"Leaky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he was got upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river Amazons, toward that of the river Oroonoque, commonly called the Great River; and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the ship was leaky and very much disabled, add he was going directly back to the coast ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... the pile, being very careful to hold her bag of sugar leaky-side up, and watched and watched. If you have ever seen ants moving grains of sugar you know how very interesting it is and you won't wonder that she forgot all about taking the parcel home to her mother. And there is no telling when she would ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... be a leaky ship, every passage I made in her. We had docked her twice in London, and it had done her good. The first week out, on the fifth passage, the ship proved tight, but the weather was moderate. It came on to blow heavily, however, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to be careful, therefore, with whom he dealt, and he expected to be cheated in making his bargain for a boat and a supply of provisions. As it was, he was skilfully skinned by the rascal with whom he finally ventured to open negotiations, and Constans thought himself lucky to exchange it for a leaky, flat-bottomed tub and fifty pounds weight of absolute necessaries, chiefly sun-dried strips of beef and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... what of pavement separates the mud-holes; an ice-manufactory supplies coolness to water peddled about in barrels; the officials outnumber the capacity of the jail; the ferry-facilities vary from an unstable leaky bateau to a dirty, open-decked dynamite steamboat, whose night-service is subject to the lung-capacity of the traveller hallooing for it, and the fares to necessities and circumstances; the fine brick improvements are flanked by frame tinder-boxes; the offal of the city ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... given a keg of nails and some tools to Norman and Billy, so that they can teach practical carpentry to some of the Mexican boys by showing them how to patch up their leaky shanties. Norman is a first-class carpenter for his age. It was Pink's suggestion that they should do that. I'm so grateful to him for getting Norman interested in something of the sort. It seemed as if he could never ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sheet-anchor-man,[2] "there's a good pattern for you; make us a brace of life-buoys like that; something that will save a man, and not fill and sink under him, as those leaky quarter-casks of yours will the first time there's occasion to drop 'ern. I came near pitching off the bowsprit the other day; and, when I scrambled inboard again, I went aft to get a squint at 'em. Why, Bungs, they are all open between the staves. Shame on you! Suppose you yourself ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... to want. There was only the coarsest of bread—and little of that; meat was a luxury; and delicacies were for the rich. We read how starving peasants in France tried to appease their hunger with roots and herbs, and in hard times succumbed by thousands to famine. One-roomed mud huts with leaky thatched roofs, bare and windowless, were good enough dwellings for these tillers of the soil. In the dark corners of the dirt-floors lurked germs of pestilence and death. Fuel was expensive, and the bitter winter nights must have found many a peasant shivering supperless ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... stains are a great bother, especially to the school girl who carries a leaky fountain pen. Do not let them get dry. They will be much harder to remove. Sometimes cold water, applied immediately, will remove the ink, if the spot is rinsed carefully. Use the cold water just as the hot ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... about India and Persia obscures the fact that in many periods the frontier between the two countries was uncertain or not drawn as now. North-western India and eastern Persia must not be regarded as water-tight or even merely leaky compartments. Even now there are more Zoroastrians in India than in Persia and the Persian sect of Shiite Mohammedans is powerful and conspicuous there. In former times it is probable that there was often not more difference between ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I had a remedy ready; yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot conceive that I have tied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see. I have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than mind, and I often wish I could lie down and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... never be a real beauty, or a Complete Fascinator, like our Gilded Girl. Besides, Monny has millions, and Rachel hasn't a cent. Yet there it is! Miss Guest is having the "time of her life" in spite of leaky water bottles and bumping camels, while Miss Gilder might be an old married woman, for all the attention she gets from any man on this trip except me. What can be the explanation? Even those two exaggerately German-looking men with Bedr stared at Rachel from their ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... visitors in the big Costello house after that. Their father was away, looking for work, Mrs. Costello imagined and feared, and they were living with some vague "lady across the hall." So the Mayor's wife had free rein, and she used it. When Marg'ret got one of her shapeless, leaky shoes cut in the Costello barn, she was promptly presented with shining new ones, "the way I couldn't let you get a cold and die on your father, Marg'ret, dear!" said Mrs. Costello. The twins' outgrown suits were found to fit Joe Hammond to perfection, "and a lucky thing I thought of ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... To be sure of that, I will ask Antony.—Sir, sir, thou art so leaky That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly all the way—carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time. The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once did ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... we reached the poor little shack Yves calls his home. On the floor he had placed some pans that caught some of the drippings from the leaky roof, and a piece of sail-cloth was stretched upon a homemade pallet covered with an old caribou hide, upon which the poor little fellow was lying. Unable to bear any heat he had cast away all his coverings, in the fever that possessed him, and when I heard him moan and knelt beside him he stretched ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... the bank is built of rough gray stones, and the roof is leaky to the light as well as to the weather. But there are two beds in it, one for my guide and one for me; and a practicable fireplace, which is soon filled with a blaze of comfort. There is also a ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... coarse woollen or hempen yarn. It is used for mops, &c., in the cabins; also for mats, which are worked on canvas with a large bolt-rope needle.—To thrum. A vessel, when leaky, is thrummed by working some heavy spare sail, as the sprit-sail, into a thrummed mat, greasing and tarring it well, passing it under the bottom, and heaving all parts tight. The pressure forces the tarred oakum into the openings, and thus, in part, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... REFITTING CONICAL VALVES.—Charles F. Hall, Brooklyn. N. Y.—This invention relates to a device by which the conical stop valves of gas, steam, and water works may be refitted or repaired when from any cause they are rendered leaky and unfit for use. ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... in charge, "why, 'tis De Lalande himself, only the peacock has put on daw's feathers. Well, my friend, you have sent your goods to sea in a leaky boat ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... and swaying for hours, and the rusty chains that held it fast to some posts were creaking and straining as though the next gust of wind would certainly carry them out to sea or drive them up the river, where they would inevitably be swamped in a very short time, for their boat-home was leaky at the bottom—had been a water-logged boat before the fisherman took possession of it and turned it into a quaint-looking cottage by running up some wooden walls along the sides, and roofing it in with planks and tarpaulin. Thus converted into a dwelling-house, the boat had been secured, ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... much to boast of; one-horse shay. V. be imperfect &c adj.; have a defect &c n.; lie under a disadvantage; spring a leak. not pass muster, barely pass muster; fall short &c 304. Adj. imperfect; not perfect &c 650; deficient, defective; faulty, unsound, tainted; out of order, out of tune; cracked, leaky; sprung; warped &c (distort) 243; lame; injured &c (deteriorated) 659; peccant &c (bad) 649; frail &c (weak) 160; inadequate &c (insufficient) 640; crude &c (unprepared) 674; incomplete &c 53; found wanting; below par; short-handed; below its full strength, under its full strength, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... (of subjects). The protection the king grants to his subjects upholds the world.[167] Manu, the son of Prachetas, sang these two verses respecting the duties of kings. Listen to them with attention: 'These six persons should be avoided like a leaky boat on the sea, viz., a preceptor that does not speak, a priest that has not studied the scriptures, a king that does not grant protection, a wife that utters what is disagreeable, a cow-herd that likes to rove within the village, and a barber that is desirous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Anon, a gentle word would turn the scale— The man would list the youthful tinker's tale; Would give a hearty welcome to his house, And introduce him to his thrifty spouse; Would bid her bring; that leaky pail, or pan, Which had been tinkered by "that other man," Who got from her the pewter spoons, and lead, His supper, breakfast, and a nice clean bed; Then took the metal every bit away, Saying he got not half enough for pay! When WILLIAM heard such things ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... not understood by those who spoke the others. It is said that there are not more than seventy-seven languages in the world; but I say that there are more than a thousand, as there are more than forty which I have heard myself. After having sailed seven hundred leagues or more our ships became leaky, so that we could hardly keep them free, with two pumps going. The men also were much fatigued, and the provisions growing short. We were then within a hundred and twenty leagues of the island called Hispaniola, discovered by the Admiral Columbus six [eight] years before. So we determined ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... rain fell in torrents. When we had dined, and all the kit had been packed up, we sheltered in the gun-pit, awaiting our horses and the baggage-waggons. As the rain found fresh ways of coming through the leaky roof, we shifted the boxes on which we sat; all of us except the colonel, who, allowing his chin to sink upon his breast, slept peacefully for three-quarters of an hour. It was pitch-dark outside, and the trench had become a glissade of slimy ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... incline, they rushed shouting through the crack and into the cave where their comrades had just been startled by the bugle-call while in the middle of their cheerless breakfast. A few hurried words and the leaky long-boat had been launched, their possessions had been bundled in, and they were afloat once more. Pulling round a promontory of the berg, they found themselves under the stern of a fine corvette, the sides of which were lined with friendly faces, while from the peak there drooped a huge ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leaky promise. Kneading slag or cold pig iron into Bessemer steel would be about as easy as pounding the law of evidence into the Governor's brains. I emphasized the moral weight of the petition, by calling ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... army left Norridgewock, the last outpost of civilization, troubles came thick and fast. Water from the leaky boats spoiled the dried codfish and most of the flour. The salt beef was found unfit for use. There was now nothing left to eat but flour and pork. The all-day exposure in water, the chilling river fogs at night, and the sleeping in uniforms which ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... advised that if it pleased him, they might put themselves aland, some place to the Eastward to get victuals, and rather hope for courtesy from the country-people, than continue at sea, in so long cold, and great a storm in so leaky a pinnace. But our Captain would in no wise like of that advice; he thought it better to bear up towards Rio de [la] Hacha, or Coricao [Curacao], with hope to have plenty without great resistance: because he knew, either of the islands were not very populous, or else it would ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... it didn't itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, the way you'd not be without some ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... earth, but foretaste and prophecy of ruin and discouragement, of the utter futility of striving? But if his own despair was great his pain at the plight of Zora made it almost unbearable. He did not see her in these seven days. He pictured her huddled there in the swamp in the cheerless leaky cabin with worse than no companions. Ah! the swamp, the cruel swamp! It was a fearful place in the rain. Its oozing mud and fetid vapors, its clinging slimy draperies,—how they twined about the bones ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the steam engine for impelling boats," he wrote, in 1803, "from which no particular mode of application can be free. These are, first, the weight of the engine and of the fuel; second, the large space it occupies; third, the tendency of its action to rack the vessel and render it leaky; fourth, the expense of maintenance; fifth, the irregularity of its motion and the motion of the water in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel-vessel in rough water; sixth, the difficulty arising from the liability of the paddles or oars to break, if ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Brigade were moved into huts at Lark Hill. They were certainly an improvement upon the tents, but they (p. 032) were draughty and leaky. From my window I could see, on the few occasions when the weather permitted it, the weird and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... "burn" his ships, as has been so commonly reported, but ordered a marine survey upon them, employing an officer who had his secret instructions, and when the report was made public it was to the effect that the galleys were unseaworthy, leaky, and not fit or safe for service. A certain sea worm had reduced the hulls to mere shells! So the stores and armament were carried on shore, and the vessels sunk or wrecked. "His followers murmured at the loss of the ships," says Chevalier, "but were quieted ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... should be, We'll have a virtuous progeny; And on the dunghill of our vices Raise human pine-apples and spices. Of all the children of John Bull 120 With empty heads and bellies full, Who ramble East, West, North and South, With leaky purse and open mouth, In search of varieties exotic The usefullest and most patriotic, 125 And merriest, too, believe me, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... at the hacienda they found the ground covered with snow. They were crowded into small, leaky, adobe houses, without floors and with doors which could not be closed tightly. The remainder of the winter and the following spring proved unusually rainy and unpleasant; the food which they were given was probably of a somewhat inferior quality; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... milder, and the sea began to be free from ice, but a single north wind brought back the most intense cold, and the sea was again covered with ice. In the meanwhile we worked hard to get out of our leaky vessel all that was necessary for our dangerous voyage, but suddenly we experienced a more dreadful storm of snow, hail, and rain, than had yet overtaken us, and which we did not expect at this time of the year. The weather was so bad ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... rigging, untarred for years, and tan-colored sails, mended with patch upon patch of lighter-hued canvas that seemed about to fall apart from their own weight. She was English-built, bark-rigged, bluff in the bow, square in the stern, unpainted and leaky—on the whole as unkempt and disreputable-looking a craft as ever flew the black flag; and with the clank of the pumps marking time to the wailing squeak of the tiller-ropes, she wallowed through the waves like a log ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... few broken steps and a broad black thing which was the boat. We got into it as silently as we could manage, and cast off. It was a clumsy, broad-beamed, leaky old conveyance, and that it was as dirty as Hewitt had described it I could feel as I groped for the sculls and got them out. The night was light and dark by turns—changing with the clouds. We shipped the rudder, and ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... of the sloops were leaky and needed a thorough overhauling in various ways. As soon as the Francis was off the bar, therefore, they proceeded up the estuary for a distance of nearly two miles and secured their vessels in shallow water, where they could be careened ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the upper works of the schooner constantly leaky, and the pumps became so much worn by constant use as to be rendered unserviceable, and made it absolutely necessary to put in at this island to get the schooner caulked and the pumps refitted before attempting the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. I also considered ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... order, evidently laboring under the strong presentiment that she was to be their coffin. He advised that it was fruitless to stick by her any longer, or hazard an attempt to reach a port with her, in such a leaky and disabled condition. "If we don't abandon her, Skipper," said he, "she'll abandon us. We'd better make signal for the first vessel, and bid ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Though the leaky condition of the frigate compelled him to abandon the search, it was not till he had gained information which he thought would lead to success; and, on his return, he inspired such confidence that the Duke of Albemarle, with other noblemen and gentlemen, gave him a fresh ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... certain Portuguese sea-captain, Gonsalvez Zarco by name, and servant of the famous Henry of Portugal, was cruising homeward in a leaky caravel from a baffled voyage in search of the Fortunate Islands. He had run into a fog off Cape Blanco in Africa, and had been pushing through it for two days when the weather lifted and the look-out spied a boat, empty but for one man, drifting a mile and more to leeward. Zarco ran down for the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... fireplace and hung the kettle on the hook, blew the coals to a blaze with a pair of leaky bellows, and sat down before the fire once more to wait for the ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of his states, of his happiness—nay, almost of his crown? What is the cause that our beautiful and amiable queen has to undergo all sorts of privations and inconveniences, and is compelled to reside, instead of in her palace at Berlin, in a miserable, leaky house in Memel, where she is closer to the Bashkirs than to civilized people? The war is the cause of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... is almost uninhabitable, the barn they have assigned to us to live in during this period of rest. It is a collapsing refuge, gloomy and leaky, confined as a well. One half of it is under water—we see rats swimming in it—and the men are crowded in the other half. The walls, composed of laths stuck together with dried mud, are cracked, sunken, holed in all their circuit, and extensively ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... pond, ten feet by five feet, was a failure, as it was leaky; but not to be beaten I commenced another and much larger one, sixteen feet by ten feet. I selected a site close above high water-mark, and commenced digging, and in fact worked a whole day at it, intending to line it with a mixture of sand and ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... no mo'?" cried the little black figure in a shrill scream; "wot, an' hev no leaky sink dat keps me a-swashin' and a-swashin', an' no old ruf dat lets in hull buckets full o' ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... Point Levis, for that was then an insignificant village, but mostly to farmers of the neighboring parishes. The number was important if Arnold had been able to lay hold of the craft, but it gave Hardinge little or no difficulty to dispose of. Some thirty or forty of them that were leaky, or otherwise disabled, he quietly broke up, sending the fragments afloat down the river. The remainder he despatched over to the other side, at intervals and from different points, with the aid of a dozen men whom he had joined to his party. Operating thus from ten in the forenoon till five in ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... enjoyment but to beat the children. Would you compare such a dog's life as that with your own—the happiest under heaven—true Eden life, as the Germans would say,—pitching your tent under the pleasant hedge-row, listening to the song of the feathered tribes, collecting all the leaky kettles in the neighbourhood, soldering and joining, earning your honest bread by the wholesome sweat of your brow—making ten holes—hey, what's this? what's the man ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... furled their sails, and made fast with ice-hooks. A change of wind, however, taking place in the afternoon, the ice began to separate, and, setting all their sails, they forced a passage through it. The vessel had rubbed off a great deal of the sheathing from her bows, and became very leaky from the strokes she received when she fell on ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... than you think, too," added Josef. "For each silkworm has coated the inside of his little home with a gum-like substance that makes it waterproof. He has no intention of lying down to sleep in a leaky cottage where the rain ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... their money to Bantam. All their goods and other things were left behind, and seized by the king of Macasser, who refused to make restitution. At Jacatra the Hector sunk in three fathoms water while careening, her keel being exceedingly worm-eaten. The Concord is there also laid up, so rotten and leaky that they had to take out her provisions, and let her sink close to the shore. The Hosiander, on the 15th October 1616, was appointed to sail for the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... declaration of war. This Court then ordered the prizes as well as Capt. Wickes to leave the port in twenty four hours. The former were sent out but sold to French merchants, and Captain Wickes, his ship being leaky, was permitted to stay. Soon after this, Captain Johnson arrived in the Lexington, and we, having bought a cutter with a view of sending her out as a packet, altered our resolution and equipped her as a cruiser, and sent her and the Lexington out under the command of Captain Wickes as commodore, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... once across the river, would be in a safer position. Day and night we were engaged in taking these over; but the work progressed very slowly, for the boat could only take ten or twelve men at a time, and, besides, was so leaky that two had constantly to throw out the water. After 250 men had been ferried across the stream the approach of the enemy was announced, and so near were they that some of us had to depart in an ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... away merry about what Old Hickory wanted kept a dead secret. But I usually do tell things to Vee. She ain't one of the leaky kind. And Auntie don't go out much. Besides, who'd think of an old girl like that ever bein' interested in such wild back-number stuff? ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... a leaky corner of sandy meadow to honey locusts. I saw them growing in semi-swamp land in Alabama, but here all but two of the 18 trees died. When replanted in 1946 also they died. I found the two that were living were carelessly planted too shallow, with the top roots ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... next street the source of the flood. And one day, when we were pumping out the water he asked me if I thought this was easier than rolling our roofs in Baalbek. For truly, the paving-roller is child's play to this pump. And a leaky roof is better than ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Ain't I the leaky vessel, though! Oh, say, Mr. Hanson," she clutched his arm like a terrified child, "promise me you won't ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... those things my manhood overcame my philosophy, and I felt a frantic impulse to be up and doing. I threw my cynicism to one side as a garment which I might don again at leisure, and I rushed wildly to my boat and my sculls. She was a leaky tub, but what then? Was I, who had cast many a wistful, doubtful glance at my opium bottle, to begin now to weigh chances and to cavil at danger. I dragged her down to the sea with the strength of a maniac and sprang in. For a moment or two it was a question whether she could live among the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one room to the shack, which was of mud, with thick walls and a leaky roof. There was a table, a chair, a heap of clothes in a comer, and nothing else, save for a puddle of ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... pounded over, lurch'd, and sank; Between two sand-bars settling fast, Her leaky hull the waters drank, And she had sail'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... utmost art and industry to be brought to a happy conclusion. Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escaped shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. My memory of past errors and perplexities, makes me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... fierce and thundering sweep, The winds in wild distraction rave, And push along the mountain wave With dreadful swell and hideous curl! Whilst hung aloft in giddy whirl, Or drop beneath the ocean's bed, The leaky bark without a shred Of rigging sweeps through dangers dread. The flaring beacon points the way, And fast the pumps loud clanking play: It 'vails not—hark! with crashing shock She's shivered 'gainst the solid rock, Or by the fierce, incessant waves Is beaten ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... engaged a working-man To mend a leaky pot or pan Or else a pipe that's porous, He would not modify his fees For hours and hours of vacant ease Though out of ARISTOPHANES I said a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... delight have we, To be for truth extoll'd, and secrecy; 150 And constant in one purpose still to dwell; And not our husbands' counsels to reveal. But that's a fable; for our sex is frail, Inventing rather than not tell a tale. Like leaky sieves, no secrets we can hold: Witness the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and we stopped. T- and S- slept ashore, however, to see how they liked it, at least they tried to sleep, for S- the ancient sergeant-major had a toothache, and T- thought the tent was coming down every minute. Next morning they could only complain of sand and a leaky coffee-pot, so I leave them with a good conscience. The little encampment looked quite picturesque: the green round tent, the square white tent and the hut all wrapped up in sails, on a sand hill, looking on the sea and masking those confounded marshes at the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pretty completely recovered my senses, and was able to fully realise my situation. I was wet, cold, feverish, and horribly thirsty, and was the sole occupant of a small, leaky junk of about twenty-five tons, without masts or sails, these having been removed in order the better to fit her for the duty of carrying troops. She had a pair of sweeps aboard, it is true; but they were so ponderous that each demanded ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... he reported, swinging clear, and sitting with his feet in the shaft. "Regular cave. Three sacks of powder stowed already, so we're none too soon.—One sack was leaky. I struck a match, and nearly blew myself to Casabianca." He paused, as if reflecting. "It gives us a plan, though. Rudie: are you game for something rather foolhardy? Be frank, now; for if you wouldn't really enjoy it, I'll give old Gilly Forrester ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... revelled—literally wallowed—in the appointments of my room. My poor old room at Possum Gully was lacking in barest necessaries. We could not afford even a wash-hand basin and jug; Gertie, the boys, and myself had to perform our morning ablutions in a leaky tin dish on a stool outside the kitchen door, which on cold frosty mornings was a pretty peppery performance: but this room contained everything dear to the heart of girlhood. A lovely bed, pretty slippers, dainty ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... entered in such solemn stillness. Oh, dear! oh, dear! The bun-loaf, and the almonds, and the cheese, and the turkey, and the pound of tobacco, and the mull of snuff! On account of Anna everything had to be conducted in great quietness, but it was a terrible leaky sort of silence, I fear, and there were hot and hissing whispers. God bless you for your thought and care of us! Coming so timely, it is like my dear one herself, a gift that cometh from the Lord; and when people ask me if I am not afraid that my granddaughter should be all alone in that great and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... seven canoes, all of them dugouts. One was small, one was cranky, and two were old, waterlogged, and leaky. The other three were good. The two old canoes were lashed together, and the cranky one was lashed to one of the others. Kermit with two paddlers went in the smallest of the good canoes; Colonel Rondon and Lyra with three other ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... stain. Despite all these defences, if the shark is fool enough to heed no warning and to eat Diodon, the latter puffs himself up and eats his way clean through the shark to liberty, leaving the shark riddled and leaky, and, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... goes after it once more, with eager yelp and rush, to renew the old experience. Ah! that is like what a great many of you are doing, and you have not the same excuse that the dog has. You have been trying all your lives—and some of you have grey hairs on your heads—to slake your thirst by dipping leaky buckets into empty wells, and you are at it yet. As some one says, 'experience throws a light on the wave behind us,' but it does very little to fling a light on the sea before us. Experience confirms my text, for I venture to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... into the swirling waters and were presently running free, sending the spurling spray flying on both sides of the boat. The wind came on to blow pretty hard and the leaky boat began to fill, so that we were hard put to it to keep from sinking. The three brothers were quite used to making the trip in foul weather, but on the Prince's account were now much distressed. To show his contempt for danger, the royal wanderer sang ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Variation of the compass. The Dezertas. Arrival at Madeira. Remarks on Funchal. Political state of the island. Latitude and longitude. Departure from Madeira. The island St. Antonio. Foul winds; and remarks upon them. The ship leaky. Search made for Isle Sable. Trinidad. Saxemberg sought for. Variation of the compass. State of the ship's company, on arriving at the Cape of Good Hope. Refitment at Simon's Bay. Observatory set Up. The astronomer ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... straining of the vessel, the decks had become so leaky, that the water ran through every part of the ship. Our provisions (particularly our bread) being spoiled, and obliged to be thrown overboard, we were necessitated to be put upon short allowance. As we had no hopes of being able to support ourselves ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... back with a battle won. "Thankee kindly, sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee kindly for a hearty meal." Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... purposes, since for the main object, the exploration of inland seas, they could not possibly be wanted. We had two and the outer one, which was both larger and heavier than the inner, had been shaken so much when suspended without the thwarts that she was almost unserviceable in the water, and very leaky as we had lately found in exploring the Glenelg. She had in fact all along served as a case for the inner boat, which could thus be kept distended by the thwarts and was consequently in excellent repair and in every respect the best. I determined therefore to abandon the outer boat and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... in the lower hold in a lot of turpentine, and when they put that out we found her cargo had shifted and she was down by the head about six feet. Then the crew made a rush for the boats and left us with only four leaky ones to go a thousand miles. They'd taken 'em all, hadn't been for me and another fellow who stood ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... will pull through this attack," he said briskly. "It's a leaky valve. There is only one rule that I have to lay upon you. It is absolutely vital that he shall not be excited. A blow with an ax would be no more fatal ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Bzib, deep and fast-running, and rowed myself across in a leaky and muddy boat. I ploughed my way through deep sand, or stepped from boulder to boulder, or crushed through miles of sea-holly and prickly shrub. I came to the sacred wood in which the Ahkbasians used to pray when they were pagans, but in which, since their ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... could he have snuffed up the cloud of frankincense, and felt that he was in the great ark which holds the better half of the Christian world, while all around it are wretched creatures, some struggling against the waves in leaky boats, and some on ill-connected rafts, and some with their heads just above water, thinking to ride out the flood which is to sweep the earth clean of sinners, upon their own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... ago I saw a coloured minister preparing his Sunday sermon just as the New England minister prepares his sermon. But this coloured minister was in a broken-down, leaky, rented log cabin, with weeds in the yard, surrounded by evidences of poverty, filth, and want of thrift. This minister had spent some time in school studying theology. How much better it would have ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... driftwood they made a landing and secured a cottonwood log for oar-timber. While the oars were making, Powell and his brother climbed up to where some pinyon trees were seen growing, and collected a quantity of gum with which to calk the leaky boats. They needed all the preparation possible, for the rapids now came ever thicker, ever faster, and more violent. The walls also grew in altitude from the thirteen hundred feet of the Junction to fifteen hundred feet, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... provisions, Mr. Bates thus expressed himself: 'Men, I did not for one moment expect such kind treatment from you, regarding the provisions you have now brought ashore for us, out of so little which there was on board. When I consider your present undertaking, without a competent navigator, and in a leaky vessel, your situation seems most perilous; therefore I hope God will prove kind to you, and preserve you from the manifold dangers you may have to encounter on the stormy ocean.' Mrs. Vickers also was pleased to say that I had behaved kindly to her, that she wished me well, and that ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... to themselves, not to mention their wives and families and friends. You know well enough that if I had wished ever so much to return aboard last night your boat could not have got alongside the Gull for the sea. Moreover, you also know that if you had attempted to put to sea in such weather, this leaky tub, with rotten sails and running gear, would have been a wreck on the Goodwin sands before now, and you and I, with the two men and the boy, would have been food for ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... alone, so he slipped into the bedroom, and I forgot to tell you. He's a powerful snorer, and that's one of the awful sounds. The other was the dripping of salt water; for you wanted some, and the girl got it in a leaky pail. Seth wiped up the slops when he came out early ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... in Cape Town, last night, without leave, stayed till past eleven and undertook to come in by sea. He shipped in a leaky boat with a crew composed of one Kaffir boy; the Kaffir funked the surf; they had an upset and Eaton-Hill waked up the picket by the fervor of his ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... country!" came, two rows back from where I stood, a Cockney voice uplifted to the leaky skies. "There ain't nothin' to eat in it, and there ain't nothin' to drink in ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... come up the narrow and tortuous Evergreen River in a couple of old boats, capable of carrying all the camp material; though so leaky that frequent baling out was necessary in order to ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... was not a good one, but in the meantime they would do what they could. It was decided to give him a perpetual penance, which might keep the evil spirits at a distance. He was led away to the shores of Dosmare Pool, on the desolate Bodmin Moors, and there set to drain the pool with a leaky limpet-shell. In those days Dosmare was supposed to be bottomless—a reputation which it has since destroyed by drying in hot summers. For long years Tregeagle toiled at his hopeless task. If he ceased from his labour for a moment he would be at the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... doctrine which the Teacher intended to declare obviously requires that the two parties whose compassion is compared and contrasted should be on equal terms. The lesson which he meant to convey would slip through and be lost, like water through a leaky vessel, if the priest and Levite were walking when they found the wounded man: we must, therefore, if we would not do violence to the parable, assume that both were mounted. With this conclusion, resulting from the nature of the case, the expressions in their minutest details correspond. The journey ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Grotait, "all the better. But it is astonishing what big embankments will sometimes burst if a leaky pipe runs through them. I don't think it is the water, altogether; the water seems to make air inside them, and that proves as bad for them as wind ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... a pause that seemed to George to stretch on and on endlessly. The rain pattered on the leaky roof. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled dismally. The darkness pressed down like a ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... windows, without doors, with only an open hatchway from which a ladder descends, several hundred fugitives spend their nights and the best parts of their days in the iron hold, forever covered with moisture, leaky when rain comes, with the floor never dry, and pervasive with a perpetual smell like the smell of a cave which never gets the light of day. Here men, women, and children were huddled together in a promiscuous communion of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... "Leaky," she observed in her smooth voice. "Old brass. One mark and a half." Her husband put out his hand, touched the machine, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... would be tedious and attended with great fatigue; that it was now the depth of winter in the southern hemisphere; that the ship was leaky, that the rudder shook in the stern very much, and that what other damage she might have received in her bottom could not be known. That for these reasons she was very unfit for the bad weather which she would certainly meet with, either ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the thread and binding and swear when she was gone, wondering who "the stingy old woman was." And yet the very day after her return from Camden "the stingy old woman" had sent to her minister a loaf of bread and a pail of butter, and to a poor sick woman, who lived in a leaky cabin off in the prairie, a nice, warm blanket for her bed, with a basket of delicacies to tempt ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... wanted, this was the worst, viz., that we had no tar or pitch to pay the seams and secure the bottom; and though we did what we could, with tallow and oil, to make a mixture to supply that part, yet we could not bring it to answer our end fully; and when we launched her into the water, she was so leaky, and took in the water so fast, that we thought all our labour had been lost, for we had much ado to make her swim; and as for pumps, we had none, nor had we any means ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... they held together at all. There was one ancient craft, a York boat of earlier times, which the Company was taking through, and this, being stiffly built with a keel, was badly strained and rendered very leaky by the time it got through the rude traverse of the rocky portage. The men took tallow and oakum and roughly calked the seams of this boat, so that it was possible to get it across the river to Fort Smith eventually. A ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... was doubtless due to the strain of her overload, in the heavy weather of the autumnal gales. Bradford says: "They met with many contrary winds and fierce storms with which their ship was shrewdly shaken and her upper works made very leaky." That the confidence of her master in her soundness below the water-line was well placed, is additionally proven by her excellent voyages to America, already noted, in 1629, and 1630, when ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... words no more so than the way she looked at me while pronouncing them. Yet I hardly thought it should give her as much concern as our leaky boat. The storm had grown worse, and more than once she glanced anxiously at the portholes whose glass, over half the time, were submerged by ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris |
