"In the nick of time" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of heaven, and terrifyingly of sin, hell and damnation, even contained a touch of genuine romance. She was a brand snatched from the burning; his detailed eloquence had frightened her into heaven; salvation came in the nick of time; his words had plucked her from the edge of that lake of fire and brimstone where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. She regarded him as a hero, sighed her relief upon his saintly shoulder, and accepted the peace he offered ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... But in the nick of time the Liberal Administration fell, and Lord Salisbury's Cabinet reversed their decision. It is interesting, in reading the Blue Books on Indian questions, to watch the emotions of party principles, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... fact. In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons. We all knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a big face, and His Majesty backed ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... up the desperado's arm just in the nick of time, thus preventing a terrible crime. But the end was not yet. There were five more bullets in the cylinder of the weapon, as the lad knew ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... insult him; and when Quonab's knife flashed out at last, it was only his recently established relations with the governor's son that saved him from some very sad results, for there were many loafers about. But burly Vandam appeared in the nick of time to halt the small mob with the warning: "Don't you know that's Mr. Van Cortlandt's guide?" With the governor and Vandam to back him, Quonab soon had the mob on his side, and the dock loafer's own friends pelted him with mud as he escaped. But not a little credit is due to ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lot, I tell you, fellows, to stumble on such a fine snug hole in the nick of time!" declared Tom Betts, as he rubbed his hands together, before giving his place in the front rank to another scout less ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... as he returned the smile. "Just a while back, my young daughter was in sobs, and I coaxed her out here to amuse her. I am just now without anything whatever to attend to, so that, dear brother Chia, you come just in the nick of time. Please walk into my mean abode, and let us endeavour, in each other's company, to while away this ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... would seem quite according to the fitness of things, just the proper ending to the romance, to lie down and die; but, unfortunately, or rather fortunately, dying is a thing that we cannot do so just in the nick of time; and indeed"—and Uncle John's face assumed its strange smile, which seemed to take you, as it were, suddenly behind the scenes, to show you the wrong side of the tapestry,—"and indeed," he continued, "when I look back on the times in my life that I should have died, when it was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... before a terrific left and right between wind and water; a big Bavarian hero brandishing a beer-bottle collapsed with a sudden and acute attack of knee-in-the-stomach; and a strong and handy chair coming to Dick's hand in the nick of time and used as a flail, and with strict impartiality, soon did the rest. Berserk with fight, and with the plucky little Jew to help him, Dick cleared the bar till not a soul but the frightened bar-keeper and themselves stood within the locked doors. Outside they could hear the crowd yelling ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... you were, I presume," said Claud, in reply. "And I was far more indebted to the hunter, Phillips, for my own rescue, than you were to me for yours. I merely turned the furious brute aside. It was he who, coming up in the nick of time, brought him ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of loud, rolling thunder, I speed swiftly over the last few miles, and dash beneath the porch of the post-office just in the nick of time to escape a tremendous downpour of rain. How it pours, sometimes, in India, converting the roads into streams and the surrounding country into a shallow lake in the space of a few minutes. Hundreds of youths, naked save for ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and example, what were these set against this final ordeal: a blistering thirst of three days and two nights? Happily a water-hole, not bereft of all moisture, was found in the nick of time. A few birds flew about it in the evening, but Sir George Grey's hand shook so that he could take no aim. He headed a last desperate spurt for Perth; the reaching of succour, or the arrival of ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... absurd anxiety about his safety and indulging another on the subject of his wet feet. A smile of tender amusement visited his lips as he took hold of the door-handle. Exactly as he touched it, the key on the other side turned. The lock had been stiff, but it had shot out in the nick of time, and he found himself brought up short in his impulsive career and hurtling against a solid barrier. He knocked, but no one answered. He could have fancied he heard panting breaths on the other ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... "Maxime is right. Don't you see, old fellow, that generous actions are like Couture's investments?—you should make them in the nick of time." ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... came in the nick of time," answered Dick. "Will you allow me to introduce myself?" and he bowed. "My name is Dick Rover and this is my brother Tom and this my brother Sam. You are Miss Sanderson, ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... in a tight fix," answered Dick, with a shiver. "You came in the nick of time, and I owe you ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... hand-to-hand combats in the houses and even in the cellars. "Blood," he wrote, "ran in the gutters like water on a rainy day." The French soldiers were being hard pressed and reserves came with their new regiments in the nick of time. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... somewhat excited, and who reveled in "bogey" stories of supernatural terror. Mrs. Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823) was one of the most successful writers of this school of exaggerated romance. Her novels, with their azure-eyed heroines, haunted castles, trapdoors, bandits, abductions, rescues in the nick of time, and a general medley of overwrought joys and horrors,[219] were immensely popular, not only with the crowd of novel readers, but also with men of unquestioned literary ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of bread that would not rise; a flock of sheep to be gathered together on a stormy night, or a bundle to be carried home by some weary labourer; Aiken-Drum, as we learned to call him, always got to know of it, and appeared in the nick of time. It looked as if we had all got wishing-caps, for we had just to wish, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... creditors, in a state of panic, pressed hard for their money. The little Church of the Brethren was now on the brink of ruin. At one moment Zinzendorf himself expected to be thrown into prison, and was only saved in the nick of time by the arrival of money from Germany. But the English Brethren now showed their manhood. The very men whom Zinzendorf was supposed to have robbed now rose in his defence. Instead of thanking Whitefield for defending them in their supposed distresses, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... related what he had felt and thought during those eventful moments when his life hung in the balance; tears of distress, of sympathy, of joy, and finally of gratitude, as in glowing words he described how noble John Connors had dived away down into the dark green depths to rescue him just in the nick of time. ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... piece I saw in Belfast was a fearful foolish piece, with a lot of love and villainy in it. The girl was near drowned in real water, and then the villain tied her on to a circular saw, and if it hadn't been for the hero coming in the nick of time, she'd have been cut in two. No man would treat a woman that way, tying her on to a saw! I'm afeard some of these pieces nowadays are terribly foolish, John, so I never ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... rein, were trembling with excitement as they stood together in shelter, with fixed bayonets and kukris, waiting to make the rush. The bugle was being raised to the holder's lips to sound the advance, when a thrill of joy surged through the British leaders' breasts, for the help they needed came in the nick of time. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... to a crisis, this difficulty was removed in the most extraordinary and providential unheard-of manner, by the most extraordinary event that, I believe, is recorded in history. Just in the nick of time, in the moment of projection, on the 3d of July, this Prince Meeran, in the flower of his age, bold, active, enterprising, lying asleep in his tent, is suddenly, without any one's knowing it, without any alarm or menace in the heavens that ever was heard of or mentioned, without any one whatever ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... armed men, under Captain Convers, an officer of militia. On the ninth of June, two sloops and a sail-boat ran up the neighboring creek, bringing supplies and fourteen more men. The succor came in the nick of time. The sloops had scarcely anchored, when a number of cattle were seen running frightened and wounded from the woods. It was plain that an enemy was lurking there. All the families of the place now gathered within the palisades of Storer's house, thus increasing his force to about thirty ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... himself should be sacrificed as an expiatory offering for the whole country. So the people decked him with garlands like a victim and led him to the altar, where they were just about to sacrifice him when he was rescued either by his grandson Cytisorus, who arrived in the nick of time from Colchis, or by Hercules, who brought tidings that the king's son Phrixus was yet alive. Thus Athamas was saved, but afterward he went mad, and mistaking his son Learchus for a wild beast, shot him dead. Next he attempted the life of his remaining son Melicertes, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... but little doubt that the brave dog would have, eventually, paid the penalty for its rashness—for the wolf had mauled it badly, and it was beginning to show signs of exhaustion through loss of blood—had not Savanich arrived in the nick of time. A couple of thrusts from his knife stretched the wolf on the ground, when, to his utmost horror, it suddenly metamorphosed into ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... get his living, he is not permitted to do so in a natural way, by hard work and years of patient effort, but is suddenly adopted by a millionaire whose pocket-book he has returned; or a rich uncle appears from sea just in the nick of time; or the remarkable boy earns a few dollars, speculates in pea-nuts or neckties, and grows rich so rapidly that Sinbad in the diamond valley is a pauper compared to ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... two or three of the rabble behind her were in the act of poising themselves with great stones in their hands, and their muscles were stiffening for a cast when, just in the nick of time, the obstinate snap yielded, and with a jerk the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... I will forestall events a little; I will cut off the burs when they have matured, and a few days of this dry October weather will cause everyone of them to open on the ground; I shall be on hand in the nick of time to gather up my nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to take the chances of a prowler like myself coming along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his neighbors. As I proceeded to collect and open the burs, I was half prepared ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... appointment in 1797, together with Pinckney and Gerry, on the famous "X.Y.Z. "mission to France. From this single year's employment he obtained nearly $20,000, which, says his biographer, "over and above his expenses," was "three times his annual earnings at the bar"; and the money came just in the nick of time to save the Fairfax investment, for Morris was now bankrupt and in jail. But not less important as a result of his services was the enhanced reputation which Marshall's correspondence with Talleyrand brought him. His return to Philadelphia was a popular ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... being the end of Young Grumpy, for the one-eyed gander would have bitten and banged and hammered at him till he was as dead as a last year's June bug. But happily the Boy and the white dog came running up in the nick of time. The gander dropped his victim and stalked off haughtily. And poor Young Grumpy, after turning twice around in a confused way, crawled ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... "And we are to be fellow-passengers, so it was very lucky that we were there in the nick of time." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... if he warn't," he repeated, when the captain laughed when Seth mentioned his sensations at the time and detailed his thoughts, "fur he came just in the nick of time to grip holt o' me; and if he hadn't ben thaar I guess it 'ud a ben all sockdolagar with Seth, I does! He must have got what ye call a call, that he must! Guess you'd a thought him a angel, if you'd been ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... you must leave me here a little! You came in the nick of time, and you brought me a message. It always comes, if you ask for it! And I shall say a prayer for the Little Master himself, as Sintram called him, before I go. He has his points, you know. He is uncommonly shrewd and tenacious and brave. He's fighting for his life, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the reporter; "besides, if by chance you had met with some deliverer there, just in the nick of time, why should he have abandoned you after having ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... where I can be?" he mused. "I was saved in the nick of time: I was too exhausted to run farther," and at that moment he heard a beautiful strain of music, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... of what the savages did during that mad retreat. More than once had my rifle been emptied in behalf of some sore-beset soldier, and I even went so far in my sympathy for the white men that I saved the life of a Tory who would have been killed had we not come up in the nick of time. After rescuing him, however, we turned the fellow over to a squad who were guarding twenty or more prisoners, thus making certain he would not be left at liberty to work ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... but he passed it up. I made one more desperate bluff and asked him if he would get some beer for us! And I reached for my purse, and for one wild moment I thought sure he had called my bluff and would really take my only nickel, my carfare home. I nearly fell over with suspense, but in the nick of time he went out, refusing my money. And I even taunted him, asked him if ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... come just in the nick of time. I had almost forgotten you while I was looking after my horses, and I wanted to hand you over to an acquaintance. I was thinking of asking you, good friend," he continued, turning towards the dealer, "if you ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... fulfilled by the capture of this bird of paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o'clock Ned Land brought down a magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call "bari-outang." This animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig dropped dead on ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... followed safe—four, five, six, seven, Yes, they were all there safe. He hoped they'd win Back to their lines in safety. They deserved, Even if they were Germans.... 'T was no sin To wish them luck. Think how that beggar swerved Just in the nick of time! He, too, must try To win back to the lines, though, likely as not, He'd take the wrong turn: but he couldn't lie Forever in that hungry hole and rot, He'd got to take his luck, to take his chance Of being sniped by ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... great joy, as the face of the faithful old negro showed itself at the doorway. "You came in the nick of time!" ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... charge upon his awakened sense of honor. He found something new and assuring in checking the passion that filled him like a flood at its height. Yes, she should be his wife; no other living man should have her. Fate had rescued him in the nick of time from the temptation to wed for ulterior motives. Another month in Atlanta and he would have lost his chance at ideal happiness. Yes, this was different! Irene Mitchell, spoiled pet of society that she was, could never love him as this ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... care of me, but that's a mistake. I have never had a horse to run away with me but once. Billy did tell me not to ride her, and when she ran and would have pitched me over her head and down a gully he caught her in the nick of time and caught me, too, but that's the only time a thing of that sort ever happened. He was real nice about it and never said anything concerning having told me so and didn't make remarks of the sort which other people rub in, but the next day the horse was sent away. That's the thing which makes ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... talent for turning up unexpectedly in the nick of time," he added, with a peculiar smile, as he turned and walked off towards the huts, around which the men who had sided with Antonio were by that time assembling. Among them Lawrence, to his ineffable joy, found Manuela and Mariquita. He was too wise, however, in ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... fires, hid our things, and hastened behind our bulwarks. I seized my rifle. Chanden Sing loaded the Martini. A Shoka, who was too far off to reach our fortified abode in time, screened himself behind some rocks. In the nick of time! Half a dozen soldiers, with matchlocks to which were attached red flags, were cantering gayly up the hillside only a few yards in front of us. They were undoubtedly searching for me. They looked in every direction, but fortunately never turned their eyes toward the castle walls that concealed ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... I thrust this panel open, leapt back, and Mr. Badcock aiding, ran the little gun out, while my father depressed its muzzle over the boat. In our excess of zeal we had nearly run her overboard; indeed, I believe that overboard she would have gone had not my father applied the red-hot iron in the nick of time. The explosion that followed not only flung us staggering to right and left, but lifted her on its recoil clean out of her rickety carriage, and kicked her back and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... slippers, that were a world too big, on Mungloo's little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village hurkaru, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking his hubble-bubble,—and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real Nawab, "as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the upper one. But Bjaaland was able to tell us a different story. He had, in fact, fallen through the outer crust, and was well on his way through the inner one as well, when he got hold of a loop of rope on his sledge and saved himself in the nick of time. Time after time the dogs now fell through, and time after time the men went in. The effect of the open space between the two crusts was that the ground under our feet sounded unpleasantly hollow as we went over it. The drivers whipped up their dogs as much as they could, and ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... felt certain, was one of elopement and seduction; and, superstitious as usual, I was sure that my good genius had sent me in the nick of time to save her and care for her, and in short to snatch her from the hands of her ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... dismasted and battered. As he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... Plumper, you're a medical man, just come in the nick of time. This gentleman here has been personating you for some reason or other, and the discovery caused the young lady to ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... (Turning round.) O Pamphilus, you are the very man I'm looking for. Well done, Charinus! both in the nick of time: I want ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... H—- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... from the sergeant, two or three dragoons were creeping under the wagon to fire from behind the wheels. I dropped a man standing at the horses' heads and then, in the nick of time and on second thoughts, made sure of the mare and hit her in the neck. She squealed, kicked, and plunged, and the other horse sharing her fears, they began to drag the wagon off. The sergeant and two or three men ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... occasion Jack shot another of the forty-foot pythons, which seemed to live in the river, but they saw nothing of the great buffalo herd. On the day they reached the waterhole a rhino charged down on the caravan and narrowly missed goring Bakari, but Schoverling managed to drop him in the nick of time. ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... brighter, and two pulses quicker; Ten minutes more of quiet talk unbroken, And heaven alone can tell what might be spoken! But it was not to be, for fates unequal Compelled—but this anticipates the sequel. Just in the nick of time, King Arthur rose From his sedate post-prandial repose, And called for lights. Along the shadowy aisles His pages' footsteps pattered o'er the tiles, Speeding to do his errand, and at once Four tapers flickered ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... representative?" he demanded abruptly. "And, how did it come that he arrived just in the nick of time?" ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... that didn't open the door 'in the nick of time'!" raced through Billy's grimly humorous mind, as he dodged the savage thrust of a knife the man had drawn and turned and scuttled across the court with the other on his heels. Through the arches he darted and then down into the garden, sprinting as he had never sprinted before, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... inquired in what names he should engage their seats. Then, for an instant, a horrible confusion nearly overcame the Baron. He—a von Blitzenberg—to give a false name! His color rose, he stammered, and only in the nick of time caught his companion's eye. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... not so very long: they had come almost in the nick of time: a few days and hours at the most, and all will then be over. So ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... kissed the singed brand it had been her mission to snatch in the nick of time and detained her in conversation with unusual empressement. Madeleine responded with an excessive politeness, and Mrs. Abbott learned for the first time that sweet brown eyes could glitter as coldly as her own protuberant orbs ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... of time for Nell, as all things, indeed, in life seemed to befall in the nick of time for her. The impious huswives shook their heads and attributed it to the evil influence; the pious huswives asserted it was providential; Nell herself laughingly declared it ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... looked in, Herapath's side had scored 35 goals against their adversaries' 29. The rules were strict Rugby, and nothing was wanted to complete the sport but an umpire. The captain arrived in the nick of time. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... ample for the security of the lenders, who, as members of religious communities, could not seek redress at law, and, moreover, those "lucky hits" which were made by penniless Europeans in former times by pecuniary help "just in the nick of time" were no longer possible, for every known channel of lucrative transaction was in time ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... said he, "Kill it! Kill it!" I saved my green friend in the nick of time. The man, with staring eyes, looked from me to the caterpillar; then he leaned over and watched ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... stricken men and horses. 'Practically all of them were dressed in khaki and had the water-bottles and haversacks of our soldiers. One of them snatched a bayonet from a dead man, and was about to despatch one of our wounded when he was stopped in the nick of time by a man in a black suit, who, I afterwards heard, was De la Rey himself...The feature of the action was the incomparable heroism of our dear old Colonel Wools-Sampson.' So wrote a survivor of B company, himself shot through the body. It was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bank, throwing off his coat as he ran. Then we took a sort of dumb fright, and tried to follow; but it was all over in a second, before we saw it, still less realized it—his struggle, swimming for dear life, and not gaining an inch; the stick held out to him in the nick of time, just as he passed a spot where the beast of a current that had ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... record that the deacon arrived, like Sheridan at Winchester, in the nick of time; that he rallied his flustered cohorts and led them to triumph—and then regretted the bargain he had made. But it was too late. He could not draw back. Wife and daughter and townsfolk were all against him, and he could not ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... immobility of the man whose money had come in the nick of time to save him from utter ruin, his voice died out ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Christobal calmly, "have turned up in some mysterious manner, just in the nick of time. A few minutes more, and they ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... well done," cried a man who just then stepped out of the bush. "If I hadn't come just in the nick of time it would have been the worse ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... men I love, and that love me, What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, covered with sweat and dust; In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge; Enter the captured works,...yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade, Pass, and are gone; they fade—I dwell not on soldiers' perils or ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... were on 73. By Gridley's orders, the two Ruffords and some others turned an engine loose to run down the road for a head-ender with the freight that was bringing the soldiers. Dawson chased the runaway engine with the coupled-up Nadia outfit, caught it just in the nick of time to prevent a collision with 73, and brought it back. He's down in the car now, with one of the young women crying on his ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... old Eb couldn't get me," she asserted. "Jesus sent ye jest in the nick of time, didn't ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... reflection, as an elderly gentleman, playing golf on a rainy day, takes his spectacles from his nose, and wipes the water-drops away, before venturing the decisive stroke of the game. Nothing escapes him; every thing is done in the nick of time. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, charge to the right or the left, or straight before them, dash through the enemy's front, or scour the flanks, or sweep the rear, perambulate squares, and perforate encampments, just as if the serried ranks of the Sikhs had been unsubstantial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... renewed peace of Lady Richard's mind, alas for the returning quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me; she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and again fall, could hardly ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... in the nick of time, and the inquiry was squashed, thanks to the Angersthorpe interest, and my grandmother's cleverness. But if he had lived a few weeks longer England would have rung with the story of his profligacy and dishonour. Some people say he committed ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... steps, however, the sound of running water halted me, and just in the nick of time, for I was walking straight into a ditch. By peering hard into the darkness and feeling my way I found a bridge. Then it did not take long to reach the light. But it was a saloon, and not the hotel. One peep into it served ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... something better than matches," growled Watson. He had just been saved from pitching out upon the roadside by the quick efforts of one of his companions, who had seized him around the waist in the nick of time. Andrews went to the forward platform of ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... fellow to have in a sick-room. Get something and dry that off the floor there, please.—Well, March, I understand you got there in the nick of time to-day. Mr. Remsen says you saved us ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... slightly and was on the point of losing her balance, she awoke so quickly that she saved herself just in the nick of time. ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... off the cross-gun of young Paul. He had seen everything in the story and had taken aim at the said Indian just in the nick of time. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... a month pension for the past forty years and had made it possible for him to live in comfort. A crippled woman who, with her four children, had at one time seemed likely to become a public charge and who had been relieved in the nick of time by a legacy, now told the real ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... wrote in the nick of time. The whole thing was just being given up for lack of funds. Now I have told him he may spend what he pleases, so long as he does ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saw the Saint Pierre rounding Cape San Engano. Subsequently observing that she was becalmed, they waited for nightfall, when they stole a boat that lay on the shore and pulled out towards our ship, just avoiding capture in the nick of time; the regiment of black soldiers Salomon had sent after them having hit upon their trail and being so close up behind that they were able to open fire on them ere the boat got into deep water, two of the fugitive patriots being struck by the ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... drowning man's collar and clambered to safety. Then they will tell you how Victor, who had managed to gain shore when he saw Rene reach the rock, plunged in again, straight into the roaring chute, of how he reached Forgan in the nick of time, of how the two bodies disappeared completely from view in the foaming white water, and of how a quarter of a mile below, by means of Herculean effort and a bit of luck, Victor managed to gain the eddy of a side ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... little ominous whirlpools not caused by wind. Presently there emerged a long shadow, like a black expanse of rock:—unmistakably a mugger. And in that moment she felt exquisitely grateful to the hand that had seized her in the nick of time. The next—she wrung her own together with a low, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... his dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of time by Jasper. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... traits of the earthly parents? These hypotheses not being very satisfactory, will it be claimed that God creates these spirits as fast as children are born to need them? and if so, who brings them down just in the nick of time? and by what process are they incarnated? But if God has, by special act, created a soul or spirit for every member of the human family since Adam, is it not a contradiction of Gen. 2:2, which declares that all God's work of creation, so far as it pertains to this world, was ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... Capt. Noah, and the Ark was turned in the direction pointed out by the faithful lookout. Then Mr. Jonah leaned over and pulled in the life-preserver as the Ark slowly came alongside, and just in the nick of time, for the poor ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... that will drive a modest girl to boldness, such as I have shown ever since the day I first met you at dear old Basel. It almost broke my heart when father—fatherland—when Burgundy made war on Switzerland." The word "land" was a lucky thought, and came to the girl just in the nick of time. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... but I must beg of you for the sake of the ladies to give up this out-of-the-way place, and come close, up to the settlement. We feel that we cannot leave you out here unprotected. Think of what would have happened if we had not arrived in the nick of time." ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... against a wall and the blood streaming from his wounds, he was making a desperate stand. Three citizens who had run upon his knife, lay squirming at his feet; but the odds were too great. In another moment all would have been over with him had it not been for the Captain who chanced upon him in the nick of time. Snatching a club from one of his assailants and accompanying each blow with a volley of Spanish oaths, he rushed through the mob, scattering it in all directions. Whether it was the oaths or the Captain's exhibition of his fighting qualities ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... made use of, as they had not had occasion to send the appeal therein mentioned. It is evident that at that time Dr. Jameson believed that his plans were so well arranged that there would be no bloodshed, that, indeed, he would appear in the nick of time to afford the "moral support" he had originally engaged to provide. The troops were to go straight to Johannesburg before the Boers had time to assemble their forces or to take any measures to stop him. The Doctor explained that they were marching to the rescue of the oppressed, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... amazing time then, of course. They laughed and questioned and explained until the dinner was in imminent danger of getting stone-cold on the dining-room table. Luckily, Alma and Frances remembered it just in the nick of time, and they all got out, somehow, and into their places. It was a splendid dinner, but I believe that Maxwell and Bertha Seeley didn't know what they were eating, any more than if it had been sawdust. However, the rest of the guests made up for that, and did full ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enough, you are in the nick of time to help materially. Will you ring off, and find out from the exchange who 'phoned here two minutes ago? I don't mean Fenley's Bank, which is just trying to get through. I want to know who made the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... you came in the nick of time," she said, looking up with kindly eyes. "It's just frozen. I'll dish you up some now, if you will run up to the pantry and fetch ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... this man, at last, sir," gulped Fitzroy, flustered, but making valiant effort at control, "as you see, sir, only in the nick of time." ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... approached the summit of the Durrnberg, the dry brownish limestone showed its bare front to the morning sun. We entered the offices, partly contained in the rock, and applied for admission into the dominion of the gnomes. Our arrival was quite in the nick of time, for we had not to be kept waiting, as we happened to complete the party of twelve, without which the guides do not start. It was a Tower of London business; and, as at the Tower, the demand upon our purses was not very heavy. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... pause, said: "By Jove! how lucky, Miss Daisy. You've come in the nick of time. Just finished our pool. Now you and Mrs. Halton shall play a single and I shall mark ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... so?" quoth he. "O husband mine," replied the lady, "he was taken but now, all of a sudden, with a fainting fit, so that I thought he was dead: and what to do or say I knew not, had not Fra Rinaldo, our sponsor, come just in the nick of time, and set him on his shoulder, and said:—'Gossip, 'tis that he has worms in his body, and getting, as they do, about the heart, they might only too readily be the death of him; but fear not; I will say a charm that will kill ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... stooped over to blow greater life into the struggling blaze which started up, he heard a rustling in the leaves on the hill behind him, in the direction opposite that in which his friends were. Like a flash he sprang away from the fire into the half-darkness which filled the valley. He was in the nick of time. A rifle cracked and a bullet threw up the ashes and sent the sparks flying where his head had been ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... weakness of our navy, and the unprotected position of our seaports, Chili instantly dispatched her three ironclads to New York. They made the voyage with remarkable celerity, stopping only for coal and provisions, and reached the beleaguered city just in the nick of time, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... extraordinary thing, but I never knew a doctor called into any case yet but what it transpired that another day's delay would have rendered cure hopeless. Our medical guide, philosopher, and friend is like the hero in a melodrama—he always comes upon the scene just, and only just, in the nick of time. It is Providence, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... certainly did seem to be a fate in the way young Mr. Wescott just happened up to camp in the nick of time to find our guardian and fall in love with her, worse luck," and Lucile vindictively kicked a stone from the path as though it were the meddling Mr. Wescott himself. "And then to think he should like Jim, a poor little country boy, well enough to take him along with him ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... a villain himself," said Random grimly. "However, Cockatoo arrived unluckily on the scene, and when he found she had parted with the emerald, and had written out the truth, he stabbed her. If we hadn't come just in the nick of time, he would have annexed that confession, and the truth would never have become known. No one," ended Random, rising and stretching himself, "would connect Braddock or Cockatoo with the death of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Hazelton entered into the play with great zest. Just in the nick of time he leaped at Greg, tackled him and bore ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... husband was helpless and ill, and the bailiffs were after him. The circumstances, as you may read for yourself, were all in her favor, and were so well managed by her that the lawyers themselves acknowledged she might have succeeded, if the supposed drowned man had not turned up alive and well in the nick of time to confront her. The scene took place at the lawyer's office, and came out in the evidence at the police court. The woman was handsome, and the sailor was a good-natured man. He wanted, at first, if ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... summer," he said, turning to Phil, "I was only two years old, and that Otter punished me so severely that but for Mother Beaver there, who came to my rescue in the nick of time, I should have been done for. But now—well, he will ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the perambulator alone in a field where there was a bull. The animal became enraged by the red blanket in the perambulator, and Heaven knows what might have happened if a gentleman had not been walking by in the nick of time, and rescued Katharine in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... about the hidden parts: let nature have endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star fails you in the nick of time."—Juvenal, ix. 32.] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any plagiarism, either, because ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... assured her, as they walked on, that Diodoros had always been born to good luck; and it was clear that this had never been truer than now, when Galenus had come in the nick of time to restore him to life and health, and when he had won such a bride as Melissa. Then she sang the praises of Agatha, of her beauty and goodness, and told her that the Christian damsel had made many inquiries concerning Alexander. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... just about to surrender, when the noble young Brave, Ipecacuanha, dashed forth, and sprang into the fray, rescuing the maiden just in the nick of time. Holding the paleface, who lay limp and gasping in his left arm, the young Indian madly fought the other two of his own tribe with his strong right arm. Apparently he, too, had a tomahawk, for he fearfully brandished an imaginary ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... diversion occurred just in the nick of time. It was Joyce, the new member, the owner of the canneries, who had just built a new house with electric appliances, and owned the best car in town. He was a stickler for proprieties, but he was a great admirer of the minister, and he had been ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... one and a half tons at rest on the orbit of the planet. Indeed, the vitiated air, escaping from the car through a small hole by its own pressure, would probably serve the purpose. Just before the planet came up, and in the nick of time we could fire some rockets, and give the car a velocity of two or three miles a second in the direction of the planet's motion, so that he would overtake us, with a speed not over great to ensure a safe descent. Our parachutes would be out, and at the first contact with the atmosphere, the car would ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... almost up to our own: a river-god, bearded, crown of reeds, urn, general dampness and uproariousness of temper, all quite correct; and a nymph, whom he pursues, who prays to the Virgin huntress to save her from his love, and who, just in the nick of time, is metamorphosed into a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a dozen instances, and which immediately brings up to the mind a vision of grand-ducal gardens, where, among the clipped ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... time she had not seen me, or even known of my insignificant existence; but suddenly, as though it were a sally of banter whose blade he parried in the nick of time, her laughter-bathed eyes darted past him and squarely met my own; her lips sobered into a half parted expression of interest and, some strange thought—perhaps unbidden—coming into her mind, sent the blood surging to her cheeks. As quickly as this ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... to introduce you to HARRY," said the ex-Bride. "You must know one another. I was going to marry him when you, darling, turned up just in the nick of time, like a dear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... from a variety of sources not ostensibly connected with Bagford, Fenn, or any other culprit of this type, shewing that the process of disappearance was in universal operation, and that mere chance arrested it here and there just in the nick of time. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt |
