"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three-quarters of an hour to climb the series of precipitous zigzags by which this remarkable pass is surmounted; darkness came on, accompanied by thunder and lightning, and just as we arrived a tremendous zigzag of blue flame lit up the house and its interior, showing a large group sitting round a wood fire, and then all was thick darkness again. It had a most startling effect. This house is magnificently situated, almost hanging over the edge of the knife-like ridge of the pass of Kuruma, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... hair hanging down their backs and silver chainlets. They began at last to mount the road in zigzags among forests of oak and beech; little by little the marvellous horizon displayed itself on the left; at each turn of the zigzag, rivers, valleys with their spires pointing upward came into view, and far away in the distance, the hoary head of the Finsteraarhorn, whitening ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the earth to note the darkening sky. The tempest broke upon us unawares. The wind fairly roared through the branches high above us; blinding flashes of lightning blazed in the shadows of the wood. Huge boughs were wrenched bodily off by the blast. Streaks of flame ran zigzag down the sides of the tall, straight hemlocks. The forest fairly rocked under the convulsion of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... and entered Blackmore Vale. Coggan's watch struck one. When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as to form a sort of zigzag if united, like ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... views of the Angel Plateau may be obtained than from Yavapai Point, and an excellent outlook over the narrow break in the great wall, where the shattering of the strata and the deposition of talus and vegetable matter made possible the building of the zigzag portion of the trail near the top. The faulting of the strata is clearly seen, and the observer will not fail to note that the strata of the left arm of El Tovar Amphitheatre are thrust up some one hundred to two hundred feet above the level of the same strata upon which El Tovar ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... sit, when the weather is pleasant, and read, or drink their tea or coffee, or explore, with an opera glass, or a spy glass, the scenery around. They can see the towers and castles across the river, and follow the little paths leading in zigzag lines up among the vineyards to the watchtowers, and pavilions, and belvideres, that are built on the pinnacles of the rocks, or on the summits ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... turning back and rounding up a scattered flock which Ferris himself could not have bunched in twenty times the space of minutes. Chum, he noted, did not touch one of the foolish beasts. His bark and his zigzag dashes served the purpose, without the aid of teeth or of ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... ease. He followed his guide mechanically as they made their way, in zigzag fashion, down the precipitous slopes and over slippery plateaus; and when at last he came in sight of the mighty arch, the long cavern, and the glimmer of sea and shore that could be seen through it, he began to put down the outlines of the picture as rapidly as possible, but with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... they then proceed to feed extensively. Spreading out from one another, and proceeding in a zigzag course, they smash and destroy all the finest trees in the forest which happen to lie in their course. The number of goodly trees which a herd of bull elephants will thus destroy is utterly incredible. They are extremely capricious, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... after dinner and saw, close in front of me, what looked to be some curious electric-light sign. It seemed odd in war time, and I stared for a moment before I saw that this strange design was really the black, opposite bank with its zigzag streams of lamps. ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... walking, as it were, on nothing in space. With fingers and toes he stuck himself like a leech to the broken surfaces of the rock wall, feeling for the cracks and crannies, the stone edgings, the little pockets in the masonry that he himself had laid. He climbed upwards in a zigzag, slowly, steadily, groping above his head for the next clutch, clinging, crawling like a spider over the surface of sheer rock. As he rose foot by foot he became clearly visible in the red light of the flames, a dark shadow stretched against the blank surface above the gulf. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... bank of clouds had commenced to move upward now. Yes, and when Andy looked, he could see the sudden wicked gleam of the zigzag lightning as it shot athwart the ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... center north and south the Cascade mountains in a zigzag course lift their clustered peaks and mountain passes from four to eight thousand feet above the sea, while Mount Olympus and his colleagues higher still poke their inspiring [Page 17] front heavenward. Between these two white and green clad mountain ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... Sacsahuaman, which stood upon a steep and rocky hill overlooking the capital. On the side toward the city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed by stone portcullis, in each wall. Within the walls was a citadel of three tall towers. The whole constituted a most ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the fiery flood. It wound in a zigzag serpentine course down the side of the hill, and soon reached the thick wood at its base and at the head of the valley. The stately forest withered, blazed for a brief moment, and vanished in its fatal embrace, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... fervoro. Zealot fervorulo. Zealous fervora. Zebra zebro. Zenith zenito. Zephyr venteto. Zero nulo. Zest gusto. Zigzag zigzago. Zinc zinko. Zinc-worker zinkisto. Zodiac zodiako. Zone terzono. Zoology zoologio. Zoophyte zoofito. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... it followed infallibly that I was quickly roused with a start, while the words "Basseterre," "Guadaloupe," seemed pronounced over my pillow, or ran athwart the darkness round and before me, in zigzag characters of red ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... murmuring noon He turns it to a lyric sweeter, With birds that gossip in the tune, And windy bough-swing in the metre; Or else the zigzag fruit-tree arms Recall some dream of harp-prest bosoms, Round singing mouths, and chanted charms, And ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... surprise in the streets of Maraucourt when the villagers saw the head of the firm seated beside a little girl wearing a hat of black straw and a black dress, who was gravely driving old Coco at a straight trot instead of the zigzag course that William forced the old animal to take in spite of herself. What was happening? Where was this little girl going? They questioned one another as they stood at the doors, for few people ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... abruptly, the hawk flew on over the tops of the hillocks, making unexpected zigzag rushes to right and left. But wherever he went, there the villagers had vanished, almost as if the wind of his approach had whisked them away. Baffled and indignant, he at last gave up the hope of a dinner of prairie dog, and dropped ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... any rate, on rounding the next corner of the ascending road, he saw a small village lying beneath him in the valley. Immediately below him, at the foot of what was almost a precipice, approached only by a rough zigzag path, lay a little river; the village was directly opposite across the stream, but the road, despairing of such a dip, swerved sharp off to his left, and, descending gradually, circled one end of the valley till it came to a bridge and thence made its way round to the ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... all I knew, whate'er his tongue In idle arrogance hath flung. 'Tis the world's way, the common lot— Foe tortures foe and pities not. Therefore I challenge him to dash His bolt on me, his zigzag flash Of piercing, rending flame! Now be the welkin stirred amain With thunder-peal and hurricane, And let the wild winds now displace From its firm poise and rooted base The stubborn earthly frame! The raging sea with stormy surge Rise up and ravin and ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... square building or garden, but this is only a conventional way of saying "the four sides." If you were speaking of the actual brickwork, you would say, "I am going to enclose this square garden with a wall." Angles clearly do not affect the question, for we may have a zigzag wall just as well as a straight one, and the Great Wall of China is a good example of a wall with plenty of angles. Now, if you look at Diagrams 1, 2, and 3, you may be puzzled to declare whether there are in each case two or four ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... mountain-tops than when we started. Though we gazed down so far that all things on the sea level had shrunk into nothingness, and the big warship we had seen in coming was no larger than a beetle, we gazed still farther up to the line where sky and mountain met. And always, there were the grey-white, zigzag lines scored on the ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Tom. He hurriedly set the delicate device that would fly the ship in a preplanned course of zigzag maneuvers and opened the circuits of ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... the ground. River-bank is followed where possible; but where windfall or precipice drives back from the bed of the river over the mountain spurs, the pathfinder takes his bearings from countless signs. Moss is on the north side of tree-trunks. A steep slope compels a zigzag, corkscrew ascent, but the slope of the ground guides the climber as to the way to go; for slope means valley; and in valleys are streams; and in the stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one shining signal to be followed. Timber-line is passed till ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... is a wonder how she had stood the latter at all—and when, with a subdued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself in flight, she nearly fell to the ground before righting herself and flying in a zigzag heavily across the lawn. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... his cigarette down into the back-garden that fringed the Park, leaning over to watch its zigzag flight ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of pushing through the ice rather tiresome. An opening of twenty or thirty yards would be found here and there, then a close pack that had to be opened by pushing the smaller bergs aside with poles. I enjoyed the labor, however, for the fine lessons I got, and in an hour or two we found zigzag lanes of water, through which we paddled with but little interruption, and had leisure to study the wonderful variety of forms the bergs presented as we glided past them. The largest we saw did not greatly exceed two hundred ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... fire until they are needed in the firing trench to repel a serious assault or to take part in a counter attack. Passages consisting of deep communicating trenches facilitate passage from the cover trenches to the firing trenches when under fire. These communicating trenches are usually zigzag or traversed to prevent their being ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... lightning was uninterrupted, and you could have read a book, or counted the trees, or viewed the lake by its constant blaze; while now and anon a wilder volley exploded, and a more furious flash flew its zigzag flight from the zenith to ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... a zigzag course, and the way was strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but out of the wreckage John Quincy Adams always appeared, calm, poised and serene. When he opposed the purchase of Louisiana it ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and near. The kite, without the support of its line, soon begins to flutter downwards. It is an established tradition that it becomes the property of the person into whose hands it falls. The original owner is rarely able to get near enough to secure it. Its zigzag course makes it problematical where it will fall. Generally those who think they are going to get it are disappointed by a final flutter, which takes it out of their reach into another pair of outstretched hands. Not unfrequently nobody gets it, because ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... be taken together, as the tourist is constantly compelled to zigzag across the new frontier. Many of the most interesting points of departure for excursionizing in the Vosges lie in Alsace-Lorraine, while few travellers who have got so far as Grardmer or St. Di will not be tempted to continue ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the honour of yielding precedence, Chichikov succeeded in making his way (in zigzag fashion) to the dining-room, where they found awaiting them a couple of youngsters. These were Manilov's sons, and boys of the age which admits of their presence at table, but necessitates the continued use of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... narrow, noisy, zigzag street, crowded with trucks and obstructed with bales and boxes of merchandise. I didn't pause to breathe until I had placed a respectable distance between me and the railway station. By this time it ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... called, "and don't drop the melon. Run zigzag. He can't hit you so well then," and Horatio himself began such a performance of running first one way and then the other that Bo was almost obliged to laugh in spite of ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tread upon it. It is the more dangerous because it is apt to vary in colour, according to the locality which it frequents, and therefore is the less easily observed. The colour is always some shade of brown, from a dull yellow to an olive tint; but it may be specially known by the zigzag, black markings along the back, and its broad head, with V-shaped mark in the centre. Its length is from a foot to a foot-and-a-half, although specimens have been killed as long as four feet. (“Naturalist,” 1895, p. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... roll and came together again with more scraping and snapping of rigging. Passengers left the rail, dived indoors, and took refuge on the opposite side, where falling blocks and small spars might not reach them. Another leap toward the steamer resulted in the ship's maintopgallantmast falling in a zigzag whirl, as the snapping gear aloft impeded it; and dropping athwart the steamer's funnel, it neatly sent the royal-yard with sail attached down the iron cylinder, where it soon blazed and helped the artificial draft in the stoke-hold. Next came the foretopgallantmast, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... upon their course, until they came to the brow of a steep descent, down which the path ran in a zigzag manner, through a dark, gloomy ravine, now rendered intensely so to our travelers, by the hour, their thoughts, the wildness of the scenery around, and the dense growth of cedars covering the hollow, whose ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... hasty sign of assent and adieu, and moving away from the pillar, again found himself pushed towards the middle of the piazza and back again, without the power of determining his own course. In this zigzag way he was earned along to the end of the piazza opposite the church, where, in a deep recess formed by an irregularity in the line of houses, an entertainment was going forward which seemed to be especially attractive to the crowd. Loud bursts of laughter interrupted a monologue which was ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... like one bewildered, shook his head and glided past; Huddling whispers hurried after, hissing in the howling blast! Now a sheet of lurid splendour swept athwart the mountain spire, And a midnight squall came trumping down on zigzag paths of fire! Through the tumult dashed a torrent flanking out in foaming streams, Whilst the woodlands groaned and muttered like a monster vexed with dreams. Then I swooned away in horror. Oh! that shriek which rent the air, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... man to push behind, the rickshaws had brought them up a zigzag hill to a cautious wooden gateway half open in a ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... others they tower in lofty, needle-like peaks, which even the chamois can not scale, and where scarcely a flake of snow can find a place of rest. Around and among these peaks and summits, and through these frightful defiles and chasms, the roads twist and turn, in a zigzag and constantly ascending course, creeping along the most frightful precipices, sometimes beneath them and sometimes on the brink, penetrating the darkest and gloomiest defiles, skirting the most impetuous ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... their women and children into the outer enclosure of the ancient stronghold, and with them their sheep and goats and the few cattle which remained to them, were employed in building up the entrance permanently with stones, a zigzag secret path upon the river side, that could be stopped in a few minutes, being now their only method of ingress and egress through the thickness of the walls. A certain number of men were also sent out as spies to discover, if ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... the Forecaster, "and you'll find that there are no two flashes of lightning that look alike. Some of them are several miles long. One thing you will notice at once, Ralph, and that is that lightning is never zigzag, the way you see it in pictures, but runs in an irregular line, winding ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... companion ran after some of the girls, and their discordant shouts and laughs could be heard in the distance, mingled with the 'Ave Maria' sung by groups of woman and girls who were mounting the zigzag path towards Nemi, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... each front confine. O'er all sage Washington his arm extends, Points every movement, every work defends, Bids closer quarters, bloodier strokes proceed, New batteries blaze and heavier squadrons bleed. Line within line fresh parallels enclose; Here runs a zigzag, there a mantlet grows, Round the pent foe approaching breastworks rise, And bombs, like meteors, vault the flaming skies. Night, with her hovering wings, asserts in vain The shades, the silence of her rightful reign; High roars ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... pious drinking of the cistern's water as they came away—a few pausing to buy some "blest" token of their visit at the adjacent shop—and the solemn silence that reigned over all, were the chief features that made the scene one from which we were only too glad to turn away. Taking the zigzag path among the pleasant trees and shrubs, on the right, we soon reached the level of the Gothic church, which we entered from the farther end. Ascending the steps, the two statues on either side of the porch came in view, but neither ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... manner of opening communication with parties known or supposed to be hostile is to ride toward them in zigzag manner, or to ride in a circle. (Custer's My Life on the Plains, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... fossils the germs of numerous designs developed in almost every department of art; but merely to enumerate them would require a volume. One form of the old classic lamp was that of the nautilus; another, that of Gyphaea incurva; the zigzag mouldings of the Norman Gothic may be found in the carinated oysters of the Greensand; the more delicate frettings of similar form which roughened the pillars of a somewhat later age occur on Conularia and the dorsal spines of Gyracanthus. The old corals, too, abound in ornamental patterns, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... "But the instant I cut Tyee loose, he went limping off, picking up his master's trail. It was a zigzag course up the face of a ridge into a grove of spruce. Weatherbee took a course like a husky; location was a sixth sense to him; yet I found his tracks up there, winding aimlessly. It had stopped snowing then, but ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... partly recruited from the country itself, partly despatched from the banks of the Nile, dwelt in an entrenched camp upon an isolated peak at the confluence of Wady Genneh and Wady Maghara. A zigzag pathway on its smoothest slope ends, about seventeen feet below the summit, at the extremity of a small and slightly inclined tableland, upon which are found the ruins of a large village; this is the High ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... under some distorted and monstrous form. To all the facts and forms of nature it wilfully and resolutely opposes itself; it will not draw a man, but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zigzag. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... zigzag of fire crossed the windows, and the house shook in the almost immediate crash. Like a child Joyselle threw his arms round Brigit and hid his face against the embroidery on her corsage, holding her tight. It seemed to her an eternity before either of them moved, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... window of leaded glass Mistress Yordas and her widowed sister sat for an hour, without many words, watching the zigzag of shale and rock which formed their chief communication with the peopled world. They did not care to improve their access, or increase their traffic; not through cold morosity, or even proud indifference, but because they had been so brought up, and so confirmed by circumstance. For the Yordas ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... things. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was born in the year Eighteen Hundred Nine, at Hamburg, and died at Leipzig in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven. His career was a triumphal march. The road to success with him was no zigzag journey—from the first he went straight to the front. Whether as a baby he crowed in key, and cried to a one-two-three melody, as his old nurse used to aver, is a little doubtful, possibly. But all agree that he was the most precocious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... who might soon be dying. One day the sick man was resting. Dr. Campbell went to the window to look out a little, while he was waiting. It was very early now in the southern springtime. The trees were just beginning to get the little zigzag crinkles in them, which the young buds always give them. The air was soft and moist and pleasant to them. The earth was wet and rich and smelling for them. The birds were making sharp fresh noises all around them. The wind was very gentle and yet ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... incredible quantities of water, and as our position was not yet very safe, we again resumed our march at a brisk trot. We travelled three or four more miles along the foot of a high ridge, and discovered what seemed to be an Indian trail, leading in a zigzag course up the side of it. This we followed, and soon found ourselves on the summit of the ridge. There we were again gratified at finding spread out before us a perfectly level prairie, extending as far as the eye could ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... of molecules, both in liquids and in gases, is so minute as to be beyond the reach of the most powerful microscope. This free path in liquids is a zigzag course, owing to the perpetual collisions with other molecules. The molecular behavior of liquids differs from that of gases only in what is called surface tension. Liquids have a skin, a peculiar stress of the surface molecules; gases do not, but tend to dissipate and fill all space. A drop ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... sashes, who stood up while handling their oars, rowed us to the shore. Their brightly painted boats had peculiar carved wooden posts erected at prow and stern and white awnings overhead. Walking up a sloping, zigzag pathway, constructed in a passage cut down through the high cliffs, we ascended from the busy docks to the heights above. At the summit a Maltese gentleman kindly directed us on our way to the Queen's Garden located directly above the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... height, stood frowning over us like a huge bluff wall, which at first sight it appeared quite impossible any camel could surmount. At 9 A.M. we reached this steep, and commenced the stiffest and last ascent up a winding, narrow goat-path, having sharp turns at the extremity of every zigzag, and with huge projecting stones, which seemed to bid defiance to the passage of the camels' bodies. Indeed, it was very marvellous, with their long spindle-shanks and great splay feet, and the awkward boxes on their backs striking constantly against every ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... be impaled upon snags and sawyers; that is to say, sunken trees, presenting a jagged or pointed end above the surface of the water. As the channel of the river frequently shifted from side to side according to the bends and sand-banks, the boat had, in the same way, to advance in a zigzag course. Often a part of the crew would have to leap into the water at the shallows, and wade along with the towing line, while their comrades on board toilfully assisted with oar and setting pole. Sometimes the boat would seem to be retained motionless, as if spell-bound, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... wilderness of stone. Foxes and wolves trotted over open places, watching stealthily. All around dark mountain peaks stood up. The afternoon was far advanced when Kells started to descend again, and he rode a zigzag course on weathered slopes and over brushy benches, down and down ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... field darts in swift zigzag a gleam of blue; then, perched on a fence-rail, sends a thrilling song. The bluebird is the true voice of early spring, as is the bobolink of later spring. Bobolinks and apple-blossoms come together in the prodigal time of May. Our Northern spring is ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... what guest she chose, or accompanied only by her official companion or by her maid. Systematically she drove everywhere, once alone with her maid, once with each of the other Vestals, often with her mother, often with Flexinna. It gave her great pleasure to drive up the long zigzag approach to the Capitol, where no human being save the Vestals and the Empress might be driven, and where few Empresses had ever ventured to drive, to have her carriage halted before the great Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, where no carriage except the carriages of the Vestals had ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... all night, the thunder roared, the lightning, darting forth from the dark sky, flashed ever and anon, in a zigzag course, from side to side of the cliffs around the bay, and the howling wind threatened frequently to tear off the sail and carry it away. Still the weary seamen slept, although Harry and young Bass did not for a long time ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... scorching and Pop was tired. He decided to rest in the barren field, at its very edge in shade of the woods. He climbed the zigzag fence with some labour and at the expense of a few of his cherries. He sat down upon a little knob of earth, took off his hat, drew a red handkerchief from the inside thereof, and slowly wiped ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... finger and part of my hand shocked me with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted and wrenched out of joint all at the ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... waddled Zigzag, you can trace in their tracks, And the dear little ducklings that toddled And tumbled sometimes ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... dark polishes floors and strips of Indian matting, cool chintz coverings, and furniture of the simplest maple and pine wood —a charming summer retreat, fitted up with unostentatious taste. There was a tiny garden at the back, shut in by a low chalk cliff, a rough zigzag path that goats might have climbed led to the downs, and there was a breach where we could enjoy the sweet ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... world, and you see San Francisco spread out below you as multicolored as a rug of Kermanshah. No other city in the two Americas, not excepting Quebec or Rio de Janeiro, so overwhelms the beholder with its vistas—with its luminous enchantments. At night the lights of the city zigzag in patterns of distracting loveliness, and Market street reaches from the foot of the mountain to the Embarcadero like the tail of some flaming comet athwart ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, A zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts Looked in like ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that; of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed this fissure rapidly widened; there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... certainly did take—about that there was no mistake—but never two of equal length, and the cart was rolling in a zigzag all the time. What a funny horse it was. It looked as if it was made of odd parts, so bony and misshapen was it. No two parts matched, and its limbs groaned and ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... fighting live in underground quarters. Some of these quarters, called "funk-holes" are quite elaborate and comfortable and contain many conveniences not found in the trenches on the firing line. They communicate with the firing line by zigzag approach ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... dropped between its banks, and the woods and the hills were gone. The tide ran heavily against the shore, and the wake of the wherry broke the floating stars into cold white streaks and zigzag ripplings of raveled light that ran unsteadily after them. The craft at anchor in the Pool had swung about upon the flow, and pointed down to Greenwich. A hush had fallen upon the never-ending bustle of the town; and the air was full of a gray, uncanny afterglow which seemed to come up out of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to him, "All right!" and made for that point. There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... with hard, shiny wing-covers on their backs and soft, fuzzy velvet underneath, flew out at dusk, twenty or thirty of them, as likely as not, would make a luncheon for Mis the clown. For he was lean and hungry, and he ate and ate and ate; but he never grew fat. He hunted zigzag through the twilight of the evening and the twilight of the dawn. When the nights were bright and game was plenty, he hunted zigzag through the moonlight. When the day was dull and insects were on the wing, he hunted, though it was high noon. And many a midnight rambler going home from the theatre ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... walking along the edge of the green mound on which the Montmartre telegraph stands. Below me, along one of the zigzag paths which wind up the hill, a man and a girl were coming up, and arrested my attention. The man wore a shaggy coat, which gave him some resemblance to a wild beast; and he held a thick stick in his hand, with which he described ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... town Wampus turned into a smooth, hard wagon road that ran in zigzag fashion near the railroad grade. The car bowled along right merrily for some twenty miles, when the driver turned to the right and skimmed along a high plateau. It was green and seemed fertile, but scarcely ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... simple, and were decorated with a "peculiar and shallow class of notched ornament", of which many examples exist in other buildings of the period; while the mouldings of William of Sens "exhibit much variety, but are most remarkable for the profusion of billet-work, zigzag and dogtooth, that are lavished upon them." The first two methods of ornamentation are Norman, the last an Early English characteristic. This mixture is not confined to the details of decoration ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... any more; I know the rest," Saunders said, under his breath. "I congratulate you. I congratulate you with all my heart." He held out his hand, but Mostyn warded it off, his cigar cutting red zigzag lines in the darkness. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... there was "no place of repentance" for him, and fled from it, it still pursued him, "holloaing after him, 'Return, return!'" And return he did, but not all at once, or without many a fresh struggle. With his usual graphic power he describes the zigzag path by which he made his way. His hot and cold fits alternated with fearful suddenness. "As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him up." "His life hung in doubt, not knowing which way he should tip." More sensible evidence came. "One day," he tells ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... attained these groves, through which the wintry sea-wind was now whistling hoarse and shrill, she seemed to pause a moment as if to recollect the way. 'We maun go the precise track,' she said, and continued to go forward, but rather in a zigzag and involved course than according to her former steady and direct line of motion. At length she guided them through the mazes of the wood to a little open glade of about a quarter of an acre, surrounded by trees and bushes, which made a wild and irregular boundary. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to be truth in this, for Gillie, having fixed the staff as a lever, was pulling at it with all his might. The projection of rock on which he stood, and which overhung the zigzag road, was partially concealed by bushes, so that the precise intention of his ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... surely it is to be credited with being distinctly diagnostic in those diseases of which it has itself established the 'curve.'" By the thermometric "curve" of a disease is understood the general visual impression made by the graphic chart of a temperature record—the course of a zigzag line connecting the points indicated by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... so hung as best to move in it." Pleasing, yes; but not beautiful. And precisely herein is illustrated the distinction. A life wearied with an undulating uniformity of days will find beauty less in the curve than in the zigzag, because the sight of the broken line brings to the spirit suggestions of change and adventure. A supine temper finds shock, excitement, and a meaning in the vertical. Yet the significance of forms is not determined ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... tying such things as knives, old bayonets, and spear-heads, to the muzzles of the useless muskets. Then, there was a second armed line, under Sergeant Drooce, also across the width of the enclosure, but facing to the gate. Then came the breastwork we had made, with a zigzag way through it for me and my little party to hold good in retreating, as long as we could, when we were driven from the gate. We all knew that it was impossible to hold the place long, and that our only hope was in ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... happened more or less at one and the same time. Cellette giggled and squirmed. Then the boy got angry and cried, 'Will you keep still? and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her! Shook Cellette till her little head went zig-zag-zigzag. It took her the sixteenth part of a second to get to her feet, and when she slapped him I myself saw stars. At the same time I saw her face, and I yelled, 'Run, boy! Run!' For a second he stood paralyzed with wonder,—just ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... if that could be called a stairway which was as difficult of ascent as a ladder, was through a closet by the side of the donjon chimney, and the logs had been so arranged without and within that the space occupied by the narrow and zigzag stairs was not apparent. Up these stairs he took Julia, leaving her in a closet above. As this closet was situated alongside the chimney, it opened, of course, into the small corner room which I have before described, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... before us. We had no difficulty in following it up the lesser heights, around the base. It wound on over rock and bog, among the heather and broom with which the mountain is covered, sometimes running up a steep acclivity and then winding zigzag round a rocky ascent. The rains two days before had made the bogs damp and muddy; but, with this exception, we had little ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... an odd chap. When he was still he liked to hang by his feet, upside down. And when he was flying he sailed about in a zigzag, helter-skelter fashion. He went in so many different directions, turning this way and that, one could never tell where he was going. One might say that his life was just one continual dodge—when he wasn't resting with his heels where his ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... portions of the old stone staircases which led to the principal room occupying the whole of the upper story. This upper room was lighted by three Norman windows on each side, enriched with the billet, zigzag, and rosette mouldings. At the north end the arch and shafts remain of a large window decorated with the familiar chevron ornament. Near the centre of the east wall is a fireplace with a very early specimen of a round chimney, which has, however, been restored. In ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... life. This was the first stage in the making of an Indian stoic. Every part of the cradle was symbolical. That the child's life might be preserved, the heart of a tree was used for the cradle board. Along the wooden bow above the child's head, which symbolized the sky, zigzag furrows were cut to represent lightning, the power of which was designated by suspended arrows. Through holes in the upper part of the board was threaded a leather thong, or burden-strap, which Tecumapease ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... the zigzag mountain peaks so short a distance beyond the north gate. As if to give her words weight, a heavy thunder of guns ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... which was full of fun, and I began to suspect that things were not to go as smoothly as when I was taught on the lake. "We cannot ascend this steep hill straight forward, for the skees would slip backward. We must ascend in zigzag," said Joseff; and then with his staff he showed me how we were to go. "Follow my furrow, then it will be easier for you," said he. I found it hard enough, and slow work. When we reached the top of the hill we were very warm, though that day it was 32 degrees ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... speed ahead on a zigzag course. We were in the most deadly submarine infested zone of the ocean. Only yesterday the Susquehanna had been torpedoed in these very waters, and, no doubt, the same evil periscopes were watching us now from beyond ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... is a narrow depression in the ridge, commanded on each side by high pine-clad mountains. The approach to it from the Kuram valley was up a steep, narrow, zigzag path, commanded throughout its entire length from the adjacent heights, and difficult to ascend on account of the extreme roughness of the road, which was covered with large fragments of rocks and boulders. Every point of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... evident from a streak of bright green in the centre of the valley, showing that a small stream must run down it. From the point at which they stood they could see the level line of the plateau near the cliff facing the sea, and on the surface of this a dark zigzag line marked the course of the ravine. Then, when apparently close to the termination of the flat land by the cliffs, the dark streak widened out somewhat. Through a small but powerful telescope which Harry carried he could make out distinctly the upper part of what might ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... explain the cause of this letter being dated on the coast of South America. Some singular disagreements in the longitudes made Captain Fitz-Roy anxious to complete the circle in the southern hemisphere, and then retrace our steps by our first line to England. This zigzag manner of proceeding is very grievous; it has put the finishing stroke to my feelings. I loathe, I abhor the sea and all ships which sail on it. But I yet believe we shall reach England in the latter half of October. At Ascension I received Catherine's ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... perpetual motion, conceived, and carried out in darkness. But suddenly the day broke. Heralded by the snuffle of the horses, light began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows, pale as mother-o'-pearl. The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag the dawn fled along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of cloud. From a lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the cry of a water-bird. A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the carriage a lark flew up. Beasts and men alike stood ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... articles such as pillows, books, handkerchiefs, inexpensive bric-a-brac, etc., on the floor. One person acts as leader and walks in a zigzag path around the obstacles, followed by the others. Then one of the party is blindfolded and told by the leader to "follow my foot-steps and if you do not break or mar anything you shall have ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in the eyes of the boy as he met the ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... slender javelins of rain. They came faster and faster, striking on and over one another; now they turned to drops; she stopped thinking, absorbed in watching a drop roll down the glass—pause, lurch forward, touch another drop; then a third; then zigzag rapidly down the pane. She found herself following the racing drops with fascinated eyes; she even speculated as to which would reach the bottom first; she had a sense of luxury in being able, in the fortress of her berth, to think ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... Tjiburong, at the foot of the steeper part of the mountain, where there is a plank-house for the accommodation of travellers. Close by is a picturesque waterfall and a curious cavern, which I had not time to explore. Continuing our ascent the road became narrow, rugged and steep, winding zigzag up the cone, which is covered with irregular masses of rock, and overgrown with a dense luxuriant but less lofty vegetation. We passed a torrent of water which is not much lower than the boiling point, and has a most singular appearance as it foams over its rugged ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... out to sea at one side, across to the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of zigzag steps, by which the apparently inaccessible shelves and platforms circulated their gay life down to the gay heart of the place,—the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and cool, where one found the great casino ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... had taken his station, he saw, in the moonlight, Mr. Mudge coming up the road, on his way home. Judging from his zigzag course, he was ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... our notable capture; and just about then the merchant steamer must have sighted us, for she veered suddenly toward the north, and a moment later dense volumes of smoke issued from her funnels. Then, steering a zigzag course, she fled from us as though we had been the bubonic plague. I altered the course of the submarine and set off in chase; but the steamer was faster than we, and soon left us ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cap pictures Ndidilhkizn, Lightning Maker, with lightning, hadilhkih, in zigzag lines above his head and beneath his feet. The broad arch indicates clouds with rifts in them, out of which the evil came and into which it may return. The cross of abalone, the small white bead, and the eagle feather ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... some strain of which they were not certain. Then they stopped playing and talked, and their voices sounded goblin-like in their dark recess, where candles were carried about in an uncertain wavering manner, reminding Ruth of the flickering zigzag motion of the will-o'-the-wisp. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at eight o'clock, P.M.; wind ahead, and little of it, performing a zigzag march between Eleuthera and Abaco. On deck, the pretty widow lies in an easy chair, surrounded by her countrymen, who discourse about sugar, molasses, chocolate, and other local topics, together ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... and to the full ruthlessness of plundering raids from the North. Nowhere can the contrast between the warfare of that day and the best methods of our own time be observed more clearly than in this unhappy region. At the opening of 1864 the effective Confederate lines drew an irregular zigzag across the map from a point in northern Georgia not far below Chattanooga to Mobile. Though small Confederate commands still operated bravely west of this line, the whole of Mississippi and a large part of Alabama were beyond ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... something else. It was something that might be utterly unimportant or might be of great value. It was a tiny bit of hardened lacquer which he found on the floor beside one of the legs of the desk. It was rounded out, with sharp edges, and coloured grey with a tiny zigzag of yellow on its surface. Muller lifted it carefully and looked at it keenly. This tiny bit of lacquer had evidently been knocked off from some convex object, but it was impossible to tell at the moment just what sort of an object it might have been. There are so many different ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... passage has seemed to be inviolably barred by an almost vertical facade, the ramparts are found to overlap each other like loosely clasped fingers, between which a zigzag path may be followed—a cunning construction that puzzles the uninformed eye. But its cunning, even where not obscured by dilapidation, is now wasted on the solitary forms of a few wild badgers, rabbits, and hares. Men must have often gone out by those gates ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... cape, and with a motherly, "Ca vous fera du bien," (that will do you good) pours us out a generous glassful. That puts the blue in the sky again and keeps the shafts of golden sunshine from creating zigzag patterns in our brain. Oh, Shades of my New England Ancestors! Would you say, "Better to slip down in a swoon?"—and give everybody ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... shoulder of mutton out of Waxy's hands, and, carrying it in his arms as a woman carries a child, joined the procession with sudden, zigzag steps. When the party reached the cottage, it was met with a howl of welcome from the crowd, which now reached to the opposite footpath. Barney Ryan, seized with an inspiration, broke suddenly into "Mother Shipton". The chorus ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... invitation, I made my way, on a sunny day in November, past the little shops of the coral-vendors that surround, like a necklace, the Rione de la Bellezza, and wound zigzag along the over-crowded Toledo. I knew that Signor Croce lived in the old part of the town, but had hardly anticipated so remarkable a change as I experienced on passing beneath the great archway and finding myself ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... southern foot of The Mountain. The "Dudley Mansion" was near the eastern edge of this declivity, where it rose steepest, with baldest cliffs and densest patches of overhanging wood. It seemed almost too steep to climb, but a practised eye could see from a distance the zigzag lines of the sheep-paths which scaled it like miniature Alpine roads. A few hundred feet up The Mountain's side was a dark deep dell, unwooded, save for a few spindling, crazy-looking hackmatacks or native larches, with pallid ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... floor in a wild zigzag darted a strip of white paper which disappeared under the bureau. Reginald was ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little band along the valley and approached the mountain whence they were tormenting us. The artillerymen kept up a fire at us from the cannon, which consisted of light six-pounders, but owing to our movement they could not get the elevation. We slowly scaled the hill zigzag fashion to baffle their aim, until we got so close that the cannon could not possibly touch us, owing to a slight mound on the hill. We were then within a hundred yards of them, and I took their number, and found at the same time that they ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... an old quarter of Florence, in that picturesque zigzag which goes round the grand church of Or San Michele, and which is almost more Venetian than Tuscan in its mingling of color, charm, stateliness, popular confusion, and architectural majesty. The tall ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in front, and the fourth in the rear. At the base of the citadel, crowding against one another, a group of houses stood within the circle of a wall, whose outlines undulated with the unevenness of the soil. A zigzag road, cutting through the rocks, joined the city to the fortress, the walls of which were about one hundred and twenty cubits high, having numerous angles and ornamental towers that stood out like jewels in this crown of ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... as the boys sat on the piazza in front of the house, talking over the events of the morning, their attention was attracted by a combat that was going on between one of Frank's pet kingbirds and a red-headed woodpecker. The latter was flying zigzag through the air, and the kingbird was pecking him most unmercifully. At length the woodpecker took refuge in a tree that stood on the bank of the creek, and then seemed perfectly at his ease. He always kept on the opposite side of the tree, ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... that they were with him, and followed him out upon the frozen river on the direct path he took for Tra-Lee. At seven in the morning he led his stampeding cohort up the zigzag trail, across the face of the slide, that led to Dwight Sanderson's cabin. The light of a candle showed through the parchment-paper window, and smoke curled from the chimney. Shorty threw ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... because for days past I had idly watched scattered flurries of lemon-yellow and of orange butterflies drift past Kartabo. Down the two great Guiana rivers they came, steadily progressing, yet never hurrying; with zigzag flickering flight they barely cleared the trees and shrubs, and then skimmed the surface, vanishing when ripples caught the light, redoubled by reflection when the water lay quiet and polished. For month after month they ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... said wand stretch'd out just as decidedly in Boston, with just as much certainty of staying; evidences of copious capital—indeed no centre of the New World ahead of it, (half the big railroads in the West are built with Yankees' money, and they take the dividends.) Old Boston with its zigzag streets and multitudinous angles, (crush up a sheet of letter-paper in your hand, throw it down, stamp it flat, and that is a map of old Boston)—new Boston with its miles upon miles of large and costly houses—Beacon street, Commonwealth avenue, and a hundred others. But the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... picturesque views to be found in Crete,—and of the rich odors of many aromatic herbs and flowers, through whose rifled sweets the Akroteri is famous for its honey. A three hours' ride—first up the zigzag road that climbs the ridge above Kalepa, and then over an undulating plain sparsely dotted with hamlets and clouded here and there with olive-orchards—brings one, with a sufficient appreciation of good cheer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... liked and admired Firm, I had my own ideas as to what was unbecoming, and now in my lonely little walks I began to think about it. My father's resting-place had not been invaded by the imperious flood, although a line of driftage, in a zigzag swath, lay near the mound. This was my favorite spot for thinking, when I felt perplexed and downcast in my young unaided mind. For although I have not spoken of my musings very copiously, any one would do me wrong who fancied that I was indifferent. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... scrawny young birds, with wide-open mouths and skinny bodies, that looked like birds visited by famine. He knew where the red columbines blossomed on the face of some tall cliffs, where the stream flowed through a rocky gorge; and how to crawl painfully down a zigzag course from the top to gather these, at the risk of falling seventy ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... We had an exciting trip across the North Sea, taking zigzag courses to avoid mine-fields and sighting numerous destroyers and one sunken ship. We successfully avoided either hitting a mine or running into a torpedo. The boat was packed down with Belgian and ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... across the window panes, and one watches, absently, the curious behaviour of the drops. They hang bulging and pendulous, in one spot for some seconds. Then, as they swell, suddenly they break loose and zigzag swiftly down the pane, following the slippery pathway that previous drops have made. It is like a little puzzle game where you manoeuvre a weighted capsule among pegs toward a narrow opening. "Pigs in clover," they sometimes call it, but who knows why? The conduct of raindrops on a smoking-car ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... language means, "Who are you?" The stranger took Mika'pi's hand and made him feel of his own right hand. The thumb and fingers were closed except the forefinger, which was extended. When Mika'pi's hand was on the stranger's hand the person moved his hand forward with a zigzag motion, ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... arm through the reins of her horse's bridle, and leading the faithful animal, stepped fearlessly out on to the muskeg. As she trod the rotten crust she took a zigzag direction from one side of the secret path to the other. That which, in early spring, had scarcely been six feet in width, would now have borne ten horsemen abreast. Presently she turned back. "We need go no further, Bill; what is safe here continues safe across the keg. It will ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... I stood upon the famous zigzag bridge, which is only a single plank with a railing on one side, made of a long, slender sapling. And now, how lovely the scene was that I looked upon! The sun came in dimples and ripples of light through the trees, and the waterfall, with its soft white foam, talked to me in a voice full ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... sank, ground together, tossed above the hurrying under-mass, tumultuous as a close-packed drove of wild horses. The rivermen rode them easily. For an appreciable time one man perched on a stable timber watching keenly ahead. Then quite coolly he leaped, made a dozen rapid zigzag steps forward, and stopped. The log he had quitted dropped sullenly from sight, and two closed, grinding, where it had been. In twenty seconds every man ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... perhaps remember what a sailing vessel cannot do, as well as what she can, when the proper men are there and circumstances suit her. She is helpless in a calm. She needs a tow in crowded modern harbours or canals. She can only work against the wind in a laborious zigzag, and a very bad gale generally puts her considerably off her course. But, on the other hand, she could beat all her best records under perfect modern conditions of canvas, scientific metal hull, and crew; and the historic records she actually has ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... heading towards the Shannon, when suddenly the fox doubled, took the hillside, and made for Dangan. "Now, then, comes the trial of strength," I said, half aloud, as I threw my eye up a steep and rugged mountain, covered with wild furze and tall heath, around the crest of which ran, in a zigzag direction, a broken and dilapidated wall, once the enclosure of a deer park. This wall, which varied from four to six feet in height, was of solid masonry, and would, in the most favorable ground, have been a bold leap. Here, at the summit of a mountain, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of buckskin harness, odds and ends of nameless things, eloquent and pregnant proof of the fact that necessity is the mother of invention. He was a mason; the levee that buffeted back the rage of the Colorado in flood, the wall that turned the creek, the irrigation tunnel, the zigzag trail cut on the face of the cliff—all these attested his eye for line, his judgment of distance, his strength in toil. He was a farmer, a cattle man, a grafter of fruit-trees, a breeder of horses, a herder of sheep, a preacher, a physician. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... windows and of walls, gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was no more. To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy smell. And birds, dislodged from sleep, began to zigzag about, aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the building, close at hand; and fell, a fluttering, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... against the dark starlit sky; and upon the spaces in between lay the soft glow from the tens of thousands of torches that the crowds carried beneath. Above the grotto the precipitous face of the cliff showed black and sombre, except where the zigzag paths shone out in liquid wandering lines, where the folks stood packed together, unseeing, yet content to be present. In front, at the foot, over the lake of fire where the main body of worshippers stood, glowed softly ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... gloom of the zigzag ravine along which they had made their way, to the sunlit amphitheatre, was almost painful, and the party stood in a group shading their eyes, gazing about in silence, till Chris suddenly snatched off his hat, waved it in the air, and with a shout startled the mules into the beginning ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... of villagers appear on the opposite bank, and several of them come wading and swimming across. They seem veritable amphibians, capable of stemming the tide that well-nigh sweeps strong horses off their feet. The river is fordable by following a zigzag course well known to the local watermen. One of them carries the bicycle safely across on his head, and others lead the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... movement. But every year will diminish the charm of this dirty old town to the antiquary. It will be observed that all the old streets are not accidentally crooked, but that they have been carefully laid out on curved or zigzag lines, which turn now in one direction and now in another. The motive was a defensive one in view of street-fighting, which was often so terrible and so prolonged in the Middle Ages. Each curve of a street formed ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... than we anticipated. It was getting dark, when the footprints of a mule on the sandy path attracted our notice, the fresh marks pointing in the direction we were taking. Soon we caught sight of a small party winding through the tall shrubbery. The turning of a zigzag on a slight rocky ascent brought the party full in view, and we closed with it. There were two girls riding astride on the same mule, with a stout peasant trudging behind. It was a ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... comical and at the same time more repellent than this hybrid statue it would be impossible to imagine, yet Lollianus of the unknown head remains a favourite with the people of Pozzuoli. Leaving the Largo del Municipio, with its weird senator and its dusty palms, we ascend by a zigzag lane between tall featureless houses to the Cathedral of San Proculo, which occupies the site of a temple of Augustus, that once dominated the ancient city and harbour below. Within, the cathedral of Proculus, who was a companion of St Januarius and a fellow-martyr, is gaudy ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... up, their legs over traces and behind whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I had always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson left me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, broad, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... it spoken, I will try To overcome the lightness of my nature; Our course, you know, is generally zigzag. 30 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... man, tall, blond, with grey-blue eyes and short, fair beard, covered with long strides the frozen road. It led him over a lofty hill whose summit commanded a wide prospect. Allan, reaching this height, hesitated a moment, then crossed to a grey zigzag of rail fence, and, leaning his arms upon it, looked forth over hill and vale, forest and stream. The afterglow was upon the land. He looked at the mountains, the great mountains, long and clean of line as the marching rollers of ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... mobile though it immobilizes personality. The symbol is the instrument by which in the short run the mass escapes from its own inertia, the inertia of indecision, or the inertia of headlong movement, and is rendered capable of being led along the zigzag of a complex situation. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... supposed gate of the ancient Temple, shut up by the Mussulmans from a superstitious motive, and the small projecting stone on which their prophet is to sit when he shall judge the world assembled in the vale below. The southern side is exceedingly irregular, taking quite a zigzag direction; the south-western entrance being terminated by a mosque built over the supposed sepulchre of David, on the elevation of Mount Zion. The form and exact direction of the western and northern walls are not distinctly ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to-day has led us in zigzag directions over fallen timber some twelve miles. We have halted on a small creek about one mile from the most southerly arm of the lake and about seven miles in a straight line from ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... was parched, he sought to refuse the offered canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and began to zigzag down the mesa side. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... you must have the soil and food. The obstacles presented by nature must not be so great that man cannot, by reasonable industry and courage, overcome them. There is upon this world only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the globe, upon which you can produce men and women of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere the real climate that man needs falls mostly upon the sea, and the result is, that the southern half of our ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... this way; you have danced with him but once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed steering his zigzag ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... from the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... as dark and dank as the pit, and the officers followed her in single file. They crawled, and they crawled, and they kept on crawling, for the passage was not big enough to allow them to stand upright. It turned this way and twisted that, sometimes like a corkscrew and sometimes zigzag, but seldom ran for long in a ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... used his knowledge of the country to lead the men a wild-goose chase. Vernon's pursuer succumbed first, for he and his horse fell into a small but sufficient chalk-pit a mile or two from Framshott just as dawn was breaking. As for Hugh's man, after three hours' zigzag riding through the mist he was deftly persuaded to gallop into the Worminglore bog, and there Hugh, flinging a parting word of derision, left him floundering. The man fired a bullet in the direction of the boy's voice, but it did no harm except to his hat, and only served to increase ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... of ink in the bottle. There were two coarse china ornaments of the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all sorts of zigzag directions, and in variously colored inks. He took the card and went away to read it at the table on which the candle was placed, sitting down with his back resolutely ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... but a distant flapping of pantalettes and frilled trousers, going up what seemed to be a ladder, farther back in the shed. So, with a dissatisfied cluck, Miss Petingill drew back her head, perched the spectacles on her nose, and went to work again on Katy's plaid alpaca, which had two immense zigzag rents across the middle of the front breadth. Katy's frocks, strange to say, always ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... and the perfume of flowers stole into the darkened room through the half-opened window. The sunlight forced its way through a chink in the blind, and stretched across the floor in strange zigzag fashion. From without came the pleasant murmur of bees and many lazier insects floating over the gorgeous flower beds, resting for a while on the clematis which had made the piazza a blaze of purple splendour. And ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
