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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adrift" Quotes from Famous Books



... traffic between the discontented provinces and the mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of London was in dismay. Half the firms of Bristol and Liverpool were threatened with bankruptcy. In Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham it was said that three artisans out of every ten had been turned adrift. Civil war seemed to be at hand; and it could not be doubted that, if once the British nation were divided against itself, France and Spain would soon take ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... expected, from her light draught of water, to render much aid in exploring the rivers and steaming against currents. She left on the 6th of July, towed out of Hudson's Bay by the Sydney steamer. The weather became stormy, and the steamer was compelled to cut her adrift during the night. Left to herself and her gallant captain, with a crew of two men only, she made her way to Sydney. During this time the coast was visited by severe gales, and much anxiety was felt for the Sir Charles Hotham. The agents of the Sydney steamer regretted ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... even the impartiality he had just shown in his description of 'Lige to Grant had been swallowed up in this new sense of injury. The founder of Tasajara, whose cool business logic, unfailing foresight, and practical deductions were never at fault, was once more childishly adrift ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... trains go out from here to the various army posts to carry food and other supplies, while ships, like farm yards adrift, ply on the same errand between port and port. Cebu and Negros ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... don't think I should like it," said Kenneth, laughing. "Tavvy says the boat was going adrift out in the bay, but he caught her in time. It's quite rough even there. Here, let's put ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... boat brought round to the beach, and put the four babes, with some strings of jewels, into a cradle, which she placed in the boat, and then set it adrift. The boat was soon far out at sea. The waves rose, the rain poured in torrents, and the thunder roared. Feintise could not doubt that the boat would be swamped, and felt relieved by the thought that the poor little innocents would perish, for she would otherwise always ...
— The Song of Sixpence - Picture Book • Walter Crane

... another split as this would happen t'other side," said the Frenchman, "I believe this block would go adrift." ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... go down to the boats every time the clock strikes, to see if they are all right. If they should get adrift, you know, our ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... missed the familiar palms and the tiny block-house; and seeing nothing beyond the iron rails but great wastes of gray water, he decided he was on board a prison-ship, or that he had been strapped to a raft and cast adrift. People came for hours at a time and stood at the foot of his cot, and talked with him and he to them—people he had loved and people he had long forgotten, some of whom he had thought were dead. One of them ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... her numerous offspring were a fair example of these irresponsible people. Like a ship adrift without skipper or rudder, they were at the mercy of every adverse wind of misfortune. Each morning they went out with frantic energy to earn or in some way procure sustenance for one more day. Young Dave hounded the sponge fishermen until they gave him an extra job. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... insurgents entered and defaced the remaining buildings, carrying off everything they could find of value and turning the church into a stable. Some of the monks returned, but in 1837 came an act suppressing the convents, and the poor Jeronymites were finally turned adrift. To-day the palace of Charles V. presents only desolate and dreary chambers, used as magazines for grain and olives. So passes away the glory of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... lady fell sick and died. She divided her fortune between her two nieces, and as they were now independent, they married their respective lovers; but the old lady forgot to mention me in her will, and I should have been turned adrift on the world had it not been for Donna Teresa, who immediately appointed me as her own attendant. I was as happy as before, although no more doubloons fell into my hands, after the marriages took place. It appears that Don Perez was so much afraid ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... with an equipage, 160 In rules of Porterage untaught, Simplicity, not worth a groat, For years had kept the Temple-door; Full on his breast a glass he wore, Through which his bosom open lay To every one who pass'd that way: Now turn'd adrift, with humbler face, But prouder heart, his vacant place Corruption fills, and bears the key; No entrance now without a fee. 170 With belly round, and full fat face, Which on the house reflected grace, Full of good fare, and honest glee, The steward ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... and the utter contempt in his voice went to her heart like a sword-thrust. "Hast a God to pray to before I send thy false soul adrift?" ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... which that supply might be checked. Teachers in mentally defective schools continually mourn the sad fact that the children under their care have been guarded from wrong, and guided to right along happy paths of busy interest until they are sixteen, only to be turned adrift into the world at an age when, more than ever before in their lives, they need a kindly and wise influence "to strengthen or control." For want of some further plan of continued supervision, the patient work of years is too often rendered ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley

... return to his seclusion at Bloomingdale. Deprived of the apostle who had set them on fire, and overwhelmed by public ridicule, the Dispensationists lost their faith, got ashamed of their minister, and turned him adrift. He disappeared in the great whirl of men and other circumstances which fills this wonderful country. From time to time, during five years, I had made inquiries concerning him of mineralogists, botanists, and other vagrant characters, without getting the smallest hint as to his whereabouts. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

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

... passage. But the odds were terrific. It took half the men to keep the canoe moving against the current, while the rest fired at the enemy as they hurled stones and assegais upon their heads. At last the two steersmen were slain, and the canoe went adrift. In a desperate attempt to lighten it, they cast all the baggage into the river, but still could make no headway. Overpowered by numbers and fatigue, and with no chance of killing a whole army, they saw but one hope of escape—namely, to make for the shore and get ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... of magic, unsubstantial, liable to go adrift and plunge into the canon. Even in the forest path, where the great tree trunks assure one of stability and long immunity, this feeling cannot be shaken off. Our party descended the winding staircase in the tower, and walked ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... had chanced on the fact that June was my sister. Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against our father's wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I wanted to help her, but she would never let me." He paused, then went on tonelessly: "It's all quite clear, isn't it? You know everything that happened while you were at Stockleigh. I've told you what happened afterwards. Storran cleared out of the country at once, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... water, and the pater deposits the supposed devil on board the raft, on which the palongs row off with the greatest possible expedition, dragging the captive out to sea, to a considerable distance, when, having turned him and his vehicle adrift, they row back with the utmost speed to shore. For two days the enemy may survive this rough usage, and again land in safety, if driven on shore by the tide or wind, but on the third day he must die. Should he land at another village, he then does the mischief ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel

... immediately and the skies grew darker still. His relations with the Mannheim theater were presently strained to the point of disgust by the production of a farce in which he was satirized. He was in terrible straits for money. To have something to do, after he was set adrift by Dalberg, he decided to go ahead with his project of a dramatic journal. An attractive prospectus for the Rhenish Thalia was issued, and he began to prepare for the first number, which was to contain an installment of 'Don Carlos'. The advance subscriptions fell far ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... speedily fallen in love with her, and in so doing had fallen out with each other. It was almost a fight, and would have been but for the colonel commanding; and yet it was all absurd, for she turned both of them adrift. Of her past she would not speak, and no one cared to question Forrest. She had been living at her uncle's in New York, was all that any one knew, and finally that had to be changed. She had come out with her bronzed and ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... Americano, Tula, and so will you be when we get you over the border," stated Rhodes recklessly. "I don't know how we are going to do it, Cap, but I swear I'm not going to let a plucky little girl like that go adrift to be lifted by the next gang of raiders. We need a mascot anyway, and she is going ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... "I've cut completely adrift from the old crowd, sir," he pleaded wistfully. "I'm an engraver now, and in good work. Heaven help me, I'm married, too. She doesn't know. She thinks I was stranded in America, and that I changed my name because Italians are thought more of ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... The movement of the boat tempered the heat, and in lazy content we sat in our lookout box and smiled upon the world. Except for the throb of the engine and the slow splash, splash, splash of the wheel there was no sound. We might have been adrift in the heart of a great ocean. So complete was the silence, so few were the sounds of man's presence, that at times one almost thought that ours was the first boat ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... having sent away his boats, was reduced to a Carley float, an apparatus like an exaggerated life-buoy, with the floor of a grating. Upon contact with the water it ignited a calcium flare and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine gun a few hundred yards away giving him its undivided attention. What saved him was possibly the fact that the defunct Intrepid still was emitting huge clouds of smoke which ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... might ask him to register. He went, therefore, to the postoffice and stood just outside the door with his hands still in his pockets and the purposeful look on his face; whereas no man was ever more completely adrift and purposeless than was Jack Corey. Now that he had lost himself from the world—buried himself up here in these wonderfully green mountains where no one would ever think of looking for him—there seemed nothing at all to do. He ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... All we can do is to give them the opportunity to develop the capacity for self-government. If we had followed the advice of the foolish doctrinaires who wished us at any time during the last ten years to turn the Filipino people adrift, we should have shirked the plainest possible duty and have inflicted a lasting wrong upon the Filipino people. We have acted in exactly the opposite spirit. We have given the Filipinos constitutional government—a ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... of the tops, and lessened the lumber and weight aloft in every way we could think of, but, nevertheless, we continued to roll gunwale under, dipping the main—yardarm into the water every now and then, and setting every thing adrift, below and on deck, that was not bolted down, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

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

... a breeze from that quarter, the hawser was cut and all the sail we could make upon the ship immediately set, a fine fair wind blowing. A raft of iron hoops, which was towing along side, was cut adrift, and we congratulated each other upon our fortunate escape; for even with a vast extent of ocean to traverse, hope excited in our bosoms a belief that we should again embrace our friends, and our joy was heightened by the reflection, ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay

... trying to-night, at all events," pursued Trevannion, as he glanced uncertainly around him. "The moon is sinking over the tree-tops. Before we could well get adrift, she'll be gone out of sight. We might only drift deeper into the maze. Is that ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... white grain of pure wheat, On the skirt of a hempen sheet entangled, That seemed of the size of a mare's foal, That is filling like a ship on the waters; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless sea I was sent adrift; Which was to me an omen of being tenderly nursed, And the Lord God then ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... was cheerfully lighted and cosily warm. Nasmyth had slept soundly there on the springy spruce-twigs, and there was at least abundance when the mealtimes came round. Now he was about to be cast adrift again to face a three days' march in the open, under the bitter frost, and what might await him at the end of it he did not know. At length, the meal was cleared away, and when the pipes were lighted, he told his comrades that he was going. They were not demonstrative ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

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

... to the captain that he was to blame for the whole misfortune, and he besought him to cast him adrift, and appease the storm. The other passengers refused to consent to so cruel an act. Though the lot decided against Jonah, they first tried to save the vessel by throwing the cargo overboard. Their efforts were in vain. Then they placed Jonah at the side ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... could tell it, the stranger's story was a sad one indeed. He had apparently been employed for a short time as usher at a school, and had been turned adrift in the world, at the outset of his illness, from the fear that the fever might be infectious, and that the prosperity of the establishment might suffer accordingly. Not the slightest imputation of any misbehavior in his employment ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... anything," Mr. Bobbsey said. "When I went past your house, near the river, I saw the two girls adrift in a boat, not far from shore. They had floated out while playing. I went after them and your wife, before she showed me this short cut to your place, spoke about an adopted boy, Frank Kennedy, who used to play with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope

... whither thou knowest!—And as for us of the Glass-coach, haste too, O haste; much time is already lost! The august Glass-coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs itself into the new Berline; two Bodyguard Couriers behind. The Glass-coach itself is turned adrift, its head towards the City; to wander whither it lists,—and be found next morning tumbled in a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave new hammer-cloths; flourishing his whip; he bolts forward towards Bondy. There a ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... in the world; therefore, in about two years, the club dwindled away; a set of rascally economists complained of expense; the cook, a very honest man and skilful professor, was accused of peculation by the reformers, and turned adrift for modestly demonstrating that he could not make turtle out of tripe, nor convert sprats into red mullet. Several members moved off without paying their arrears. The managing committee disposed of the premises, plate, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... the wounded steward, the carpenter, and a Swedish seaman whose name is not recorded, were brought on deck and forced, at the point of cutlasses, to enter the boat, which was then cast adrift. ...
— The South Seaman - An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke

... breakers on the shore. In others he gives finely imaginative expression to an ideal or a yearning, and his verse rises to high poetic levels. Note this allegory of the spider, an insect that, when adrift or in a strange place, sends out delicate filaments on the air currents until one thread takes hold of some solid substance and is used as ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... said Nick. "He's like a well-built ship adrift without a rudder. He's all manners and no grit—the sort of chap who wants to be pushed before he can do anything. I often ached to kick him when we were boxed ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... ask, my dear young lady," he said to Eve, who ventured on deck to look at the desolation, as soon the wreck was cut adrift, "all I now ask, my dear young lady, is an end to westerly winds for two or three weeks, and I will promise to place you all in America yet, in time to eat your Christmas dinner. I do not think Sir George will shoot ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

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

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

... much that I resolved to come down to its center-point and see Vater Rhein in one of his grandest furies. I strayed upon the bridge of boats; forgot where I was, listened only to the storm: ere I knew what was happening I was adrift and the tempest howling round me—and you, fresh from your devotions to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... every single Spanish ship adrift and then sailed out again, leaving the harbour a perfect pandemonium of wrecks. Overhauling a ship from Panama he found that the King's great treasure ship, Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, the "chiefest glory of the whole South Sea," had such a long start ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... had remained a servant in his house he had been unaware of her, or aware of her only as a presence beneficent, invisible, inaudible. Here again his celebrity, such as it was, had cursed him. The increase in Tanqueray's income, by enabling them to keep a servant, had the effect of throwing Rose adrift about the house. As the mistress of it, with a maid under her, she was not quite so invisible, nor yet so inaudible as she ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... shabby figure ruefully. He felt that he had been taken in and done for. His small capital had vanished, and he was adrift in the streets of a ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... the punt, where the dog sat in the stern in her usual self-possessed manner. Perigal struggled with the rope by which the punt was moored to the stump of a tree. Very soon, they were all adrift on the stream. They made little progress at first, merely scraping along the overhanging branches of pollard willows; now and again, the punt would disturb long-forgotten night lines, which, more often than not, had hooked eels that had ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... behind, facing to the loan, in the centre of which Lucky Thamson keeps up the sign of the Tankard and Tappit Hen. It was also a relief to my mind, as the head of my family, that we had cut Benjie loose from his mother's apron string, poor fellow, and set him adrift in an honest way of doing to buffet the stormy ocean of life; so, everything considered, it was found that enough and to spare had been laid past by Nanse and me to spend the evening of our days by the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... become servants; but "greedy folk hae lang airms", and Kgobadi himself was proceeding with his family and his belongings in a wagon, to inform his people-in-law of his own eviction, without notice, in the "Free" State, for a similar reason to that which sent his father-in-law adrift. The Baas had exacted from him the services of himself, his wife and his oxen, for wages of 30s. a month, whereas Kgobadi had been making over 100 Pounds a year, besides retaining the services of his wife and of his cattle for himself. When he refused the extortionate terms the Baas ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when there is no land on the horizon, ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... the world and its beastly ways. I thought you were to be trusted to keep her out of the mud; I could have sworn you were. But you withdrew your protection just when she needed it most. You practically turned her out, cut her adrift. She might have gone straight to the bad for all you cared. And now, like the damned blackguard that you are, you are going to clear out and leave her to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... of the stolen meetings once more, the girl whose eyes reflected the open beauty of what Martin had called the big cathedral. For all that, she was the girl who had hurt him to the soul, shown him her door, played that trick upon him at the Ritz and sent him adrift full of the spirit of "Who cares?" which was her fetish. It was in his heart to say: "Because I adore you! Because I am so much yours that you have only to think my name for me to hear it across the world ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... opposite side of the Hudson. He was commonly known by the name of "French Somerville," from having passed part of his early life in France, and from his exhibiting traces of French taste in his mode of living, and the arrangements of his house. In fact, it was in his pleasure-boat, which had got adrift, that I had made my fanciful and disastrous cruise. All this was simple, straightforward matter of fact, and threatened to demolish all the cobweb romance I had been spinning, when fortunately I again heard the tinkling of a harp. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... warm winds blow O'er fields of daisies Adrift like snow— Sing sad leave-takings And tender praise Of all the mem'ries Of ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... bales—lest they enrich the enemy—were being hauled to the wharves and landings and were just now beginning to receive the torch, the wharves also burning, and boats and ships on either side of the river being fired and turned adrift. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... us and began to question the new men. The boat was cast adrift, though one of them called it a "bloody ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... use of talking about what followed? I hadn't the ghost of a show from the start. Do you think you know anything about London? Believe me, you don't until you have been cast adrift in it with empty pockets. It's a city of vampires and stony hearts, a seething inhuman hell where you can wander till you drop and die without anyone giving a pitying glance—much less a helping hand. Even a man's guardian angel deserts him. It doesn't ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... supposed he must go on drifting. John Locke had stopped the process for a time, and given him something to stick to, something worth doing; but a bullet from an old Remington in the hands of a ragged Dago, a bullet probably aimed at someone else, had sent him adrift again. True, that same Dago had gone, a few seconds later, to whatever place there is reserved for his kind; but that did not alter matters; it avenged, perhaps, but it could not bring back, the one man besides his father for whom Jimmy had ever cared, who had ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... been the pole-star of American foreign policy; no other people had such a wrench to make from their moorings before they could enter the war, and no other people can understand what it cost the Americans to cut themselves adrift from their haven of democratic pacifism in order to fight for ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... him on shore, and presently made sail to go to the other large island which was in sight to the westward. I also ordered the other large canoe, which the caravel Nina was towing astern, to be cast adrift; and I soon saw that it reached the land at the same time as the man to whom I had given the above things. I had not wished to take the skein of cotton that he offered me. All the others came round him and seemed astonished, for it appeared clear to them ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... to put them upon paper with all the cumulative evidence needed to carry conviction,—if conviction could indeed be conveyed without the reiteration of words and the persuasiveness of the voice,—to do this and send the paper adrift, to fall into Archdale's hands or not as the fortunes of war should determine, perhaps to fall into other hands,—it was impossible, for Elizabeth's sake it was impossible. "I don't see how we can reach him," he said at last. "A ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... stripped again—the old man suffered much from prickly heat—stood cooling his back in the doorway, with his arms crossed on his bare and adorned chest. His head touched the beam of the deck above. The nigger, half undressed, was busy casting adrift the lashing of his box, and spreading his bedding in an upper berth. He moved about in his socks, tall and noiseless, with a pair of braces beating about his calves. Amongst the shadows of stanchions and bowsprit, Donkin ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... first attack that someone had had access before him to the sanctuary of love, and secondly, from the dread that in the event of a child coming before the usual time he might denounce her and turn her adrift. ...
— Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover • Anonymous

... invited them to his home. On arriving at the hut Scott and his lubras prepared for their guests a beautiful meal of kangaroo and potatoes. This was their only food as long as they remained on King's Island, for Scott's only boat had got adrift, and his flour, tea, and sugar had been all consumed. But kangaroo beef and potatoes seemed a most luxurious diet to the men and women who had been kept alive for three weeks ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... outcome, we must see to it that free Cuba be a reality, not a name, a perfect entity, not a hasty experiment bearing within itself the elements of failure. Our mission, to accomplish which we took up the wager of battle, is not to be fulfilled by turning adrift any loosely framed commonwealth to face the vicissitudes which too often attend weaker States whose natural wealth and abundant resources are offset by the incongruities of their political organization and the recurring occasions for internal rivalries to sap their strength ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... each one of you. Every fellow is placed on his honor not to have a single other one in his possession. You are not to use any kind of paper in kindling your fires. Just imagine that you are adrift in the wilderness, where a newspaper is never seen. And in the end when a kettle begins to boil the owner of it must shout and raise his hand. I will have inspectors appointed whose duty it will be to see that all is ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... nothing better to think about than me?" he asked, with a smile. "Well, the psalm-shouter let me out—jerked the piller-slip from under me, you might say—and turned me adrift. He's got a high-chested, low-browed Swede in my place. It takes a guy with hair down to his eyebrows to be ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... left him at full liberty to say whether those whom he appointed were fit for the situation or not—so that if they turned out to be ignoramuses, deboshed fellows, or drunken dogs, Jack had only to say so on good grounds, and they were forthwith sent adrift. Matters went on for a time very smoothly on this footing. Nay, it was even said that Jack was inclined to carry his complaisance rather far, and after a time seldom troubled himself much about the usher's qualifications, provided his credentials were all right. He might ask the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... for wages all summer at Miller Creek over on the Sixty Mile, and, the summer done, had strayed up Bonanza like many another waif helplessly adrift on the gold tides that swept willy-nilly across the land. He was tall and lanky. His arms were long, like prehistoric man's, and his hands were like soup-plates, twisted and gnarled, and big-knuckled from toil. He was slow of utterance and movement, and his eyes, pale blue as his hair was pale ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... that same place, he added, the Stream carried all that was caught in its current—like the spar and the plank floating near us—so that the sea was covered with a thick tangle of the weed in which was held fast fragments of wreckage, and stuff washed overboard, and logs adrift from far-off southern shores, until in its central part the mass was so dense that no ship could sail through it, nor could a steamer traverse it because of the fouling of her screw. And this sort of floating island—which lay in a general way between the Bermudas and the Canaries—covered ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

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

... the queen, "who had never conceived before" (which varies both from Greene and Shakspeare), produces a daughter, which the king resolves to get rid of by turning it adrift at sea in "a little boat." He so informs the queen, and she in great grief provides the outfit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various

... he; "but the Macdonalds were asked first to give up the men that had bound the Macleods hand and foot and set them adrift in the boat, and they would not do it. And if the Macdonalds had got the Macleods into a cave, they would have suffocated them ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... China. He passed the winter at about 52 deg. north latitude, in that expanse of water which has ever since been appropriately known ass Hudson's Bay. A mutiny having broken out among his crew, he and eight others having been forced into a small boat, on the 21st of June, 1611, were set adrift on the sea, and were ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn; I have chased it north to the Lizard—ribboned and rolled and torn; I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea; I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... must promise him not to allow herself to be persuaded to abandon her purpose, no matter on what pretext they tried to lure her. Hadria, in vain, enquired the cause of this sudden excitement. Jouffroy only repeated his exhortations. Why did she not cut herself entirely adrift from her country, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... the captain and me was more emphatic than elegant. He dared not risk letting go of us, however, or of running us under, for fear of incurring the risk of heavy damages. I would not consent to be landed. So about the twentieth of June we were set adrift in Bellingham Bay and, tired and ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

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

... my launch on the morning after the first night's bombardment we seemed to be followed by a wave of sound—a great murmur of mingled anguish and misery and fatigue and hunger from the homeless thousands adrift upon the waters. ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... includes a survey of conditions among women in stores and factories in seven cities[14]. According to this report the average earnings of the women in retail stores of these cities is $6.88 in the case of those who live at home, and $7.89 in the case of those who are "adrift."[15] Among the factory women of these cities the average wage of those who live at home is $6.40, and of those who are "adrift," $6.78. The Boston investigation shows that from 11,000 to 12,000 women and girls were living in lodging- or boarding-houses at an average cost of ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... a perpetual theme for small-talk. It usurps the place of the weather, which is turned adrift, or laid up in ordinary for future use. Nevertheless it (I mean the palace) is a remarkable achievement, after all; and I speak sincerely when I say, 'All honor and glory to Paxton!' If the strings of my poor little lyre were not rusty and overworn, I think I should try to sing some of my nonsense ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... treats a merchantman like gentlemen on the high seas, and I never knew one on 'em to turn their backs on friends or foes. What a pity they ever cut adrift from the Old Country! Howsoever, matey, it can't be helped, and you had better up with the port studding-sails, hang out all the rags, and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... your boy, and then to provide for him by putting him into the army, or such other profession as he may choose; for it would be very unfair after bringing him up and educating him as my own to turn him adrift. Thus, you see, in any case my adoption of him would be greatly to his benefit. I can, of course, thoroughly understand that it will be very hard for you and Mrs. Humphreys to give up your child. Very hard. And I am quite ready to make any pecuniary arrangement with you and her that ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... returned Captain Jack, "but I have concluded that I can be of more use to myself. So far I have sunk but three vessels and in each case I have set passengers and crew safely adrift in the regular channel, where they were sure to be picked up. There will be some great tales when they reach home. They probably will blame their misfortune on ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... eight years, Abraham lived in Kentucky. His father, always adrift in heart, tried two farms before abandoning Kentucky altogether. A shadowy figure, this Thomas; the few memories of him suggest a superstitious nature in a superstitious community. He used to see visions ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... as the whale was turned round and round, the blubber was stripped off, till the whole coat was removed. The whalebone, of which the gills are formed, being then extracted, the carcase was cast adrift, when it was seen to be surrounded by vast numbers of fish and wild sea-birds, coming from all directions to banquet on the remaining flesh. The operation, which lasted five hours, being concluded, the crew ...
— Archibald Hughson - An Arctic Story • W.H.G. Kingston

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

... first to try his fortune. He had chosen the tale of a young girl cruelly turned adrift in a forest and left there to die, and he related it with every circumstance that could render it more piteous. Soon every lady in the court was weeping, but to the eyes of the Princess Elene came no tears, which ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

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

... could get away, even last night, at the hour when we turned him adrift," Darrin contended. "A man might have gone a quarter of a mile, but he couldn't go ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... eagerly agreed to her suggestion. It would never do to leave the canoe as a tell-tale, and he gave it a shove which carried it far out on the lake. Discovered in that situation, no one could tell what point on the shore it had touched, and, being adrift, near the middle of the lake, it would suggest the theory of suicide, which they were anxious ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... which Sir Lucien Pyne presided, and which must be kept hidden from Monte Irvin; and it was not until she thus contemplated cutting herself adrift from it all that she perceived the Gordian knot which bound her to the drug coterie. How far, yet how smoothly, by all but imperceptible stages she had glided down the stream since that night when the gold box had lain upon her dressing-table! ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... south of the Gulf of Persia, was the land from which the Arabians, (to use a maritime phrase) took their departure, with various superstitious observances, imploring a blessing on their intended voyage, and setting adrift a small toy, rigged like a ship, which, if dashed to pieces, was supposed to be accepted by the god of the ocean, instead of ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... them, and for the first time Annie felt herself an alien, a stranger, far adrift from familiar shores. She ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... left—nothin'. But Lulie, bless her heart, was a brave girl and a dear one. She said, 'I am left, father. You've got me, you know.' And he turned to her and clung to her as if she was his only real sheet anchor. As, of course, she is, and would have been always if he hadn't gone adrift after Little Cherry Blossom and such ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... has won another's earnest love, Her head rests on the heart once pledged to me, And I have poured my worship on the dust! He loves again, and yet I gave him all— Been proud—is this 'the worm that never dies?' Ah, what am I?—a ruined wreck adrift Upon a surging sea of endless pain! Are human hearts all fickle, faithless, base? Does levity brand all of mortal race? When we shall meet within the Spirit's land, How wilt thou bear my sorrow, my despair? Wilt strive to teach me there ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... were unwilling to accept them, and a third entrusted with the collection of royal taxation on ecclesiastical benefices. By these commissions the entire face of the country was changed. The monastic institutions were suppressed and the servants and labourers in their employment were turned adrift, the relief to the poor and the wayfarer was discontinued, and the tenants awaited with nervousness the arrival of the new grandees. The possessions of the religious houses, instead of being spent on the development of education and the relief of the taxes, found ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... Clouds were adrift in the sky. No star gleamed in the wide space high above the sombre mountains. On every side they encompassed Lonesome Cove, which seemed to have importunately thrust itself into the darkling ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... and Ambulinia's, we guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives—how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!—he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into the presence of his father's ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... hundred in number, were hurried away by the Boers, who seemed under the immediate eye of De Wet to have behaved with exemplary humanity to the wounded. The captives were taken by forced marches to the Basuto border, where they were turned adrift, half clad and without food. By devious ways and after many adventures, they all made their way back again to the British lines. It was well for De Wet that he had shown such promptness in getting away, for within three hours of the end of the action the two regiments of Imperial Horse ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... his friend Russell joined in representing to him that it would be useless to follow her, that it would only give himself and Selina unavailing pain. Vivian felt this stroke severely. His mind was, as it were, adrift again. After the first violence of his feelings had spent itself, and when he sunk into that kind of apathy which is the consequence of exhausted passion, his friend Russell endeavoured to excite him to honourable ambition. Vivian caught the idea, that if he distinguished himself ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... Lazowski, and Maillard are not only murderers, but likewise robbers,[26147] while, by their side, arises the future general of the Paris National Guard, Henriot, at first a domestic in the family of an attorney who turned him out for theft, then a tax-clerk, again turned adrift for theft, and, finally, a police spy, and still incarcerated in the Bicetre prison for another theft, and, at last, a battalion officer, and one of the September executioners.[26148]—Simultaneously with the bandits and rascals, monstrous maniacs come out of their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift, and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan Almanack, what state ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... all a purposeless passing of dreary hours. Before, there was always an object ahead of me, a light to which I made my way; and all the pleasant incidents of life were things to guide me, and to beguile the plodding path. Now I am adrift; I need go neither forwards nor backwards; and the things which before were gentle and quiet occupations have become duties ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... no doubt this Terrence Malone is a good, noble young fellow; but he has too much native mischief in his composition, and will get you from one scrape into another with marvellous regularity. I don't mean that you should cut him adrift; but though you sail in company with him, do not allow him to get too far windward of you. When you see he's going to fly right into the teeth of some rash fate, get on the other tack, that's all. You did honorably, however, in fighting ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... wonderful what thrilling pleasures there are in store for us in literature when once we have cut ourselves adrift from all this superfluity of cultured opinion, and have given ourselves complete leave to love what we like and hate what we like and be indifferent to what we like, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... said coolly, resolved to clear the ground thoroughly for Mrs. Devar's benefit; "your French ally is resorting to the methods of the blackmailer. If you are wise you will cut yourself entirely adrift from him, and warn your son to follow your example. I shall deal with Monsieur Marigny—have no doubt on that score—and if you wish me to forget certain discreditable incidents that have happened since we left London you will respect my earnest request that Miss ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... best can. Hide yourself there so that no one can see you from the deck. When the watch is changed, instead of going forward I shall make for the boat. No one will see me, I promise you. When I am with you we shall cut the boat adrift and let the vessel outsail us. Then we must make for the coast in the direction of Tuxtla. We shall know which way to steer because of the volcano. But after that—why, I know not what ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... settlers who might rush in and by a perfectly legitimate process of naturalization and voting set up self-government. At the time of confederation such eminent Imperial statesmen as Gladstone and Labouchere seriously considered whether it would not be better to cut Canada adrift, if she wanted to be cut adrift. The difference between the Canadian provinces and the isolated Latin republics of South America illustrates best what the bond of confederation did for the Dominion. The why and how of confederation ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

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

... it may be well for you to find out something of this boy. If you can prove to Aunt Eliza that he is of bad character, she will send him adrift." ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

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

... the date, but it was at any rate shortly after the establishment of the Reverend Theophilus Catesby at Ashfield,—the Doctor was in the receipt of a new letter from his friend Maverick, which set all his old calculations adrift. It was not Madame Arles, after all, who was the mother of Adele; and the poor gentleman found that he had wasted a great deal of needless sympathy in that direction. But we shall give the details of the news more succinctly and straightforwardly by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... replied to with a broadside, to which a smart fire was returned by the Revenge and the Defiance, that were close astern. On both sides there was no willingness to fight. The pirates were at first seized with consternation at discovering their mistake; they had turned their prizes adrift after throwing their sails overboard, and, with only three hundred men for their joint crews, forty of them negroes, were not strong enough to engage the Bombay squadron. But England was a man who preferred fighting to running, so putting a bold face on the matter, ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... her think he was suffering. Then he was sad, too. She stood up because his hand drew her. Why did he want her to stand up? His body touched her and she heard him gasp. Her heart seemed adrift. She was unreal. There was another Rachel somewhere else. He was saying, but he was not talking to her, "Oh, Rachel, I love you. I love ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... was suggested by the dying words of John Adams, one of the crew of the English ship Bounty who in 1789 mutinied, set the captain and officers adrift, and ran the vessel to a tropical island, where they burned her. In a few years vice and violence had decimated the wicked crew, who had exempted themselves from all divine and human restraint, until the last man alive was left with only native women and half-breed ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

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

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

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

... home! To that new bridal nest, which, be it the poorest dwelling on earth, seems—or should seem—holy, happy, and fair! What a coming home it was! Better, she thought, that he had cast her adrift, or torn himself from her and placed the wide world between them. Rather any open separation than the mockery of such ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... of there being anything wrong was a big white boat, adrift, with the dead body of a very hairy man inside, bumping against the bows of his steamer. Then indeed he lost no time in going ashore—alone, of course, from ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... my eighteenth year, and had as yet never gone more than ten miles from my native town, nor slept a night away from home. 'Tis true, no close ties of blood now bound me to Shrewsbury, but it held dear memories and kind friends, and I felt a natural heart sickness at thus cutting myself adrift from all and ranging forth alone into the great unknown world. But healthy youth can not long lie under such an oppression; my low spirits lasted just so long as it took me to gain the crest of the hill towards Harley, and when I had turned and taken a parting look behind—at the fields in their ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... about the approach of the vernal equinox or the seedsman's catalogue, we wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning. This is an immediate warning and apprisement that something is adrift. Three hundred and sixty-four days in the year we wake, placidly enough, at seven-ten, ten minutes after the alarm clock has jangled. But on this particular day, whether it be the end of February or the middle of March, we wake with the old recognizable nostalgia. It ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... loss of Toulon the British fleet in the Mediterranean was left adrift, without any secure harbor to serve as a depot for supplies and a base for extended operations. Hood took his ships to Hyeres Bay, a few miles east of Toulon, a spot where they could lie safely at ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... deposit it hurriedly as a votive offering. The paint which covers the piece of stick to which the feather is attached becomes appropriately significant through its colours, the feather itself is the symbol of human thought, flitting as one set adrift in the air toward heaven, where dwell Those Above. But as in the present instance, the Indian has not always a prayer-plume with him. So he has recourse to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... feeling of being adrift in unmeasurable nothingness making him sick, to watch mistily as the blue beast came to a halt. Whimpering it turned, but before it reached the level of the woods, it sagged to its knees, fell face forward and was still, a destructive machine no ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... the moment her intellect was clear, her heart yielded up to its new intuition. Her guardian spirit was busy with her passionate but noble nature. She felt, for the first time, in all its force, how wrong she was acting, how indelicate was her situation. It seemed as if she were that moment cast adrift from her father's love—from her own lofty self-appreciation. The heart that had swelled and throbbed so warmly a moment before, now lay heavy in her bosom, shrinking from the destiny prepared for it. Just then the sound of a voice penetrated the thick foliage of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... and how may I reach it? Somewhere he knows there is a solution to all the riddles of his friends and the questions of his own heart. An orderly universe is not crowned by a being whose life must ever remain an unsolved riddle. Men are not adrift in a fog with no hope of taking bearings. If men have marked the natural world with lines of latitude and longitude for the guidance of its travellers, the moral world is not ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... banish me—a castaway uprooted from my ancestral soil, adrift in a homeless current of indignity? Why set a bottomless chasm between Arjuna and myself, turning the natural attachment of kinship to the dread attraction of hate? You remain speechless. Your shame permeates the vast darkness and sends invisible shivers through my limbs. Leave my question ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore

... upon the prima donna, Hepworth Closs was sitting quietly in the pit, where he found himself, as if by accident. They had reached town only in time for a late dinner, when the ladies, being greatly fatigued, proclaimed their intention of retiring early, which was, in fact, casting him adrift for the evening. Being thus let loose upon the world, he very naturally brought up at the opera, and was seated so near the stage that his eyes more than once caught those of Olympia, who gave him one of those quick glances of recognition, which seemed aimed at the whole ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens

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

... like a soul cast out and praying Vainly, prayers that pierce not ears when hearts resist: Now mine own soul sighs, adrift as wind ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

... ten minutes we sounded, and found three feet water in the hold. The pumps were choaked; by 9 A. M. they were cleared, and by this time we had eight feet water in the well, and three on the gun-deck; the ship rolled very much, and the chests, guns, and water-casks, being all cast adrift, were dashing from larboard to starboard with the greatest fury. At 10 A. M. the ship labouring so much, and her being eight streaks of her main-deck under water, abreast of her main-hatchway, so that we had very little prospect of her living two minutes above water, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp

... a reminder of the lighted boats sent down-stream in Japan to bear away the souls of the dead, is that which makes use of nut-shell boats. These have tiny candles fastened in them, are lighted, and named, and set adrift on a tub of water. If they cling to the side, their namesakes will lead a quiet life. Some will float together. Some will collide and be shipwrecked. Others will bear steadily toward a goal though the waves are rocked ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... the market. The women's hats were enormous—from three to four feet in diameter. Anything more curious than the appearance of a boat-load of these ladies can scarcely be imagined. It looked just like a bunch of gigantic mushrooms which had somehow got adrift and was floating down the stream. The marketing is, of course, all done in boats; and it was interesting and amusing to watch the primitive system of exchange and barter. Very little money passed, though some of the hideous ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... I am no lover of sentimental trips on the sea; but this was not the time to draw back. She leaped into the boat, and I after her; and I had not time to recover my wits before I observed that we were adrift. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... a leather jerkin, with spurs upon his heels—bloody spurs—that he seemed to have found no time to take off. This hard rider came aboard in a skiff after the anchor was up, and, having cast the skiff adrift, offered good money for a passage to Spain or any other foreign port, and paid it down upon the nail. He, Goody, had taken the money, though with a doubtful heart, and given a receipt to the name of Charles Smith, asking no questions, since for this gold he need not account to the owners. Afterwards ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... could no longer carry his liquor with his former assurance. While outwardly he was the same suave, debonair old beau, he was beginning to have inner doubtings and despairs. And Joe, who had, as it were, taken up the pen when he had cast aside the sword, became for him a potential straw adrift on the ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... very thick, with small snow, and as disagreeable and dangerous for people adrift upon floating ice as can well be imagined. If the women, however, gave their husbands a thought, or spoke of them to us, it was only to express a very sincere hope that some good news might shortly arrive of their success. Our singing party had ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... was not entirely unregenerate; a lie sat awkwardly on his honest lips, and now that his feeble effort at deception had miscarried, he felt himself adrift on a boundless sea. He wildly felt around for a reply, and was greatly relieved by the arrival of his father on the scene, who, seeing the lights of the auto in the yard, had come out hurriedly to see what was the matter. Grandpa Kennedy, although nearing ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... centralization? No thoughtful patriot can view such a possibility without the gravest misgivings. The integrity of the states was a cardinal principle of our governmental scheme. Abandon that and we are adrift from the moorings which to the minds of statesmen of past generations constituted ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... at such marks of condescension. Yet in his manner and address he was as humble and as servile as ever. His story was shortly told. He had received, he said, a short note from Miss Krieff, by which he learned that, owing to an act of thoughtlessness on her part, she had gone adrift in a boat, and had been picked up by a ship on its way to Naples, to which place she had been carried. He understood that she had written to Lady Chetwynde to come and join her. Gualtier hoped that Lady Chetwynde ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night; and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact, winter, like some great calamity, changes the status of most creatures and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us acquainted with ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... only in thought but in all human relations, in love, friendship, faith in man, faith in God, faith in beauty; and while it was this profound dissatisfaction with less than the perfect form of every art, passion, thought, or circumstance, that set him adrift in life, making him seem untrue to duty, conviction, and himself, it was this also that formed in him the double existence of the poet and the philosopher, each supplementing and interpenetrating the other. The poet and ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... as well as in Russia, the professional organizers, especially the civilians, were very much adrift. In the army all the sterling qualities of the French nation at its best, and many that were deemed extinct, but are now seen to have been only dormant, shone forth resplendent. Valour, fortitude, staying power, self-abnegation for the common good, became household ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... and, when the winter came, even dangerous; a few pilots were lost and some spent hours adrift on wrecked seaplanes. Here is the report of a December experience of Squadron Commander J. W. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... was fearful some one would come and claim the child, but when evening came without the arrival of any stranger he decided the baby had been cast adrift and now belonged ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... suffered by the pirates when captured. No word picture can present the awful orgies indulged in by these social outcasts, who continued their carnage, assault, and abuse until the last victim had succumbed. Then, directing their attention to the ship, it was quietly dismantled, set adrift, or frequently burned to the water's edge, allowing the hull to float about, a ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... and such things that are precious to you if you give us the land,' and does it,—then I am in favour of compelling Tzitz hanutsh to give it; for it is better thus than that the tribe should be divided and each part go adrift. These are my thoughts, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... day week, and found a good airy cabin, and all very comfortable. Next day I got the carpenter's services, by being on board before all the rest, and relashed and cleeted everything, which the 'Timmerman', of course, had left so as to get adrift the first breeze. At two o'clock the Attorney-General, Mr. Porter, came on board, escorted by bands of music and all the volunteers of Capetown, quorum pars maxima fuit; i.e. Colonel. It was quite what the Yankees call ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... the matter is decided; for my heart whispers me that this slight deviation from truth would be a less culpable offence than turning so young and, I had almost said, so innocent a creature adrift upon the world. I may take your opinion as ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Light from east, came bright God's beacon; the billows sank, so that I saw the sea-cliffs high, windy walls. For Wyrd oft saveth earl undoomed if he doughty be! And so it came that I killed with my sword nine of the nicors. Of night-fought battles ne'er heard I a harder 'neath heaven's dome, nor adrift on the deep a more desolate man! Yet I came unharmed from that hostile clutch, though spent with swimming. The sea upbore me, flood of the tide, on Finnish land, the welling waters. No wise of thee have I heard ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... an atrocious mutiny having broken out on board the Russell, and that the mutineers had remained in possession of the ship, which had gone off, it was supposed, to be a pirate; and that Captain Reid was sent adrift in a boat with some men—officers or something—whose names were all given, for they were picked up by a West-Indian steamer. Oh, Margaret! how your father and I turned sick over that list, when there was no name of Frederick ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Murry, King of Suddenne, was captured by Saracens, who killed his father, and turned him and his twelve companions adrift in a boat, which was eventually beached safely on the coast of Westerness, and Ailmar the king took them in and brought them up. Rymenhild his daughter, falling in love with Horn, offered herself to him. ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick

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

... sail in pursuit. The Newcastle was on the Constitution's lee quarter and directly ahead of the Leander, while the Acasta was on the weather-quarter of the Newcastle. All six ships were on the port tack. The Constitution cut adrift the boats towing astern, and her log notes that at 12.50 she found she was sailing about as fast as the ships on her lee quarter, but that the Acasta was luffing into her wake and dropping astern. The log of the Acasta says, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... into the stony desert in front of the Gare de Lyon in the grey chill of a March morning, he had just two hundred and twenty francs in his pocket, and he felt that he was really adrift in the world. There was nothing for him to hold fast to, no one who had need ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... be attentive to such Means, as shall be proposed to them for that End. The Idle, who are neither wise for this World, nor the next, are emphatically called by Dr. Tillotson, Fools at large. They propose to themselves no End, but run adrift with every Wind. Advice therefore would be but thrown away upon them, since they would scarce take the Pains to read it. I shall not fatigue any of this worthless Tribe with a long Harangue; but will leave them with this short Saying of Plato, that Labour is preferable to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... in haste, yet haltingly; were all but inaudible whispers; went flying back and forwards, like brief cries for aid, implying a peculiar sense of aloofness, of being cut adrift and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson



Words linked to "Adrift" :   be adrift, undirected, purposeless, planless, rudderless



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