"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fallacy of the old theory, "too cold to snow." Even by daylight it would have been no light task to steer a true course through the whirling and blinding storm. In the darkness, the man found himself stumbling along with drunkenly zigzag steps; his buffeted ears strained, through the noise of the wind for ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the path be long, and thorny, the cycle is closing, and many have reached the goal through its zigzag course. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... 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 and foaming torrents, and at last, perhaps, emerging upon the surface of a glacier, ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... required; but as the particular action might be supposed to be exerted only at the moments of making and breaking contact, the induction was produced in another way. Several feet of copper wire were stretched in wide zigzag forms, representing the letter W, on one surface of a broad board; a second wire was stretched in precisely similar forms on a second board, so that when brought near the first, the wires should everywhere touch, except that a sheet of thick ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... from which the view is said to be the finest in the whole of the Blue Mountains, though some maintain that the outlook from the big zigzag near Lithgow Down is still finer. On the return journey we had to wait nearly half an hour at Blackheath, and as I was not able to walk far I utilised the time by taking photographs. But no sun-picture can ever give the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... 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 ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... edge of the sand, and ascending in a succession of terraces, whose faces were so steep that it was almost impossible to scale them. They could be ascended in succession, however, by means of the ravines and numerous gullies which rose in rugged and zigzag lines from the beach to the mountain tops. In the very first of these gullies in which the exploring party landed, they found the remains of an Esquimau summer encampment. These consisted of a few stunted trees, which appeared ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... alarm. The sudden yells, the crack of Winchesters, startled even the revellers and all who could, headed by Rome and Steve Marcum, sprang into the square, and started in pursuit. But the Lewallens had got far ahead, and were running in zigzag lines to dodge the balls flying after them. Half-way to the woods was a gully of red clay, and into this the fleetest leaped, and turned instantly to cover their comrades. The Winchesters began to rattle from the woods, and the bullets came ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... 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
... lightning are the zigzag or forked sharply defined,—the sheet-lightning, illuminating a whole cloud, which it seems to open,—heat-lightning, not emanating from any cloud, but apparently diffused through the air and without report. There are also fireballs which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... a great 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 in the village knew of her and of the position that M. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... was 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 various strange figures in the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... people of the upper Nile valley, dwelling on the east bank of the Bahr-el-Jebel, about a hundred miles north of Albert Nyanza. They are akin to the Shilluks of the White Nile. They frequently decorate the temples or cheeks with wavy or zigzag scars, and also the thighs with scrolls; some pierce the ears. Their dwelling-places are circular huts with a high peak, furnished with a mud sleeping-platform, jars of grain and a sunk fireplace. The interior walls are daubed with mud and decorated with geometrical or conventional ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 first impressions were nearly filled. In a little while I ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... this stupendous work of nature day after day, I try to stretch my mind to some large computation of the work done. A whole day is taken to go down the gorge to the river. It takes seven miles of zigzag trail, sometimes frightfully steep, along shelves not over two feet wide, under rock thousands of feet above and going down thousands of feet below, to get down that perpendicular mile. It ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... to the ways of the time. Philomela returns once more to euphuism, but Greene is soon back again with A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, a piece of social satire, flying rather higher than his previous attempts. The zigzag is kept up in Orpharion, the last printed (at least in the only edition now known) of the author's works during his lifetime. Not till after his death did the best known and most personal of all his works appear, the famous Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... uneasily and crouched close to his master's legs, but Rose ran again to the door and stood, heedless of the rain which beat in upon her wind-whipped skirt, peering out with evident delight. A still more vivid, zigzag flash rent the serried masses of black storm-clouds which were rolling up over the mountain's top, edging the nearer one with fire, and she laughed merrily and clapped her hands like ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the hill where our battery was making things so lively, they stopped firing to let us pass. We saw General Leggett, our Division Commander, come riding toward us. He was outside of our line of works, too. You know how we build breastworks—sort of zigzag like, you know, so they cannot be enfiladed. Well, that's just the way the works were along there, and you never saw such a curious shape as we formed our Division in. Why, part of them were on one side of the works, and go along a little further and here was a regiment, or part of a regiment ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... reach an object, his hand described a sort of zigzag before it succeeded in reaching what it was in search of, and after a little while this movement annoyed me so that I turned aside my head in order not to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the older, aims only at speed; the Dutch school cultivates grace as well. The Frieslanders are stiff in their motions; they throw their bodies forward, and hold themselves very straight, looking as though they were starched, and keeping their eyes fixed on the goal. The Dutch skate with a zigzag movement, swaying from left to right and from right to left with an undulating motion of the body. The Frieslander is an arrow, ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... slowly up the zigzag path, neither of them troubled to make conversation. All in a moment it had come back—mysteriously, unaccountably—the sense of understanding, the quiet kinship of minds—for her, the sudden utter content at his nearness. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... 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. 206.) The female is larger than the male. Its bite is made with great rapidity, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... twenty-five miles from Epi, I was five days on the way, so zigzag a route did the steamer pursue. But if one is not in a hurry, life on board is quite entertaining. The first day we anchored near the volcano of Lopevi, a lofty peak that rises from a base six kilometres in diameter to a ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... us. What endless undulations in the various declivities and ascents,—here a slant, there a zigzag! With what majestic disdain yon roof rises up to the left! Doubtless a palace of Genii, or Gin (which last is the proper Arabic word for those builders of halls out of nothing, employed by Aladdin). Seeing only the roof of that ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ever within itself. The curate moved his head from side to side to see if the ray within the stone would remain still, but it did not, turning itself to meet his eye as if the tiny star had a life and a light of its own. Then he looked at the setting, for the stone was set in steel. A zigzag-barred steel frame held it fast, and outside the zigzag bars there was a smooth ring, with some words cut upon it in Hebrew. The characters were very small; he knew, rather than saw, that they were Hebrew; but he did not know what they meant. All this time he had ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... woodlands, looked 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 and the open-air theatre, the exquisite orchestra, into which only the mellowest ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... there?" cried Nat, pointing toward the outer beacon. "Some look like white Crows, and the others go zigzag like big Barn Swallows. Are there any such things as ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... at the bottom, very dingy and mouldy, the new part at the top, very showy and elegant. Nothing can be more exquisite in its way than the grande place in the very heart of the city, surrounded with those toppling, zigzag, ten-storied buildings bedizened all over with ornaments and emblems so peculiar to the Netherlands, with the brocaded Hotel de Ville on one side, with its impossible spire rising some three hundred and seventy feet into the air and embroidered to the ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... awaiting something. Still farther back, behind a brook, are the French soldiery, also ranked in the same manner of reposeful expectation. In the middle- distance we see the town of Bayonne, standing within its zigzag fortifications at the junction of the river Adour with ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... nothing but the corner torn from a newspaper, and should be consigned to the waste-basket; yet her eye caught the words in large head-lines as she picked it up idly, "Miss Geraldine Loring's Wedding to Be an Elaborate Affair." There was nothing more readable. The paper was torn in a zigzag line just beneath. Yet that was enough. It reminded her of ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... visited by any of the troop—as the major had ascertained before starting. The account was not reassuring. The guide reported that it stood on a rock, which rose perpendicularly some eighty or a hundred feet from the plain; the only access being by a zigzag road cut in the face of the cliff, with a gateway defended by a gun, and loopholed walls at each turn, and with a very strong wall all round the edge of the rock. The garrison, they had learned from the persons at the farm, was some three hundred strong, the ordinary number of retainers being ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... which a large quantity was taken daily, "turned" in a very curious manner. After being deposited, in its usual place, in the pantry, it began to darken; first of all it became light blue, then deepened into an almost inky blackness, exhibiting curious zigzag lines; and, lastly, the whole mass began to putrefy and to emit a stench so overpowering that every one in the house retched, and the whole place had to be disinfected. This occurred day after day. Nothing would stop it. The dairyman who supplied the milk did all he could to counteract it. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... 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
... 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 ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... word to call it. I always had a fairly accurate sense of direction; but, standing in many places in this giant battlefield, it was impossible for me to say where were the Germans and where the French, so completely was I turned around on account of the constant zigzag of the trench lines. Sometimes, when I was positive that a furious cannonade coming from a certain position was German, it turned out to be French. At other times, when I thought I was safely going in the direction of the French, I was hauled back by officers, who told ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was all too short. On the fifth of April they passed the Azores, running close to the islands of Fayal and San Jorge so that the passengers might admire the zigzag rows of white houses that reached from the shore far up the steep hillsides. On the sixth day they sighted Gibraltar and passed between the Moorish and Spanish lighthouses into the lovely waters of the Mediterranean. The world-famed rock was now disclosed to their eyes, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... hastened to the door of the room from which the sounds of approach had been heard. The apartment was dark and still, save for the whipping of the wind at the open casement. While the boys stood there, expecting every instant to hear the voice of one of their chums, rain began to fall, and a sharp zigzag of lightning cut across ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... in the morning of the 8th when Levis marched in; and they went on working like ants till the battle began, though all day the heat was terrific. Some of the trees cut down were piled up like the wall of a log-cabin, only not straight but zigzag, like a 'snake' fence, so that the enemy should be caught between two fires at every angle. This zigzag wooden wall was, of course, well loopholed. In front of it was its zigzag ditch; and in front of the ditch were fallen ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... diminishing size toward an escarpment in the hillside seventy-five or a hundred feet below, where appear five or six square, grated doors, leading, apparently, to a row of subterranean ammunition-vaults. Underneath the escarpment is a zigzag flight of steps, screened at exposed points by what seem to be comparatively recent walls, or curtains of masonry, much lighter in color than the walls of the castle itself. Still lower down, at the base of the bluff, are two ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... deep, stand in icy water looking across at another ditch, and sleep in a cellar that you have dug in the wall, and you are near understanding what Mr. Atkins has been doing for his country. The ditch should be cut zigzag in and out, like the lines dividing the squares of a checker-board; that makes more work and localizes the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... attached end; and a circlet of longitudinally disposed folds radiate from the bottom of the follicles, in which a number of small pits or fenestrations are sometimes visible. The sides of these folds are wrinkled transversely so as to present a median zigzag elevation. The funnel-shaped membranous process above noticed is continuous with the lining membrane, consisting of an extension of the same epithelial pavement; but the cells are somewhat larger and more regular ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... it was a tea- house, and came up to it. It took 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 ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... described in the preceding paragraphs. The consequence of using this kind of riffle-bar is, that though much of the water and light dirt runs straight over the bars, the heavier material runs down from side to side in a zigzag course. Near the head of the sluice is a vessel, from which quicksilver falls by drops into the box; and it follows the course of riffle-bars, overtaking the gold which takes the same route. These zigzag riffle-bars are nailed down. In all sluices, men must keep watch to ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... however, there were no branches in this zigzag staircase, which communicated directly with the top of the lofty plateau. When presently I felt the fresh mountain air upon my face, I wondered why I could perceive no light ahead of me. Yet ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... up, winding back and forth zigzag fashion on the south wall, until it reached that wonderful cavern of fairyland, the Grand Caverns. Thousands of tourists annually come to see its wonders, but to the boys there were other caves more magic in their spell, for they had not yet become "civilized," as the fellows ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... into the night. From the door through which he had just come bullets spat aimlessly. He crouched as he ran, dodging in zigzag little rushes. Voices pursued him, fierce and threatening. Men poured from the gambling-house as seeds are squirted from a ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... be a better path for you up the hill," he said; "I must speak to Sam Wright about it." And carefully he flung the noiseless zigzag of light back and forth in front of her, and told some more stories that he might hear that ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... congratulating us upon 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
... for a moment, when his rifle spoke out and its voice rung and re-echoed among the surrounding hills as if a whole platoon of musketry were blazing all around us. The deer made three or four desperate leaps in a zigzag direction, and then went down. When we got to him, he was dead. He was a fine two year old buck, with spike horns, and in excellent condition. We took his saddle and skin and ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... covered with a marsh forest of cypresses. It was a dark and gloomy forest, but the spell of its sombre depths drew our eyes quite as often as the cheerfuller charm of the woodland on the other side; and so was equally responsible for the zigzag course that Gadabout ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... of the gold coast. Remembering how Alonzo de Ojeda had gone back and reaped riches from the pearl coast, and how Pedro Nino, that captain who brought slaves to Cadiz and sent word that he had brought a cargo of gold, and also been to Paria, Christopher decided to zigzag about in such a manner that no one could ever find his way back to the gold country ten days inland from Darien. Suffering and misfortune were surely telling on the Admiral's mind, else he would never have written this childish note: "None of them [the ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... 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 but may be observed also in the indiscriminate ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... 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 ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 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 on a small rattler ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the afternoon, and we had landed with full water-bottles, for drinking water was unavailable. Towards evening some double-roofed tents were run up. The men settled down in the empty sheds alongside the creek. We got to bed in a thunderstorm—a vivid zigzag banging affair that circled round most of the night. The rain turned the ground into something beyond description as regards its slippery properties. Only a native donkey can keep footing in such ground. There is no road metal available in Mesopotamia. ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... man to push behind, the rickshaws had brought them up a zigzag hill to a cautious wooden gateway half open in a close fence ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... but still Eleanor waits on the verandah, with widely-opened eyes, staring along the zigzag path by which Carol rode away. She remembers he turned back to look at her three times, kissing his hand twice. What can have detained him? Surely he ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... industrial art. The curiously twisted glass goblets, so common in the early graves of Kent, are shewn by their form to be of English workmanship. It is only in the English pottery, hand-made, and marked with coarse zigzag patterns, that we find traces ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... the blue misty sunshine of morning overhung by not less beautiful shades. We were quite glad to get to this sort of mountain scenery again, which we had so enjoyed at Grasmere, and leave smooth, bare, pyramidal Skiddaw and its "ancient" fellows behind. We at last ascended the steep zigzag which begins Sty Head Pass, confirming our resolution now and then by admiring the plodding industry of our mountain horses. It was indeed pleasant when the last gate was opened and we were safe ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... would have yielded to my prayer; but as you will not, I have no choice." And he took his hand from under the cloak that wrapped him, and held something out; then there came a great roaring out of the pit, and a zigzag flame flickered in the dark. Then in a moment the tall man and the shadow were gone; Anthony could not see whither they went, and he would have thanked the stranger; but the other put his finger to his lip as though to order silence, and pointed to the way he had come, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 face of the ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... those tents, the thought of what one of them contained, inspired me with new courage, and, releasing my grip upon the rein, I allowed my patient horse to proceed. Shortly after this I passed the divide—that is where the water sheds both ways—then the descent began. It was zigzag, just as the climb had been, but I preferred the climb. I did not have the unfathomable spaces so constantly before me, nor was my imagination so active. It was fixed on heights to be attained rather than on valleys to roll into. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... and cities lying between Springfield and Washington invited him officially to visit them on his way to the capital. It was decided that he should accept as many as possible of these invitations. This would involve a zigzag route and require considerable time. The invitation of Massachusetts he declined on account of the pressure of time. Maryland was conspicuous by its omission of courtesy. Two private citizens of Baltimore invited him ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... The roar of breakers, while the blinding spray O'erleaps the barrier, and comes drifting on In lines as level as the window-bars. What curious visions, in a night like this, Will the eye conjure from the rocks and trees And zigzag fences! I was almost sure I saw a man staggering along the road A moment since; but instantly the shape Dropped from my sight. Hark! Was not that a call— A human voice? There's a conspiracy Between my eyes and ears to play me tricks, Else wanders there abroad some hapless soul Who needs assistance. ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... rest of the tribe, having brought 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 ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... master, and there was comfort in the very miserableness of the cornstalks with their disheveled blades hanging like tattered banners and rattling discordantly in the rising wind. Wandering without purpose, Ralph followed the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At last he came out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased his melancholy fancy by kicking the dry and silky leaves before him in billows, while the soughing of the wind through the long, vibrant boughs and slender twigs of the beech forest ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... than other parts, and soon betray the damage by their threadbare, dingy look, as is the case in the example just cited. The method for grounding the quatrefoils is remarkable for being done in a long zigzag diaper pattern ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... another object, a curious metal casket brought to Europe by a member of the Punitive Expedition. In design, according to Ling Roth, this casket "is bold and artistic; the high relief of the bizarre face and the zigzag conventionalized serpents and tadpoles being well thrown up by enchasing of the ground work. The proportions are all good, and this is especially the case with an enchasing of the enclosed lines." Ling Roth says that the relief portions are somewhat roughly cast, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the rock slippery, the path heavy, and his young guide a drag on him. The path through the fir woods which had been so delightful two days (could it be only two days?) ago, was now a baffling, wearisome zigzag; yet when he tried to cut across, regardless of the voice of his guide, he found he lost time, for he had to clamber, once fell and rolled some distance, happily with no damage as he found when ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mist stole up from the river and stealthily crept through the streets and lanes of Chelsea. It was not yet five o'clock, but on an afternoon in the depth of winter the little touch of fog converted dusk to darkness. The mist was not thick, but very cold and clammy, and in the zigzag lane the lamps were blurred and the shadows deep. Two people left a bus in the King's Road and turned down it. He was broad-shouldered, and swung along with a fine decided stride: she was trim and erect, and very quietly clad; her face was fresh and ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... these days I might be amused to read it. Besides, it took me such a devil of a time to write. It was good of you to keep things to yourself although I laid down no conditions of secrecy. I might have known it." He stared at the hill-side opposite, with its zigzag path through the vines marked by the figures of zealous pedestrians, and then he said suddenly: "If I asked you not to come and see our show you would set me down as ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... REVERSE COUCHING—Showing the parallel lines of couched linen thread which sew down the silk upon the surface (Illustration 54). The zigzag pattern of the stitching might equally ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... arrived with time to spare. Fully an hour we loafed and yarned and smoked before a whistle blew and long lines of little figures began to come up out of the depths and zigzag across the landscape until soon a line of laborers of every shade known to humanity began to form, pay-checks in hand; its double head at the pay-windows on the two sides of the veranda, its tail serpentining off down the hillside and away ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... tore a 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 was taken up with a ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... a few excited zigzag turns on the leaf and pulled at his head, to Maya's intense concern. However, the little bee had observed by this time that there wasn't much sense to be got out of ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... heart: To these be helpful—yea, to one of these!" And lo, the wrathful thoughts, like routed fiends, Left me, and came no more!' Discoursing thus, The friends a moment halted in a space Where stood a flowering thorn. Adown it trailed In zigzag curves erratic here and there Long lines of milky bloom, like rills of foam Furrowing the green back of some huge sea wave Refluent from cliffs. Ecstatic minstrelsy Swelled from its branches. Birds as ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the north side there are a plain square-headed doorway and two bold round arches let into the outer wall over the graves of some great men of these distant times. The drip-mould of one of these arches is carved with a shallow zigzag ornament which is repeated on the western door, a door whose slightly pointed arch may mean a rather later date than the rest of the church. The wooden roof, as at Villarinho, has a very gentle slope with eaves ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... him climb into the car; On which the mule went slower still and slower. This creature who, upon occasions, shows Taste very like her master's, left the highway And took a grass-grown wheel-track that led down Zigzag athwart the broad curved banks of lawn Coating a valley between rounded hills Which faced the sea abruptly in huge crags. Each slope grew steeper till I left my seat And led the mule; for now Hipparchus' snore Tuned with the crooning waves heard from below. We passed two narrow belts ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... sleep about this time, but whenever I did slumber, 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... should have done so if the great streaks of lightning which now and then shot zigzag through the sky had taken the shape of words and bid us all beware. I was not one to be daunted, and knew no other course than that of advance when once a stroke of justice had been planned, and the direction for ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... 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 aid from Richmond. But the average man did not grasp the situation. ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... making a leisurely circuit of the two sides of the principal square, was now beginning the ascent of the steep zigzag road to the Palace, which stood on the terraced height of the plateau that commanded the city. The party in the coach caught glimpses of its massive but ornate towers with fantastic spires and turrets, and its great arched and columned wings ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... humble-bee, being, at heart at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky. The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... roots, and a vast branch lay across the path we had just passed. Nothing now was required to expedite our steps. The wind roared, the mighty trees rocked to and fro as if they had been reeds, the thunder rattled in deafening peals, and the lightning, in zigzag form, rushed down the stems of the trees, running like serpents along the ground, and flashed vividly in every direction. The storm I had witnessed in the Cordilleras was grander, but it was scarcely so terrific in ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... ocean is before that ship, and a wider mystery. But in the passage of time, as the strange cruise proceeds, its course begins to tell upon the chart. The zigzag line, like obscure chirography, has an intelligible look, and seems to spell out intimations. As order after order is opened, those sibyl leaves of the cabin commence to prophesy, glimpses multiply, surmises come quick, and shortly the whole ship's company more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the same side of the leaf are brought into some sort of connection. Near the circumference of the larger leaves the bifurcating branches also come into close union, and then separate again, forming a continuous zigzag line of vessels round the whole circumference. But the union of the vessels in this zigzag line seems to be much less intimate than at the main inosculation. It should be added that the course of the ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... the sides of this steep slope were covered with dwarf cypress and occasional young pines, and it was clear that St. Hilarion would be commanded by a battery upon these heights, or even by the fire of modern rifles. Ascending the zigzag path among blocks of fallen stone, which had rolled from the partially dismantled walls, we entered the gateway, and at once perceived the great extent of the old fortress. The entire mountain-top is encircled by a high wall, flanked at intervals ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... your life," said the miner, with the firmness of a great conviction. "It's full of yeast powders. Why, it's r'arin' and risin' like a buckin' hoss. I'm plumb sea-sick." He laid a zigzag course for the door. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... decades of the last century, when Clintonian and Bucktail, gradually absorbing the Federalists, severed the old Republican party into warring factions. In later years, Daniel S. Dickinson spoke of "the tangled web of New York politics"; and Horace Greeley complained of "the zigzag, wavering lines and uncouth political designations which puzzled and wearied readers" from 1840 to 1860, when Democrats divided into Conservatives and Radicals, Hunkers and Barnburners, and Hards and ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Rob Roy yawl, of 4 tons register, and the map (about 70 pages farther on) shews the general course of her first sea voyage by a dotted line, but many a long mile of zigzag had to be ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... long boat and making frantic efforts to push it off finally got it afloat, and with an oar shoved it into deep water and began to scull it out rapidly, making a zigzag course for ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... 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 ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... done by a line that zigzags along the exact measurements; because it is less influenced by temporary and extraordinary causes that may obscure the operation of those that are being investigated. On the other hand, the abrupt deviations of a punctilious zigzag may have their own logical value, as will appear in ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... was now steered this way and that, sometimes backed, and then sent forward again. After about an hour of this zigzag work Mr. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... with three or four berries of the mountain ash (there called "sorbier "); this is fixed to the bow by inserting the stalk into a slit in the wood. The hirer of a new tenderie three or four acres in extent is obliged to make zigzag footpaths through it, to out away the boughs which obstruct them, and even to hoe and keep them clean. Having thus prepared himself, he purchases one or two bushels of mountain ash berries, with the stalks to which they grow, picked for the purpose after ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Save one in course of construction from Mostar to Metcovich, it is the only attempt at road-making in the province. It is bad enough, as all Turkish roads are, their engineers having not the slightest idea of levelling. They take the country as they find it, apparently thinking that a zigzag, no matter at what slope the angles may be, is the highest triumph of their art. Until our arrival at Blagai, six miles from Mostar, an escort was deemed necessary, though it was really of not the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... 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 ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... finally went up in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... summit, and so set out alone, the path appearing plain 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 trouble for ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... road, I saw just before me a negro standing, with a hoe and a watering-pot in his hand. He had evidently just gotten over the "worm-fence" into the road, out of the path which led zigzag across the "old field" and was lost to sight in the dense growth of sassafras. When I rode up, he was looking anxiously back down this path for his dog. So engrossed was he that he did not even hear my horse, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... great, down-drifting pall of white. It was falling thick and fast when Alexander Jardine and Ian Rullock passed through the broken wall beyond the school-room. The pine branches were whitening, the narrow, rugged path ran a zigzag of white. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... be caught napping by any Hun making seemingly friendly proposals. Before the German had more than half executed the maneuver, Bangs was already shooting upwards in a zigzag course and by the time the other had gotten into position, Buck was swinging round far above, from whence, to outdo the other, he pointed his Nieuport downward pointblank at the fuselage of the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... valley and the blended mountain ground Sink in confusion; but with tempest-wing Should Boreas from his northern barrier spring, The rushing woods with deaf'ning clamour roar, Like the sea tumbling on the pebbly shore. When spouting rains descend in torrent tides, See the torn zigzag weep its channel'd sides: Winter exerts its rage; heavy and slow, From the keen east rolls on the treasured snow; Sunk with its weight the bending boughs are seen, And one bright deluge whelms the works of men. Amidst this savage landscape, bleak and bare, Hangs the chill hermitage ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... DONA PISES SIMUL ATQ' CIRONA." [Footnote: The comma in these inscriptions stands for a small cuneiform mark, I believe of contraction, and the small for a zigzag mark of the same kind. The dots or periods are similarly marked ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... light—ominously—grey with a tinge of yellow in its depths. Uncle William hurried down the face of the cliff, a telescope in his hand. Now and then he paused on the zigzag path and swept the bay with it. The grey ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... dynamiter," he said. "Let me see; Texas! Texas!" He walked to a large wall map of the United States, and placing his finger thereon at about the location of Idaho, ran it down in a zigzag, doubtful way until he ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the zigzag mountain peaks so short a distance beyond the north gate. As if to give her words weight, a heavy thunder ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... sxercemulo. Zeal 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 ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... females, and generally have longer and slenderer tails; but he knows of no other difference in external structure. In regard to colour, be can almost always distinguish the male from the female, by his more strongly- pronounced tints; thus the black zigzag band on the back of the male English viper is more distinctly defined than in the female. The difference is much plainer in the rattle-snakes of N. America, the male of which, as the keeper in the Zoological Gardens shewed me, can at once be distinguished from the female by having more lurid ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... 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 ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... ZIGZAG, v.t. To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man's burden. (From zed, z, and jag, an Icelandic ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... we took our meals is still clear in my mind. The floor was two inches deep in white sand, in which were carefully traced zigzag lines, with odd patterns in the corners. A bare table of well-rubbed mahogany stood in the middle, with a thin board or two laid on the sand, that the table might be set without disturbing the patterns, ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... bird's breeding range extends from the plains to the timber-line; and he dwells on both sides of the mountains, for I met with him at Glenwood. About a half mile above Malta a western nighthawk was seen, hurtling in his eccentric, zigzag flight overhead, uttering his strident call, and "hawking for flies," as White of Selborne would phrase it. A western grassfinch flew over to some bushes with a morsel in its bill, but I could not discover its nest or young, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... soon left boots, shoes, and all behind, and deposited us at the door of the uncle's villa, where a friendly hand welcomed us to its hospitalities. It was very prettily situated upon a cliff overlooking Massachusetts Bay, in which said cliff a zigzag stepway was cut down to the water, for the convenience of bathing. The grounds were nicely laid out and planted, and promised in time to be well wooded, if the ocean breeze driving upon them did not lay an embargo upon their growth, in the same heartless ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... himself and talking whimsically to the three horses stringing behind him, Dick Kincaid picked his way down the zigzag, sidling trail which led from the saddleback between two peaks of the Bitter Root Mountains into the valley which still ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... village of Dresden, Yates County, New York, seven miles from Penn Yan, where Robert Ingersoll was born, to his niche in the Temple of Fame, was a zigzag journey. But that is Nature's plan—we make head by tacking. And as the years go by, more and more we see the line of Ingersoll's life stretching itself straight. Every change to him meant progress. Success is a question of temperament—it is all a matter of the red corpuscle. Ingersoll ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... across to Memorial Hall, rubbing elbows with the heroes, who stalked majestically in their voluminous bulk, with the coveted 'Varsity caps riding on the backs of their cropped heads, or being jostled by the freckled imps who ran zigzag, shrieking chases ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor a horsey-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was helping a boy to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ancient zigzag decoration, referring to the four wombs of earth and the darts with which they were broken open for the liberation and birth of mankind. K'i-wih na-k'ia t-le, a-wi-ten ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... coast was the headland of Bratvold, where the lighthouse was built just on the edge of the slope, which here fell so steeply off towards the sea as to make the descent difficult and almost dangerous, while in ascending it was necessary to take a zigzag course. The sheep, which had grazed here from time out of mind, had cut out a network of paths on the side of the hill, so that from a distance these paths seemed to form a pattern of curves and projections ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... that had a familiar tang to it, and that was almost instantly obeyed, for, under cover of sharp, well-aimed fire from aloft, from the shelter of projecting rock or stranded bowlder, again there leaped into sight a few scattered, sinewy forms that rushed in bewildering zigzag up the steep, until safe beyond their supports, when they, too, vanished, and again the cliff stood barren of Apache foemen as the level of the garrison parade. It was science in savage warfare against which the drill book of the cavalry taught no method whatsoever. Another minute and even ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King |
