"Fluke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... having been held to one lone and practically fluke touchdown, Delmar opened the second half with a drive of even greater power, calculated to put Elliott speedily to rout. The cream of the country's football teams had hammered steadily enough at Elliot's line to have ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... of this river is a group of islands, of which two only are of large size, namely, ROTTNEST and BUACHE. We anchored on the north side of the former, but broke the fluke, from the rocky nature of the bottom. On the North-East side of the island, the anchorage is better, since it is more sheltered. Rottnest Island is five miles long: it was discovered by Vlaming in 1696. Its shores ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... seen, and the frouziest and most repulsive of dogs. This man, if man I may call him, was bony and ill-built, and appeared to consist largely of hands and feet. His arms were abnormally long and his chest narrow and hollow, and altogether he seemed to hang together by a mere fluke. His ill-assorted limbs were surmounted by a sallow, yellowish face, large repulsive lips, and a shapeless nose, and to him belonged the long, black greasy hair which I had already noted amid the folds of the red banner. Large ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... contracted by cattle grazing on marshy lands. There are two different species of Fluke that affect the liver and lungs of cattle. They are both flat, leaf-like worms. The Common Liver Fluke is about one-half inch long, while the so-called American Fluke is somewhat larger. In their life history these Flukes depend on snails as intermediate hosts. At a ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... fluke in it from beginning to end. I was never more astonished in my life. It seemed to me it was ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... day, perhaps, when I have made my pile, And can from ostentatious show refrain, Without the Greengrocer to purchase "style," I possibly once more may entertain! And so,—I know not how it came about, But if by chance, it is a happy fluke That I at length without the slightest doubt Have lived to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... sail to beat back to us. In the meantime the strain put upon the Hecla’s hawsers being too great for them, they snapped one after another, and a bower-anchor was let go as a last resource. It was one of Hawkins’s, with the double fluke, and immediately brought up, not merely the ship, but a large floe of young ice, which had just broken our stream-cable. All hands were sent upon the floe to cut it up ahead, and the whole operation was a novel and, at times, a fearful ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit for use, owing to its twisted condition. Their work was over, but an unfortunate accident marred its conclusion. On the evening of the 2nd the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in the back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari. Jenkin's knowledge of languages made him useful as an interpreter; but in mentioning this incident to Miss Austin, he writes, 'For no fortune would ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the next morning Ray greeted his ladies and helped them into the car. Giddy had put on a clean shirt and yellow pig-skin gloves and was whistling his best. He considered Kennedy a fluke as a ladies' man, and if there was to be a party, the honors had to be done by some one who wasn't a blacksmith at small-talk. Giddy had, as Ray sarcastically admitted, "a local reputation as a jollier," and he was fluent in gallant speeches of a not ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... at the end of Court Street. The very fact that it was once a noisy, busy place, crowded with sailors and soldiers—in the war of 1812—gives an emphasis to the quiet that broods over it to-day. The lounger who sits of a summer afternoon on a rusty anchor fluke in the shadow of one of the silent warehouses, and look on the lonely river as it goes murmuring past the town, cannot be too grateful to the India trade for having taken ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it. So he was a cert. It was only the merest fluke I managed to out him when I did. If he'd hung on to the end, he'd have won easy. He'd been scoring points ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... I was sure that I had missed altogether, and thought no more about it, but when the beat came up half an hour later, a huge tiger was lying there stone dead. That, of course, was an absolute piece of luck, a mere fluke, as I had never even seen the brute. As soon as the Maharajah and his men had examined the big tiger's teeth they at once pronounced him a man-eater, and there was great rejoicing, for a man-eating tiger had been taking toll of the villagers in one of the jungle clearings. I believe ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... comrade as to one who would know exactly what to do with it. Dan perched himself on the weather gunwale, his weight there serving as ballast to keep the craft from capsizing. Yet, even so, everything had to be done with the utmost skill, for, with the mainsail up, the least fluke in handling the ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... may make a lucky hit now and again by what is called a fluke, but even this must be only a little in advance of his other performances of the same kind. He may multiply seven by eight by a fluke after a little study of the multiplication table, but he will not be able to extract the cube root of 4913 by a fluke, without long training in arithmetic, any ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... six, who, seeing a torpedo shimmering past the ship's side, called out, "Oh, Mummy, look at the pretty fish!" Once a fast torpedo was hit and exploded by a shell from the vessel its submarine was chasing. But this was a perfect fluke. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... and kicked away the earth in different places, till he found where there was a good crevice between two pieces of rock, where, making use of the anchor as if it were a pickaxe, he dug out the earth till he could force down one fluke close between the stones till the stock was level, when he gave it a final stamp, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... shark, with a fluke of his tail, also advanced closer to the bait, which just then, by a twist of the rope attached to ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... evil-looking snout was seen; then Red Chicken went quietly over the side of the canoe, descended beside the shark and tapped him sharply on the head. The fish turned swiftly to see what teased him, and in the same split-second of time, over his fluke went the noose, and Red Chicken was up and away, while his companions on a nearby cliff pulled in the rope and killed the shark with spears in shallow water. Red Chicken said that he had learned this art from a Samoan, whose people were cleverer killers of sharks than the Marquesans. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... estate—Lady Victoria's mother or grandmother was a Spanish-Californian. Of course he chucked the title. He's a sort of cousin of mine and I looked him up, and dined with him the other night. He was born in the United States, by a fluke as it were, and has made up his mind to be an American for the rest of his life and carve out a political career in this country. I'd have done the same thing, by Jove! First-class solution...although it's ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... observed that the thrush sings a lilt, and immediately repeats it: but Browning was the first to give a pretty reason for it. The thrush seems to say, "You think that beautiful melody is an accident? Well, I will show you it is no fluke, I will sing it correctly right over again." Browning was not in Italy in April—perhaps he wrote the first stanza on the voyage, as he wrote Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, and added the second stanza about May and June after he had reached the country ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... of heaven and noticed it, the sight must have turned his thoughts towards hell for a pleasant change. She was saved from disaster, from martyrdom, from ignominy, from the unnameable, by the merest fluke. The nurse who tended Lionel Share's last hours was named Grig. This nurse had cousins in the typewriting business. She had also a kind heart a practical mind, and a persuasive manner ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... have been if it wasn't for her beastly mother. Just because you found him out before us, by a fluke, you think you can preach to us about being rude to him. Well, you'd have been just as bad under the same circumstances, if not worse. The fact of you having spotted his game doesn't make it any the less disgusting. He's behaved atrociously and you know it, ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... round, and verily no wonder! The Money-boxing Kangaroo is plucky: But when a chance-blow smites the jaw like thunder, A champion may succumb to fluke unlucky. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... It was by a fluke that he missed Sanders. As it happened, the Commissioner had come back to the big river to collect the evidence of the murdered woman's brother who was a petty headman of an Isisi fishing village. The Zaire came into the river ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... laughed, "having a minor public position—because, by a fluke, having found myself in the place of a common councilman, I have got some things done and kept others ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... story of the previous day's disaster. Over half the Fifes are missing, most of the Devons also, so-and-so killed, and so-and-so, and so-and-so. Kits lost, and tents burnt. From various reliable sources I have compiled the best account I can make of the affair, which we missed by the merest fluke, what men call ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... summer ruined the crops and reduced many farmers to a state of destitution. Much of the grain was never harvested, whilst owing mainly to the excessive floods there commenced an outbreak of liver-rot in sheep, due to the ravages of the fluke parasite. This continued for several years, and the mortality was so great that its adverse effects upon the ovine population of the country were still perceptible ten years afterwards. A fall in rents was the necessary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... you are not my overlords. The bonds they set upon your minds do not touch me." Travis hoped that that was the truth and his escape that morning had not been just a fluke. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... said. 'You can't choose what crimes you'll be a detective about. You just have to get a suspicious circumstance, and then you look for a clue and follow it up. Whether it turns out a murder or a missing will is just a fluke.' ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... a fluke, then," said Hector, who, in spite of his sorrow for the wren, had felt some ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... hard, and difficult to get an anchor into it, there was the risk of dragging on this bank. We say that the bottom was hard, for the reader should know that it is not the weight of the anchor that secures the ship, but the hold its pointed fluke and broad palm get of the ground. The coast itself was distant less than a mile, and the entire basin within the reef was fast presenting spits of sand, as the water fell on the ebb. Still there were many channels, and it would have ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... bread, naturally. They bring in a few shillings. It is just a fluke that I can make them at all. I know as much about a needle ordinarily as a flying-machine; but I learnt to knit once under protest. I sprained my ankle and was laid up for some weeks, and I told the doctor I should go stark, staring mad if he ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... clothes driven by the furious gale, with one hand holding on their caps, and with the other supporting themselves by the gunnels of the boats hauled up, the capstans, or perhaps an anchor with its fluke buried in the shingle, were looking on with dismay and with beating hearts, awaiting the result of the venturous attempt, and I soon discovered the form of Bessy, who was in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... I care for the public eye?" said the magnanimous young man. "We know that the lists don't mean everything. A headache might make the best scholar that ever was lose his place. A fellow that knows nothing might carry the day by a fluke. Don't you remember, sir, that time when Daws got the Lincoln because of that old examiner, who gave us all his own old fads in the papers? Every fellow that was any good was out of it, and Daws got the scholarship. I am sure you ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... a ship's ribs. This was the schooner laden with pipe-clay, out of which in a dangerous sea the captain and crew escaped in their own boat, as the lifeboat advanced to save them. Far away on the Sands you see the fluke of a ship's anchor, which from the shape when close to it we recognise to ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... pedigree! He felt himself to be proud of his position prouder than he could have been of any other that might have been vouchsafed to him. And yet amidst it all he was somewhat ashamed of his pride. 'The man who can do it for himself is the real man after all,' he said. 'But I have got it by a fluke and by such a sad chance too!' Then he wandered on, thinking of the circumstances under which the property had fallen into his hands, and remembering how and when and where the first idea had occurred to him ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... barest fluke that the manoeuvre should have worked so well. Harrison Smith stumbled heavily, grabbed at Dirk and missed him. Barraclough's foot just above his waist line destroyed the last of his equilibrium and over the edge he went into the shallow water below. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... delay, the several movements on board, the subsequent signal of sailing, and of the impatience in the crowd, Wilder had been a grave and close observer. Posted with his back against the upright fluke of a condemned anchor, on a wharf a little apart from that occupied by most of the other spectators, he had remained an hour in the same position scarcely bending his look to his right hand or to his left. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... girl who would marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry anybody, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... back to us. In the mean time the strain put upon the Hecla's hawsers being too great for them, they snapped one after another, and a bower-anchor was let go as a last resource. It was one of Hawkins's, with the double fluke, and immediately brought up, not merely the ship, but a large floe of young ice which had just broken our stream-cable. All hands were sent upon the floe to cut it up ahead, and the whole operation was a novel, and, at times, a fearful one; for ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... for snappers, even if they hooked more of sluggish fluke than of the gamier fish to tempt which the chopped bait is devoted, was so exciting that Betty, sailing the sloop, overlooked a pregnant cloud that streaked up from the horizon almost like a puff of ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... particular morning which saw Scrabblegrab the only worker at Blugsey's, the remaining miners were assembled in solemn conclave at Stumpy Fluke's saloon, to determine what was to be done with ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... will you stay tied as I want you? She has traveled, she has studied, she is at home with grand dukes in Nice, and scribblers in a country village. She is wise without being solemn. She has courage, too, or I should not be here on a mere fluke. Now, my boy, you have given ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... monks would prosper. And, because all the jurats, bailiffs, and water-wardens had been hanged either on the one part or the other and no more had been appointed, at about that time the sewers began to clog up, the lands to swamp, murrain and fluke to strike the beasts and the sheep, and night mists to blight the grain and the fruit blossoms. So that even Throckmorton had little good of his wealth ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... was soundin', I thought that the tip of the upper one looked as if it had been damaged—as if he had broken it floppin' about in some tight place; and ever since, when I have seen a whale, I have looked for the tip of that upper fluke, and there's that same old break. Every time I have looked I have found it. It can't be that there are a lot o' whales in here and each one of 'em with ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... Sayers' brother, a lawyer, had saved him from being punished as a murderer and after the trial, and the young negro's acquittal, had induced his sister to take him as gardener. His chances as a professional man in the city were no good. "He has had a terrible experience and has just escaped by a fluke" the brother had said. Cora Sayers had taken the young man. She had bound him ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... satisfied, for the shots were very good. Mr. Cossey opened his eyes and wondered if it was a fluke, and George ejaculated, "Well, ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... usual. "I never got it cashed, because I got by the very same post good news from England. My great-aunt Maxwell is dead at Bath and has left me all her money, twenty thousand pounds. Isn't it the luckiest fluke that ever was? But all the same it is a kindness that I shan't forget. You are an awfully good sort to have done it. Most fellows would have seen me in Halifax first, you know. And if ever you want a friend you'll know where to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... got all the ballast of Noah's ark thrown out there; and the other half is eat up by bankers, lawyers, and other great folks. All our money goes to pay salaries, and a poor man has no chance at all.' 'Well,' says I, 'are you done up stock and fluke—a total wrack?' 'No,' says he, 'I have two hundred pounds left yet to the good, but my farm, stock and utensils, them young blood horses, and the bran' new vessel I was a-buildin', are all gone to pot, swept as clean as a thrashin' floor, that's a fact; Shark and Co. took all.' 'Well,' says I, ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... chanced, it was only by a fluke that the salvage steamer stumbled across the wreck at all. She wandered for several days among an intensely dangerous archipelago, and many times over had narrow escapes from piling up her bones on one or other of those reefs with which the Red Sea in that ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the place for years, but Mr. Williams quarrelled with Dr. Bevan, and his daughter dared not send for him, and as I was the nearest medical man, the servant came to me; it was just a fluke, that's all." ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... how Britten and I scoffed at that pompous question-begging word "Evolution," having, so to speak, found it out. Evolution, some illuminating talker had remarked at the Britten lunch table, had led not only to man, but to the liver-fluke and skunk, obviously it might lead anywhere; order came into things only through the struggling mind of man. That lit things wonderfully for us. When I went up to Cambridge I was perfectly clear that life ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... what I wish to know," answered Sir Bale; "because, although I can't, of course, believe that he's a witch, yet he has either made the most marvellous fluke I've heard of, or else he has got extraordinary sources of information; or perhaps he acts partly on chance, partly on facts. Be it which you please, I say he's a marvellous fellow; and I should like to see him, and have a talk with him; and perhaps ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... wrong jungle, Parrot, old top," said Mallow, who, as he did not believe in ghosts, was physically nor morally afraid of anything. "Though, you have my word for it that I'd like to see you lose every cent of your damned oil fluke." ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... anything else. If you have been to college, so much the worse for you. You'll have to unlearn all you learned before you can get right down to human nature, and unlearnin' takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they learned at college. Such men may get to be district leaders by a fluke, but ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... "I've never known him fail yet in anything he set his mind to—at least, only once. And that was a fluke." ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... how Three-fingered Hoover had insulted Charlotte Rooze At the conversazzhyony down at Sorry Tom's that night, An' when they asked me, I allowed that Bill for once wuz right; Although it broke my heart to see my friend go up the fluke, We all opined his treatment uv the girl deserved rebuke. It warn't no use for Sorry Tom to nail it for a lie,— When it come to sassin' wimmin, there wuz blood in every eye; The boom for Charlotte Rooze swep' on an' took the polls by storm, ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... that it had been plundered from some American vessel. It was evident that she had been along the Gold Coast, and round the Bights of Benin and Biafra. The Captain stated that he was going to Prince's Island to procure anchors, having only one remaining, and that one, with but a single fluke to it. We afterwards learnt from the crew that he had endeavoured to enter the river Lagos, but had been fired on and forced to retire, by several Brazilian vessels lying there at the time. We conjectured ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... Jeannie, "is it too dreadful and wicked and fast of me to go on playing? I don't care if it is. I must finish the game, and I'm going to win.—Oh, Lord Lindfield, what a fluke! Do you mean to say you ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... morning: The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe | of a finger-nail held to the candle, Or paring of paradisaical fruit, | lovely in waning but lustreless, Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, | of dark Maenefa the mountain; A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, | en- tangled him, not quit utterly. This was the prized, the desirable sight, | unsought, pre- sented so easily, Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, | eyelid ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... brain-relation ('the stranger in blood'), he alone should go untaxed altogether! Alas, the Inland Revenue Commissioners would charge him more than any, which shows that their above-mentioned touch of nature was but a fluke, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... who'd muddle it all up and maybe bring us to the Auctioneer's. I've known ... I've seen ... they had a bailiff in at Becket's House and he lost them three fields of lucerne the first season, and got the fluke into their sheep. Why, even Sir Harry Trevor's taken to managing things himself at North Farthing after the way he saw they were doing with, that old Lambarde, and what he can do I can do, seeing I wasn't brought up ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... in that forehead," he said to me on one occasion—"so delicate and refined. Do it again," he added, as he took up my palette knife and scraped off the "delicate bit." "Ah, you see, savez vous, you can't do it again; you got it by fluke, some stray tints off your palette, savez vous," and, taking the biggest brush I had, he swept over that palette and produced enough of the desired tints to ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... contemptuously; "that was a pure fluke. Any one could have caught that; and so it does not count either. I am not ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... golden lining. Not silver—real good Australian gold! For old Ewbank hadn't quite appreciated me till then; he was a hard nut, a much older man than myself, and I felt pretty sure he thought me young for the place, and my supposed feat a fluke. But I never saw a man change his mind more openly. He got out his best brandy, he made me throw away the cigar I was smoking, and opened a fresh box. He was a convivial-looking party, with a red moustache, and a very humorous face (not ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... WHAT though a Fluke should fling your Class aside, And Best Gross be your momentary pride: Are you a Golfer more than when last week You did YOUR best, and barely saved ...
— The Golfer's Rubaiyat • H. W. Boynton
... were beginning to be disgusted. "It was only a fluke after all," they said to each other. Colonel Drew was appealed to urge Monty to save himself, and he was on the point of remonstrance when the message came that the threatened strike was off, and that the men were willing to arbitrate. Almost before one could draw breath ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... mysterious way had at length been hooked and landed. For Duncan was a notable man and held the championship of the Zorras; and indeed in all Ontario he was second only to the world-famous Rory Maclennan of Glengarry, who had been to Braemar itself and was beaten there only by a fluke. How he came to agree to be present at the Maplehill picnic "Black Duncan" could not quite understand, but had he compared notes with McGee, the champion of the London police force and of various towns and cities of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the truth, Flossie, that was a bit of a fluke. The man told me that graining was coming in again, and I said, "Grain ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... this way. Bertie was so pleased with the result of his first speculation in horseflesh (though so far as he was concerned it was a pure fluke) that he must needs make another. If he had picked up a second cab-horse at thirty or forty pounds he could not have gone far wrong; but instead of that he must needs go to Tattersall's and give nearly fifty for a blood mare rejoicing in the name of "Tickle-me-Quick," described as being "the property ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... prospecting for herself, very likely; and that trail led oftenest to black disappointment. If he made good, he would tell her—when he told her something else. And if the whole thing were just a fluke, a stray deposit of a little gold that did not amount to anything, then it would be best for her to know nothing about it. Ward felt in himself, at that moment, the keen foretaste of bitter disappointment ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... yesterday; however, we were disagreeably out in our anticipations, for about three o'clock A.M. (January 16) a heavy squall burst on us, veering from East-South-East to East-North-East, broke our best bower anchor, and drove us half a mile out to sea, when the remaining fluke hooked a rock and brought us up. It rained and blew till daylight, then we were again favoured with fine weather, and light westerly winds. The land was now in sight, Cape Villaret being the most ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... had haled Don into the gymnasium on the way back to hall, tried his best to convince all those who would listen to him that they had played a perfectly punk game and that nothing but the veriest fluke had accounted for that score. But they called him a "sore-head" and laughed at him, and even drove him away with flicking towels, and he finally gave it up and consented to accompany Don back to Billings, limping a trifle whenever he thought no ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... he developed a certain expert dignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He treated Denton with the utmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit" now and then, to keep the interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy fluke of Denton's that covered his ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... stood off and prepared for another similar broadside. In the mean time, he lashed the anchor to the bows of the vessel in such a way that the fluke should pierce the side of the boat, and serve as a grappling iron. As there were now only ten Indians to be attacked, he decided to board the boat in case it should be grappled by the fluke of his ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... reasonable security. Experienced prospectors, experts in their line, had been seeking this symbolic well in the desert for twenty-five years and he, not by virtue of his skill or knowledge, but by a mere fluke, a glorious accident, had stumbled on it. It was hardly likely that another should have a similar experience, within the space of the next few months at any rate, and the next few months ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... It's a theory of mine that we are all born with a certain length of life in us, and, barring accident, that time we'll live. Well, of course this man had the accident of his stroke, which by rights ought to have done for him, but by some fluke he weathered it, and now he'll live out his time. If one could find out his ancestors and see how long they each lived, with a little calculation I could tell you how long he'd lie there.' With that the apothecary poked his patient in ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the truth," said John, "it isn't quite so bad as I expected. In fact I very much doubt whether he wrote it at all. If he did—well, it's a marvellous fluke, that's all." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... too good, if they had been over the heads of people—but they weren't. Plenty of work quite as good, quite as modern, yet no whit more tuneful or interesting, was making its authors rich. We couldn't understand it, we had to conclude it was a fluke, a question of chance, of accident. Pair was still a very young man; he must go on knocking, and some day—to-morrow, next week, next year, but some day certainly—the door of public favour would be opened to him. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... frightened rabbit burst out of a disturbed hole, and Geoffry, with a shout of delight, in pure instinct flung a stone. By a strange, unhappy fluke, expected least of all by himself, the stone hit the poor little terrified thing and it rolled over dead. He picked it up by its ears and called to them triumphantly to witness his luck, with boyish delight ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... said the father. "There are eighty acres of meadow lying under Lough Corrib this moment which will not give a ton of hay next summer, or food for a sheep next autumn. The pastures will be saturated, and sheep would perish with foot-rot and fluke. Then money must be laid out again upon it, just that Mr. Carroll may again wreak his vengeance." After that there was silence, for the children felt that not a word could be spoken ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... was all a fluke. It seemed to him he was getting an entirely disproportionate reward for mauling an insolent chauffeur. That moved him to wonder what became of Pebbles. He felt sorry for Pebbles. The man had probably lost his job for ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... cried a broad-shouldered jack-tar, giving the fluke of the anchor a hearty slap with his hand after the housing was completed—"there, lass, take a good nap now, for we shan't ask you to kiss the mud again for many a long day ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... mind, but the merino ruins his man with greater celerity. Nothing on earth will kill cross-breds; nothing will keep merinos alive. If they are put on dry salt-bush country they die of drought. If they are put on damp, well-watered country they die of worms, fluke, and foot-rot. They die in the wet seasons and they die in the ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... sensible of the honour of being P.R.S., but I should be much more sensible of the dishonour of being in that place by a fluke, or in any other way, than by the free choice of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... not have done that, Mallett, for the men would have marched all night, and, if necessary, all day tomorrow, to catch up. Still, it is a wonderful fluke that after all we ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... sportsmanlike sort of fishing, this "jagging," but it possesses a marvellous enjoyment and fascination for the youth of ten, and older people as well; for a full-grown salmon is a powerful fellow, and his big, fluke-like tail enables him to make a terrific rush when under the influence of terror or ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... loomed more distinct. Phillips School came and went and Brimfield marked up her fifth victory. Phillips gave the Maroon-and-Grey a hard tussle, and the score, 12 to 0, didn't indicate the closeness of the playing. For Brimfield made her first touchdown by the veriest fluke and only gained her second in the last few minutes of play, when Phillips, outlasted, weakened on her six-yard line and let Norton through. On the other hand, Phillips had the ball thrice inside Brimfield's twenty yards, missed a field-goal by the narrowest of margins ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Cupples's face. 'You must not suspect me of empty paradox,' he said. 'My meaning will become clearer, perhaps, if I mention some things which do appear to me essentially remarkable. Let me see .... Well, I would call the life history of the liver-fluke, which we owe to the researches of Poulton, an essentially ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... Carmichael Porter, why, then his little Elizabeth would have been allowed the to sit in seat of the scornful with the rest of the Four Hundred, and this story would never have been written. But Dad wasn't any of these things; he was just an old love who had made seven million dollars by the luckiest fluke ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... angularness^; aduncity^; angle, cusp, bend; fold &c 258; notch &c 257; fork, bifurcation. elbow, knee, knuckle, ankle, groin, crotch, crutch, crane, fluke, scythe, sickle, zigzag, kimbo^, akimbo. corner, nook, recess, niche, oriel [Arch.], coign^. right angle &c (perpendicular) 216.1, 212; obliquity &c 217; angle of 45 degrees, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, angular elevation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... uncomfortable, and, as far as possible, we lived on deck. With a crew of eighty all told, Lieutenant Thompson was in command, Lieutenant Bukett executive officer, and two midshipmen were the line officers. She was so slow that we could hardly hope for a prize except by a fluke. Repeatedly we had chased suspicious craft ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the road, in the wilderness, in the sea, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. In perils too, so Gerda believed, of cattle; for these would stray in bellowing herds about narrow lanes, and they would all charge straight through them, missing the lowered horns by some incredible fluke of fortune. If this seems to make Gerda a coward, it should be remembered that she showed none of these inward blenchings, but went on her way with the rest, composed as a little wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. She was, in fact, of the stuff of ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... catting and fishing as other seamen do, this position of the stock offers no impediment. The flukes were of the same dimensions as those of similar sized anchors with us; they were straight and not rounded, and there were no palms. There was also a kedge, with only one fluke. The cables were of rattan. The junk had no bitts, but to supply their place the strong beams across the deck had large holes for stoppers. The "wales" formed another singular feature of the vessel—airtight boxes, projecting three feet from the ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... new rope from a belaying-pin through this hole, and then he betrayed his watch on deck by hauling the end up with a clew, and gently returning it to the deep with a long grappling-iron made fast to it. This had not fluke enough to lay fast hold and bring the vessel up; for in that case it would have been immediately discovered; but it dragged along the bottom like a trawl, and by its weight, and a hitch every now and then in some hole, it hampered quite sufficiently the objectionable voyage. Instead ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the bottom; whence the words odontes and dentes are frequently taken for anchors in the Greek and Latin poets. The invention of the teeth is ascribed by Pliny to the Tuscans; but Pausanias gives the credit to Midas, king of Phrygia. Originally there was only one fluke or tooth, whence anchors were called eterostomoi; but a second was added, according to Pliny, by Eupalamus, or, according to Strabo, by Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher. The anchors with two teeth were called amfiboloi or amfistomoi, and from ancient ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... beginning to bend away towards that hissing knot in the north-west, wound our poor little channel, mercilessly exposed as a stagnant, muddy ditch with scarcely a foot of water, not deep enough to hide our small kedge-anchor, which perked up one fluke in impudent mockery. The dull, hard sky, the wind moaning in the rigging as though crying in despair for a prey that had escaped it, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... find the genesis of each one and trace its evolution or unfolding, we should probably not find more than one that could be associated with the things that happen by chance. The case of a man who achieved what is called a "lucky fluke" out of a piece of spoiled cloth is perhaps the only instance of its kind on record in the history of cloth manufacture. I have admitted that there are cases where advantage falls to a man which cannot be explained by anything he deserves, or has done ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... opinion Cedric stands a very poor chance." Here Dinah's face fell. "He has plenty of abilities, but I doubt his staying power; he works too much by fits and starts—there is no method or application. But of course he may turn over a new leaf. It is just possible that he may pass by some lucky fluke. It is not always the best workers who get through. You will give him a coach, of course. Oh, I see," reading Dinah's expression correctly, "he may have a dozen coaches if he needs them; but if you care to consult me when the time comes, I think ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... though a loud voice seemed crying in his ears, "What will happen next? What will the end be—success, or a sudden fluke that will mean failure?" He barred his mind against misgivings, but he had hoped for some sign of life when he rode in sight of the white roofs; and there ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from the south. This day came into Harbor the bark Winona, after a cruise of three years, two months, and four days. Captain Chase reported that my eldest son, Matthew Shore, was killed by the fluke of a right whale, at Christmas Island. The whale yielded seventy barrels of oil. Matthew ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... returned the steward; and, by what I can learn, they spoke them pretty plainly to one another. Indeed, I may say that I overheard a small matter of it myself, seeing that the windows was open, and I hard by. But this here is no pick. but an anchor on a mans shoulder; and heres the other fluke down his back, maybe a little too close, which signifies that the lad has got under way and left ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... have found her," Jimmie replied. "It was by a mere fluke. I went to a solicitor on some business, and it turned out that he was acting for Miss Foster—you see her father left a good bit of money. He was close-mouthed at first, but when I partly explained how matters stood, he told me that the ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... plain clothes," he observed musingly to himself. "I wonder if it's just a fluke—or something else? ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... that her sudden brightness but hid a black abyss of bitterness and apprehension. What she had told me had somehow stricken me dumb. There seemed a stark sordidness in the situation that repelled me. She had arisen and was about to step over the fluke of the great anchor, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser. Raphael alone ever united form and idea. You want to be the Raphael of love; but chance cannot be commanded. Raphael was a 'fluke' of God's creation, for He foreordained that form and idea should be antagonistic; otherwise nothing could live. When the first cause is more potent than the outcome, nothing comes of it. We must live either on earth or in the skies. Remain ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... of his losses, was now almost cheerful again on account of a curious side issue. "You may say it is coincidence," he said, "you may call it a fluke, but I prefer to look for some other interpretation! Consider this. The amount of my balance is a secret between me and my bankers. He never had it from me, for I did not know it—I hadn't looked at my passbook for months. But he drew it all in one cheque, within seventeen ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... at once a joy and a disappointment. Such marvellous angles and stop volleys off difficult drives! Yet immediately on top of a dazzling display Alonzo will throw away the easiest sort of a high volley by a pitiable fluke. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... bag seven wickets." (Renewed applause, interrupted by a warning shout of "Look out! this form's going again!") "I was going to say," continued the speaker, attempting to hide his embarrassment by pretending to drink out of an empty glass, "that it was rather a fluke—" (Shouts of "No! no!" "More pop for the gentleman!" and fresh outbursts of cheering.) "Well, I did the best I could, and—well—glad you're pleased, and all that sort of thing. (Alarums and excursions.) I suppose I ought to say something about this society, but, as regards that matter, ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... itself, it was quite exhausted. Pneumonia supervened, and when John thought it impossible to save its life he handed the case over to my wife. She succeeded, chiefly, I think, by careful nursing, in pulling it through, much to John's surprise; doubtless he thought its recovery a lucky fluke. John was given to occasional alcoholic lapses; on one occasion I found him aimlessly driving sheep across a field of growing mangolds! I could see that he was muddled, and on reaching home later I sought an interview. He was not to be found, but at his cottage his wife told ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... wanted? That one little flash of inspiration she'd had, that had resulted in the twelve costumes for the sextette—where had it come from? How had she happened on it? Wasn't it, perhaps, just a fluke that never could be repeated? During those wonderful days she had had antennae out everywhere, bringing her impressions, suggestions from the unlikeliest objects. Now they were all drawn in and the part of her mind that had responded to ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... fluke, I guess," he frowned in frustration and disgust at himself. "I keep thinking I'm getting good—then flooie!" He idly sent his mind towards the boy again ... and suddenly found himself once ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Carried his point. Wiseacres winced; Obstruction "cut its stick." He won the day, stout ROWLAND HILL, and then they made him Knight. If universal benefit unmarred by bane gives right To titles, which are often won by baseness or a fluke, The founder of the Penny Post deserved to be a Duke. But then he's something better—a fixed memory, a firm fame; For long as the World "drops a line," it cannot drop his name. 'Tis something like a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... his promise. Mr Dobbs allowed him to look over the library of the late Vicar of Fenside, and at length he came to a volume of "Sturm's Reflections," on the title page of which was written, in a clear mercantile hand, "Given to Susan Fluke, on her marriage with Henry Walford Esquire, by her loving ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... bend the sainted knee, Invite all men their liberty to share, Seek public peace, defy the assaults of war, Plant, reap, consume, enjoy their fearless toil, Tame their wild floods, to fatten still their soil, Enrich all nations with their nurturing store, And rake with venturous fluke ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... mare's grasping stride. The trap pitched more than ever as she came up into the shafts and back into her harness; she twisted suddenly to the left into a narrow lane, cleared the corner by an impossible fluke, and Fanny Fitz was hurled ignominiously on to Rupert Gunning's lap. Long briars and twigs struck them from either side, the trap bumped in craggy ruts and slashed through wide puddles, then reeled irretrievably ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... exhibiting the gold with the other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... bowers, Sir," he hastily added, in his orders to Trysail. "We are in no condition to sport with stock-and-fluke; have every thing ready to let go at a word; and see the grapnels ready,—we will throw them aboard the smuggler as we close, and take him alive. Once fast to the chain, we are yet strong enough to haul him in under our scuppers, and to capture him with the pumps! Is the signal still abroad, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... effective, he lashed his anchor to the bow, so that the sharp flukes protruded; thus extemporizing an iron-clad ram more than two hundred years before naval men thought of using one. Thus provided, the second blow of the sloop was more terrible than the first. The sharp fluke of the anchor crashed through the side of the pinnace, and the two vessels hung tightly together. Gallop then began to double-load his duck-guns, and fire through the sides of the pinnace; but, finding that the enemy was not to be dislodged ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... you I was certain I had missed," said he—though he hardly knew what he was saying; a kind of bewilderment of joy possessed him—he could not keep his eyes off the dead stag—and now, if he had only chanced to notice it, his hand was certainly trembling. Probably Roderick did not know what a fluke was; in any case ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... got his Diploma on a Fluke, but when he appeared on the Rostrum between an Oleander and the Members of the Board, with Goose-Goose on the Aureole, the new Store Suit garnished with a leaf of Geranium and a yellow Rose-Bud, and the Gates Ajar Collar lashed fast with his future ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... ran the ship alongside of the dead whale and after darting at him two or three times managed to get fast and get him alongside. Just then it was reported that the boats to leeward were out of sight. That worried me some so I told the cooper to get the fluke chain on the whale and I would go aloft and see if ...
— Bark Kathleen Sunk By A Whale • Thomas H. Jenkins
... and having now nothing on her except the main-topsail and fore-topmast-staysail, she rode more upright. The main-topsail was clewed up and fortunately saved, the mizzen-staysail was set. "Stand by, to cut away the stoppers of the best bower anchor—to let it go, stock and fluke," said Captain G. "Man the fore-topmast-staysail down-haul; put your helm down! haul down the staysail." This was done, and the ship came up handsomely, head to wind, "See the cable tiers all clear—what water ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... I wish you'd tell us what yuh done it for!" Slim cut in disgustedly. "It was nacherlay supposed you could ride; we got money up on yuh! And then, by golly, to go and make a fluke like that before them Diamond G men—to go and let that blue roan pile yuh up b'fore he'd got rightly started t' pitch—If yuh'd stayed with him till he got t' swappin' ends there, it wouldn't uh looked quite so bad. But t' go and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... you were deceiving them by a conjuring-trick, just as priests of strange cults deceive their votaries.... And further, you taught them that money had but one use—to be spent. You may—though by a fluke—have left a quantity of money to your widow, but her sole skill is to spend it. She has heard that there is such a thing as investing money. She tries to invest it. But, bless you, you never said a word to her about that, and the money vanishes now as magically ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett |
