseways we shall hev all in the house afloat, 'cepting the stoves an' flat-irons, by-'n'-by. Somebody at Mrs. Moyler's acted so, and the house was like a roarin' sea, with the baby adrift in his little cradle, and the roaches a-swimmin' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

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

... we were sucked against a big dock and smashed and bumped down a quarter of a mile of its length before we could get clear. Two hours afterward, on San Pablo Bay, the wind was piping up and we were reefing down. It is no fun to pick up a skiff adrift in a heavy sea and gale. That was our next task, for our skiff, swamping, parted both towing painters we had bent on. Before we recovered it we had nearly killed ourselves with exhaustion, and we certainly had strained the sloop in every part from keelson ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

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

... with him, I wished to learn something about my new skipper, and what sort of a chap I should have to deal with. When I learnt all about him, I'd half-a-dozen minds to shove off again, but then I was adrift, and so I thought better of it. It won't do to be nice in peace times you know, my lads, when all the big ships are rotting in Southampton and Cinque Port muds. Well, then, what he told me I recollect as well—ay, every word of it—as if he had whispered it into ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... men who looked forward to homes of their own on a distant shore; others, with youth on their side, were eager for the trail of the flying moose or the sight of a painted redskin; a few were women, steeled to bravery through fires of want and sorrow. Too many were wastrels, cutting adrift from a blighted past. A goodly number were malcontents, wondering ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

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

... and we used to go up the Humber with the tides, for several miles at once. I remember on one occasion it blew a strong gale of wind from S.W., several vessels sank in the Humber, and a number of boats broke adrift, while a heavy sea was running: I stripped and swam to one of the boats, got into her, and brought her to land, for which act the master of the boat gave me five shillings. During the same gale a keel came ashore at Hessle; I stripped and swam to her and ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... omen, too—left me benumbed, adrift in a sort of pained contentment which alternately soothed and troubled, so that at moments I almost drowsed, and at moments I heard my heart stirring, as though in dull expectancy of beatitudes ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

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

... last word. Well, we don't want to know any more. We've got to work the gangs all night and clean up the river-bed. You'll take the east bank and work out to meet me in the middle. Get every thing that floats below the bridge: we shall have quite enough rivercraft coming down adrift anyhow, without letting the stone-boats ram the piers. What have you got on the east bank that needs ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... was over the horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut by shadows ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... kill, the convict. Probably restrained by the fact that, there being no officers of criminal law, they had to inflict punishment themselves, they sometimes imprisoned a convict in a small island, or sent him adrift on the sea in a currach or boat of hide. Law supported by public opinion, powerful because so inspired, powerful because unanimous, was difficult to evade or resist. It so strongly armed an injured person, and so utterly paralyzed a criminal, that escape from justice was hardly possible. The ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... epistle.[14] The seal was used, and still is to mark ownership. In our lumber regions up in the Northwest it is customary to clear a small spot on a log and strike it with the blunt end of a hatchet containing the initials of the owner, and then send it adrift down the stream with hundreds of others, and though it may float miles unguarded, that mark of ownership is respected. On the Western plains it is common to see mules with an initial branded on the flank. In ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... denser around those fires than elsewhere. Dimly reflected in the river, the stars seemed to be absolutely motionless, whereas the trailing, golden reproductions of the steamer's lights never ceased to quiver, as though striving to break adrift, and float away into the obscurity. Meanwhile, foam like tissue paper was licking our dark hull, while at our stern, and sometimes overtaking it, there trailed a barge with a couple of lanterns in ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... stones at light of day. She would never be Lady Catheron, never be mistress of this glittering Aladdin's Palace. It grew upon her day after day, this feeling of vagueness, of unreality. She was just adrift upon a shining river, and one of these days she would go stranded ashore on hidden quicksands and foul ground. Something would happen. The days went by like dreams—it was the middle of September. In little more than a fortnight ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

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

... a large canoe, which had made two trips, so that one frigate was now full of Spaniards, who had cut her cables, while the canoe towed her towards the batteries. As Drake ranged up alongside, the towline was cast adrift by the men in the canoe; while the gallants on the deck leaped overboard, to swim ashore, leaving their rapiers, guns, and powder flasks behind them. Drake watched them swim out of danger, and then set the larger ship on fire. The smaller of the two he ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... bloodiest form upon the officers. Capt. Landais, as the special object of their hate, was to be put into an open boat without food, water, oars, or sails. Heavy irons were to bind his wrists and ankles, and he was to be set adrift to starve on the open ocean. The fate of the surgeon and marine officer was to be equally hard. They were to be hanged and quartered, and their bodies cast into the sea. The sailing-master was to be seized ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... high-principled champion of distress, is both human and likeable, I was never persuaded that any more real motive than regard for an amusing situation would compel him to saddle himself with the continued society of a squint-eyed maid-servant and her yellow cat, turned adrift through his unfortunate attempts to befriend them. I think I need not tell you all, or even a part of all, that happens to Mr. Tubbs and Belinda and the yellow cat after their arrival as fugitives at the pleasant village of Holmes-Eaton, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... some pleasant secret behind this, a secret that none is wise enough to fathom. The infinite fund of disinterested humane kindliness that is adrift in the world is part of the riddle, the insoluble riddle of life that is born in our blood and tissue. It is agreeable to think that no man, save by his own gross fault, ever went through life unfriended, without companions to whom he could stammer his momentary impulses of sagacity, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... been one towards whom all his thoughts and sympathies would have been drawn. Such a love would have given him concentration, poise, unity. But, on the other hand, his heart had no anchor, and his intellect was left adrift. He has pursued truth, forgetting that truth is a tree, one and mighty, but with innumerable branches; and that it is unsafe to risk the weight of one's salvation upon a single bough. Susan had no part in his life; she was left with that hungry, yearning heart, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... a German, hard-fisted, bullet-headed—editor of an East Side labor-paper. Some one spoke of working-men losing their votes through being unemployed and cast adrift; and Thyrsis remembered this man's grim comment, "They lose their votes, but they don't lose their voices!" There came a young man, fair as an Antinous, who with his verbal battering-ram shook the institutions of society ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... the last blow to the poor wretch. "If you do not lose your head for ten minutes," Jacques Collin had said in his note, and Lucien by keeping cool would have gained all his desire. He might have paid his debt to Jacques Collin and have cut him adrift, have been rich, and have married Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. Nothing could more eloquently demonstrate the power with which the examining judge is armed, as a consequence of the isolation or separation of persons under ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... but almost as bad. The girl was a waitress or something like that in a restaurant. She's very common; her father died in prison. You can imagine the blow to old Jeffries. He turned the boy adrift and left him ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... unhappy history of the country and reinforced by those differences of race and creed to which I have already alluded as making two Irelands out of one. But the remedy for this is not to cut Ireland adrift and leave the two sections to fight it out alone, but rather to maintain the existing constitution as the best guarantee that the balance will ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... une chute est rare comme le Niagara"—and there are more apples than one in the Garden of Eden—she tried another; such a bad one unfortunately. It was a wonder it didn't poison her, body and soul, but it didn't. There was a moment when the Angel with the flaming sword threatened to cast her adrift, and it would have fared badly with her had not a helping hand come to save her. But sound as she was at the core, and true, she rallied and rose again to new life and unhoped-for happiness. It was a young doctor who came to the rescue; a mere boy he seemed ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles

... is an old man, and he was my lord's best-loved servant. He would have died for my lord, and joyfully; and now he is turned adrift, to die to no purpose. Ah, well." He heaved a deep sigh and fell silent, whilst I—the pent-up anguish in me suddenly released to hear my thoughts ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... mention, lest any of my readers should be blessed with as strong a credulity as Mr. Boltay, that there was not one word of truth in the tragic monologue above described. Mrs. Meyer had not fallen out with her daughters; they had not turned her adrift; there was no need for her to leap into the Danube. The matter stood simply thus: Abellino, since his late rebuffs, had, full of passionate frenzy, plunged deeper and deeper into his unsuccessful enterprise. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... know; he was not captured and hanged, and so may have sailed away to the Barbadoes or the Mediterranean, and there have met his death and scuttled his ship in a last fight against odds, or perhaps been marooned by a mutinous crew, or set adrift in an open boat to die of hunger and thirst, or been stabbed in a drunken scuffle ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... talking of your true name, Moses, as you came in," I said. "It will never do for you to hail by one name, while your mother hails by another. You'll have to cut adrift ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... I have seen in old cathedrals, lighting up the beauty of a saintly face. A light which the poet tells was never seen on land or sea. I thought of this beautiful and defenseless girl adrift in the power of a reckless man, who, with all the advantages of wealth and education, had trailed his manhood in the dust, and she, with simple, childlike faith in the Unseen, seemed to be so good and pure that she ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... Everybody on Mars was aware that Roger Hunter's sons were heading out to the Belt to pick up where he had left off. Greg had secured a leave of absence from Project Star-Jump ... unhappily granted, even though his part in their program had already been disrupted. Even they had heard the rumors that were adrift.... ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... adrift by her more than anything," he said, brokenly. "Nine-an'-twenty years I sailed with the cap'n and served 'im faithful, ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... exhausted, he sank down at the door of a wayside cottage and begged for food and shelter. These were given to him, and next day he was set to work in the fields. But his hands were not used to labor, and he was sent adrift, his fellow workers jeering at him. With a heavy heart, and his pride humbled, he set forth again to learn the mystery ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... and its snare. To keep the most elaborate comparison in harmony with its occasion, so that when it is completed it shall fall back easily into the emotional key of the narrative, has been the study of the great epic poets. Milton's description of the rebel legions adrift on the flaming sea is a fine instance of the difficulty felt ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

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

... legality, the lawful Governor and his official associates made provision for a State convention to be chosen by the people, which they expected to control, but which, having a Unionist majority, played the boomerang on them by sending them adrift and taking the affairs of the State into its own hands. In this it had opposition. The most progressive men of the State insisted that, after it had settled the question of Missouri's relations to the Union, with reference to which it was specially chosen, it was functus officio. ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... it free from the halliard, to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard—ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

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

... his horse and circling with me, "we caught onto everything that was adrift. The Rebel and Sponsilier were both in town, in charge of two deputies. Flood and your brother went in with us, and with the lads from the other outfits, including those across the river, there must have been twenty-five of Lovell's men in town. I noticed that Dave and The Rebel were still ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

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

... condemned to be hung by the neck until I am dead, and to go out of the world without finding out who is my father—Afterwards my innocence is made manifest and I am turned adrift a maniac ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... "lily-livered heroes" and the "poltroons" are left out of the laborious comparison, perhaps because none of either can be found in Shakspere sufficiently like the original types in Beaumont and Fletcher. The examples of the "faithful friend" are not happy. For Gonzalo sets Prospero adrift in a crazy boat and Camillo betrays one ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... he said, 'When one is a wanderer, one feels that one fulfils the true condition of humanity?' and that among his last words are these, 'The stream of travel is full of delight. Oh! who will set me adrift on this Nile?'" ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... Radnor Gaylord been disinherited and turned adrift, but Colonel Gaylord, weak in his love for his youngest son, invariably received him back again into the house he had dishonored. Finally, pressed beyond the point of endurance, the old man took a firm stand and refused to meet his son's inordinate demands for money. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... between his crutched legs. Then he settled down, and, accustomed as the Jackal was to his ways, he could not help starting, for the hundredth time, when he saw how exactly the Mugger imitated a log adrift on the bar. He had even taken pains to lie at the exact angle a naturally stranded log would make with the water, having regard to the current of the season at the time and place. All this was only a matter of habit, of course, ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... that had been in the Tower with the Lady Alianora his wife—five cups and two ewers of silver, and twenty-seven cups and six ewers of gold; and his horses and hers delivered into the keeping of Adam le Ferrour, keeper of the Queen's horses: and his servants either cast adrift, or drafted, some of them, into the household of the Lord John of Eltham. Go to! saith man: was all this more than is usual in like case? Verily, nay: but should such things be usual in Christendom? Was it for this ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... truantry for once; but in the meantime I had taken another notion, and become so obstinately fond of it that I would have carried it out, I believe, in the teeth of Captain Smollett himself. This was to slip out under cover of the night, cut the Hispaniola adrift, and let her go ashore where she fancied. I had quite made up my mind that the mutineers, after their repulse of the morning, had nothing nearer their hearts than to up anchor and away to sea; this, I thought, it would be a fine thing ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... man had merely slipped over the edge of the quay, and clung like a limpet to the rough baulks of timber which faced it; when his pursuers were safely disposed of on board the barge, one cut of a sharp knife had sent them adrift by the stern, while the forward rope, released of any strain, had probably uncoiled itself from a stanchion with the diabolical ingenuity which inanimate objects can display ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... chief dressed in black bearskin gesticulating protest against the cross till Cartier explained by signs that the whites would come again. Two savages were invited on board. By accident or design, as they stepped on deck, their skiff was upset and set adrift. The astonished natives found themselves in the white men's power, but food and gay clothing allayed fear. They willingly consented to accompany Cartier to France. Somewhere north of Gaspe the smoke of the French fishing fleet was seen ascending from the sea, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... Mollyanthus. I only wish you were going with me, but I'll keep a journal for you and post it every night. I am glad you do not dislike Harriet. Of course if you did I should not go, for it is too soon to turn her adrift." ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... than call him an idiot? He must be that or else a heartless knave. And he says that he does not mean to see me,—me with whose life he has thus been empowered to interfere, so as to blast it if not to bless it, and intends to turn me adrift as he might do a dog that did not suit him! And because he knows that he cannot answer me he declares that he will ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... intend to remain in this quiescent condition. It was, of course, useless to order forth his ironclads, simply to see them disabled and set adrift. There was another arm of the service which evidently could be used with better effect upon this peculiar foe than could the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton

... to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives —how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!—he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a free republican country. He was closely followed by Hapgood, and at a later period by Fred Pemberton. The nerves of the latter were not remarkably steady, and as he stepped on board the schooner, he neglected to take the painter with him; and the consequence was, that the boat went adrift. It is good generalship to keep the line of retreat open; and Fred's neglect had deprived them of all means of retiring from the scene of action. The only alternative was to fight their way through, and find safety ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... Now, [98] turned adrift into the past, He finds no solace in his course; Like planet-stricken men of yore, He trembles, smitten to the core By strong compunction ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... been her mind. He studied her lovely face under the great hat, and noted the dark shadows beneath her eyes. He felt that he must do something to relieve her. It was unbearable to him that this young girl should be adrift, friendless, and apparently a ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill

... like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

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

... assassin Went on its wicked way, And struck a hundred boats adrift, To reel about the bay. They meet, they crash—God keep the men! God give a moment's light! There is nothing but the tumult, And the tempest ...
— Monkey Jack and Other Stories • Palmer Cox

... the country who would have cared to cut themselves adrift as Castro did on this ride of ours to intercept the marching Patriots. His only guides were those he could interpret from nature. While daylight lasted, he steered by the sun; at night, by the stars and the faint wind ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... not doubt, to his last days, that the peril of the Empire was very real. Neither did he doubt that it was overcome, largely by the wisdom and foresight of the Queen. 'But for her action,' he declared in so many words, 'events would most probably have ended in the cutting adrift of some of the colonies. She saw true, and clear, and far, as the Prince Consort when alive had seen, and the Anglo- Saxon race has reason ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... inheritance, one can only reply that beauty is almost always dumb. Male beauty in association with female beauty breeds in the onlooker a sense of fear. Often have I seen them—Helen and Jimmy—and likened them to ships adrift, and feared for my own little craft. Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance? As she passed him his cup there was that quiver in her flanks. Bowley saw what was up-asked Jimmy to ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... various grey-beards have done their best to make a love-sick poet pay court to wisdom. I could scarcely keep from laughing at the look of perplexity and indignation in Tullus's face when he quoted Propertius's reply. The boy actually asked them if they thought the poor flute ought to be set adrift just because swelled cheeks weren't becoming to Pallas! The long and short of it is that he wants me to interfere, and convince Propertius of his public duty. That public duty may conceivably take the form of writing ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... enterprise. All kinds of problems were awaiting solution—his relation to his father, his mother, his sister, his home, his past, his future, his sins and his weaknesses—and he had meant to solve them all, as he had often solved them in the past, by simply cutting adrift. But now, instead of that, he had decided to stay and face it all out, he had confessed at last that secret that he had hidden from all the world, and he had submitted to the will of a girl whom he scarcely knew and was not even ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... this Terrence Malone is a good, noble young fellow; but he has too much native mischief in his composition, and will get you from one scrape into another with marvellous regularity. I don't mean that you should cut him adrift; but though you sail in company with him, do not allow him to get too far windward of you. When you see he's going to fly right into the teeth of some rash fate, get on the other tack, that's all. You did honorably, however, in fighting the duel with Lieutenant Matson, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... of Africa in December, and it was reported that all hands were lost: so they were, all but one, and that one was William Stanley. I was picked up by a Dutchman, the barque William, bound to Batavia. I kept with the Dutchman for a while, until he went back to Holland. After I had cut adrift from him, I fell in with some Americans, and got some old papers; in one of them I saw my father's second marriage. I knew the name of the lady he had married, but I had never spoken to her. The very next day, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... Portia now?—But Portia left behind Two lovely copies of her form and mind. What heart untouch'd their early grief can view, Like blushing rose-buds dipp'd in morning dew? Who into shelter takes their tender bloom, And forms their minds to flee from ills to come? The mind, when turn'd adrift, no rules to guide, Drives at the mercy of the wind and tide; Fancy and passion toss it to and fro; Awhile torment, and then quite sink in woe. Ye beauteous orphans, since in silent dust Your best example lies, my precepts trust. Life swarms with ills; the boldest ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... pitching of a sailing vessel. We were certainly not nearly so much knocked about; the vases of flowers were taken off the mantel-piece, and placed upon the floor, but beyond this there were no precautions taken to prevent the movables from getting adrift; every thing remained quiet upon the tables, a circumstance which could not have happened in so heavy a sea in any vessel not steadied by the ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

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



Words linked to "Adrift" :   rudderless, aimless, purposeless, afloat, undirected



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