"Fluke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a juggle, I tell thee; sheer malice of the enemy, fow' an' fause as he be." Here he spat on the floor to show his detestation and contempt; but George, either too ignorant or too idle to reply, took down a dried fluke from the chimney, and warming it on the glowing turf for a few minutes, was soon occupied in disposing of this dainty and favourite repast. Their hut was of the rudest construction. The walls were of boulder stones from the beach, loosely set up with mud and slime, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... efforts may have been very worthy—but gloria's surely not the word for them. Or take a football game," she laughed. "Sometimes the defeated team really does better work than the winners—but wouldn't we rather our fellows would win on a fluke than go down to defeat putting up a good, steady fight? The ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... up a few crumbs of comfort, while the feast's been spread for Riverport. And yet Mechanicsburg has just as good athletes as you can boast. We manage to win now and then, sometimes by sheer hard work, and again by a fluke. But they seem to be only the minor events; all the big plums go ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... could be obtained all the way to the top of Spion Kop; and even had it been wanting it is not likely that after a sacrifice of 1,200 to 1,300 lives the position would have been abandoned on this account alone. Our victory was undoubtedly a fluke. ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... been lowered properly into its hardwood beds, but there had been no time to take a turn with it. Anyway, it was quite secure as it was, for going into dock; but I could see directly that the tow-rope would sweep under the fluke in another second. My heart flew up right into my throat, but not before I had time to yell out: 'Jump ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office. Mat Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... what it had been an hour ago. Lawrence was playing left end on the Harvard Freshman football eleven; not only that, but in the first game of the season, played against a Boston preparatory school, he had made the only touchdown. He added that that didn't mean much, for he had got the ball on a fluke; still, the tone of the ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... anchor to the bow, so that the sharp flukes protruded; thus extemporizing an iron-clad ram more than two hundred years before naval men thought of using one. Thus provided, the second blow of the sloop was more terrible than the first. The sharp fluke of the anchor crashed through the side of the pinnace, and the two vessels hung tightly together. Gallop then began to double-load his duck-guns, and fire through the sides of the pinnace; but, finding that the enemy was not to be dislodged ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... all a fluke. It seemed to him he was getting an entirely disproportionate reward for mauling an insolent chauffeur. That moved him to wonder what became of Pebbles. He felt sorry for Pebbles. The man had probably lost his job for ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "Why should you force me for explanations? Ask yourself. Once before you have stood in the dock, on the charge of being connected with certain enterprises designed to wheedle their pocket-money from over-credulous ladies. You got off by a fluke, but you did not learn your lesson. This time, getting off will not be quite so easy, for you seem to have added to your former profession one which an English jury seldom lets pass unpunished. I am in a position to prove, Bertrand Saton, that the offices in ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... In consequence, at 6 P.M. the two frigates fell aboard, the Chesapeake's quarter pressing upon the Shannon's side just forward the starboard main-chains, and the frigates were kept in this position by the fluke of the Shannon's anchor catching ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... came mostly from mines and workshops, were hard and steady and did not show any outward sign of nervousness, though they knew well enough that before the light of another day came their numbers would have passed through the lottery of this game of death. Each man's life depended on no more than a fluke of luck by the throw of those dice which explode as they fall. They knew what their job was. It was to cross five hundred yards of open ground to capture and to hold a certain part of the German position near ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... found her," Jimmie replied. "It was by a mere fluke. I went to a solicitor on some business, and it turned out that he was acting for Miss Foster—you see her father left a good bit of money. He was close-mouthed at first, but when I partly explained how matters stood, he ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... themselves into the bottom; whence the words odontes and dentes are frequently taken for anchors in the Greek and Latin poets. The invention of the teeth is ascribed by Pliny to the Tuscans; but Pausanias gives the credit to Midas, king of Phrygia. Originally there was only one fluke or tooth, whence anchors were called eterostomoi; but a second was added, according to Pliny, by Eupalamus, or, according to Strabo, by Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher. The anchors with two teeth were called amfiboloi or amfistomoi, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... than he had previously done, and this close examination revealed the fact that the measure is one in every way worthy of support. (Pretty thin!) It cannot be denied that this desertion has had a damaging effect. Jex and Fluke have returned to their iniquitous allegiance, with six or eight others of lesser calibre, and it is reported and believed that Tubbs and Huffy are ready to go back. It is feared that the University swindle is stronger to-day than it ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... disagreeably out in our anticipations, for about three o'clock A.M. (January 16) a heavy squall burst on us, veering from East-South-East to East-North-East, broke our best bower anchor, and drove us half a mile out to sea, when the remaining fluke hooked a rock and brought us up. It rained and blew till daylight, then we were again favoured with fine weather, and light westerly winds. The land was now in sight, Cape Villaret being the most northerly point, and bearing East-South-East some 16 or 17 miles. The hillock upon this cape, and ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... hard to get out of and forced him to make excuses for himself, whereas at the moment he was all lit up with joy over the miracle of his second big strike. He had discovered the Wunpost, and lost it on a fluke; but the Willie Meena was different—if he kept the peace with her they would both come ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... poor chance." Here Dinah's face fell. "He has plenty of abilities, but I doubt his staying power; he works too much by fits and starts—there is no method or application. But of course he may turn over a new leaf. It is just possible that he may pass by some lucky fluke. It is not always the best workers who get through. You will give him a coach, of course. Oh, I see," reading Dinah's expression correctly, "he may have a dozen coaches if he needs them; but if you care to consult me when the time ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Three-fingered Hoover had insulted Charlotte Rooze At the conversazzhyony down at Sorry Tom's that night, An' when they asked me, I allowed that Bill for once wuz right; Although it broke my heart to see my friend go up the fluke, We all opined his treatment uv the girl deserved rebuke. It warn't no use for Sorry Tom to nail it for a lie,— When it come to sassin' wimmin, there wuz blood in every eye; The boom for Charlotte Rooze swep' on an' took the polls by storm, An' so Three-fingered ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... really big team, and they had clearly outclassed them. The contests with the smaller colleges had been little more than practice, and in most cases the scrub could have won as certainly if not as overwhelmingly as the 'Varsity. And the victory to-day had been won not by a "fluke," but by clearcut playing. To be sure, the memory of the first part of the game kept rising up like Banquo's ghost to make them uncomfortable. But they had redeemed that so royally in the final half as to ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... of his losses, was now almost cheerful again on account of a curious side issue. "You may say it is coincidence," he said, "you may call it a fluke, but I prefer to look for some other interpretation! Consider this. The amount of my balance is a secret between me and my bankers. He never had it from me, for I did not know it—I hadn't looked at my passbook for months. But he drew it all in one cheque, within seventeen and sixpence of ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... hopes and fears and little stratagems which as often as not proved injudicious, and then somehow or other in the end, there lay the young man bound and with an arrow through his heart at her daughter's feet. It seemed to her to be all a fluke which she could have little or no hope of repeating. She had indeed repeated it once, and might perhaps with good luck repeat it yet once again—but five times over! It was awful: why she would rather have three ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... colour you have painted in that forehead," he said to me on one occasion—"so delicate and refined. Do it again," he added, as he took up my palette knife and scraped off the "delicate bit." "Ah, you see, savez vous, you can't do it again; you got it by fluke, some stray tints off your palette, savez vous," and, taking the biggest brush I had, he swept over that palette and produced enough of the desired tints to have ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... jungle, Parrot, old top," said Mallow, who, as he did not believe in ghosts, was physically nor morally afraid of anything. "Though, you have my word for it that I'd like to see you lose every cent of your damned oil fluke." ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... liquid, and stowed in a ship's hold, in order to keep them bilge-free; being steadied upon the beds by means of wedges called quoins. The impression made by a ship's bottom on the mud on having been left by an ebb-tide. The bite made in the ground by the fluke of an anchor. A kind of false deck, or platform, placed on those decks where the guns were too low for the ports.—Bed of a gun-carriage, or stool-bed. The piece of wood between the cheeks or brackets which, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Hackett Wells this was a national calamity. Havin' got in with the easy-money bunch by a fluke in the first place, he wa'n't a man who could come back. Course he brought suit, and wasted a lot of breath callin' Pyramid hard names from a safe distance; but Pyramid's lawyers wore him out in the courts, and he was too busy to care who was ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... the mare's grasping stride. The trap pitched more than ever as she came up into the shafts and back into her harness; she twisted suddenly to the left into a narrow lane, cleared the corner by an impossible fluke, and Fanny Fitz was hurled ignominiously on to Rupert Gunning's lap. Long briars and twigs struck them from either side, the trap bumped in craggy ruts and slashed through wide puddles, then reeled irretrievably ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... share already in being sent to Cheltenham—and one can live a good deal cheaper in the Marines than in the line—I concluded the best thing I could do was to accept the offer; and I have not been sorry that I did it. It was awful luck my coming out in the Naval Brigade here; it was just a fluke. The man who was going was chucked off a horse and broke his arm the day before the brigade sailed from Suakim, and I was sent up in his place. Well, what is the last news, Clinton? You ought to know, as you are on ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... hissing knot in the north-west, wound our poor little channel, mercilessly exposed as a stagnant, muddy ditch with scarcely a foot of water, not deep enough to hide our small kedge-anchor, which perked up one fluke in impudent mockery. The dull, hard sky, the wind moaning in the rigging as though crying in despair for a prey that had escaped it, made ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... the Gordian Knot the diplomats have been fumbling at for over a hundred years by slicing their old Turkey in two. Then came the big delay owing to ships changing stations during which mines set loose from up above had time to float down the current, when, by the Devil's own fluke, they impinge upon our battleships, and blow de Robeck and his plans into the middle of next week—or later! These are ward-room yarns. De Robeck was working by stages and never meant, so far as we know, to run through to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... are good all year round, but the fluke is better than the flounder in summer. Carp may be had all year, but care must be taken that it has not been in ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... this way. Bertie was so pleased with the result of his first speculation in horseflesh (though so far as he was concerned it was a pure fluke) that he must needs make another. If he had picked up a second cab-horse at thirty or forty pounds he could not have gone far wrong; but instead of that he must needs go to Tattersall's and give nearly ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... anchor into it, there was the risk of dragging on this bank. We say that the bottom was hard, for the reader should know that it is not the weight of the anchor that secures the ship, but the hold its pointed fluke and broad palm get of the ground. The coast itself was distant less than a mile, and the entire basin within the reef was fast presenting spits of sand, as the water fell on the ebb. Still there were many channels, and it would have ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... travelling, and impoverished by the husband's follies, the hapless couple returned to London, where a pure fluke with some mining shares introduced Minchin to finer gambling than he had found abroad. The man was bitten. There was a fortune waiting for special knowledge and a little ready cash; and Alexander Minchin settled down to make ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... that a man should expend so much ammunition in a region swarming with his particular prey without experiencing something in the shape of a fluke. He did, after a time, get one shot which was effectual. A young rabbit sat on the top of a mound looking at him with an air of impudence which is sometimes associated with extreme youth. A fat old kinsman—or woman—was ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... my own sheep; but I know the signs of it so well. My grasses are peculiarly dry, and my flocks are remarkably well looked after; but I can see indications of it. Only fancy where we should all be if fluke showed itself in Britannula! If it once got ahead we should be no better off than ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... girls, and that will give you more pleasure than if I could do all the sums in the world. They tried to teach me algebra, too. Such a joke; I once got an equation right. The teacher nearly had a fit. It was the most awful fluke." ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... yards long, and it was Robinson's ball on her ten-yard line. The north stand was applauding vociferously this stroke of fortune. If Erskine could get possession of the ball now she might be able to score; but her coaches, watching intently from the side-line, knew that only the veriest fluke could give the pigskin to the Purple. And meanwhile, with hearts beating a little faster than usual, they awaited the first practical test of ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... waist. Gunnar sees this, and turned him about so quickly, that no eye could follow him, and caught the spear with his left hand, and hurled it back at Karli's ship, and that man got his death who stood before it. Kolskegg snatched up a grapnel and casts it at Karli's ship, and the fluke fell inside the hold, and went out through one of the planks, and in rushed the coal-blue sea, and all the men sprang ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... by a fluke that he missed Sanders. As it happened, the Commissioner had come back to the big river to collect the evidence of the murdered woman's brother who was a petty headman of an Isisi fishing village. The Zaire came into the river almost as the last of Bosambo's canoes went round the bend ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... only eighteen hours in Paris, and by a happy fluke the business was done over which I had counted upon spending a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Portion of grass stalk bearing three encysted cercariae of the common liver fluke ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... stuck, they stuck, and I thought it a poor game. When they slid I sat down and I thought it a poorer game. It never entered my head that I could traverse across any slope and so I always went straight down and only by a fluke did I ever stand. Then Tobias Branger, who was a great sportsman and kept a sports shop at Davos, imported several pairs of Skis and ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... remember as early as the City Merchants' days how Britten and I scoffed at that pompous question-begging word "Evolution," having, so to speak, found it out. Evolution, some illuminating talker had remarked at the Britten lunch table, had led not only to man, but to the liver-fluke and skunk, obviously it might lead anywhere; order came into things only through the struggling mind of man. That lit things wonderfully for us. When I went up to Cambridge I was perfectly clear that life was a various and splendid disorder of forces that the spirit of man sets itself ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... true. I confessed that all three had predicted that I should do several things which I had since done rather unexpectedly. He asked if I didn't accept this as, at any rate, a scrap of evidence. I said I could only regard it as a fluke—a rather remarkable fluke. ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... pile, And can from ostentatious show refrain, Without the Greengrocer to purchase "style," I possibly once more may entertain! And so,—I know not how it came about, But if by chance, it is a happy fluke That I at length without the slightest doubt Have lived ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... Canadian girl of six, who, seeing a torpedo shimmering past the ship's side, called out, "Oh, Mummy, look at the pretty fish!" Once a fast torpedo was hit and exploded by a shell from the vessel its submarine was chasing. But this was a perfect fluke. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... dropt alongside of each other, head and stern, when, the fluke of our spare anchor hooking his quarter, we became so close, fore and aft, that the muzzles of our guns touched ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... shocked. "Just a fluke of circumstance. If something like that happened again you'd be right to wonder. But it could not ever ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... swore that he'd give Ranny the cup, for Ranny'd given him the race. He explained to them in his hoarsest tones that it stood to reason he could never have got in with the pace Ranny'd got on him. It wasn't fair, he said. It was a fluke, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... "Fluke this time, I'm afraid," he acknowledged, "but I rather like the suggestion. You ought to see a great deal of me, Miss Van Teyl. Do you realise that I am a stranger in New York, and any hospitality you can show ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Something or other has taken me in hand: I'm blessed if I know what. All these things don't happen one on the top of the other just by a fluke. There's something going on, and I want to know what it is. And I suppose something's going to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... you are not my overlords. The bonds they set upon your minds do not touch me." Travis hoped that that was the truth and his escape that morning had not been just a fluke. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... fore-topmast-staysail, she rode more upright. The main-topsail was clewed up and fortunately saved, the mizzen-staysail was set. "Stand by, to cut away the stoppers of the best bower anchor—to let it go, stock and fluke," said Captain G. "Man the fore-topmast-staysail down-haul; put your helm down! haul down the staysail." This was done, and the ship came up handsomely, head to wind, "See the cable tiers all clear—what water ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... the mere fact that the thief got the jewels, and was only stopped by a fluke from getting away with them, ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... on the trooper. 'Diggs will 'ave to ride 'im this hafternoon, and it'll bait the cap'n horful; for one of our 'orses come a fluke last hevenin'. I ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... light, from the south. This day came into Harbor the bark Winona, after a cruise of three years, two months, and four days. Captain Chase reported that my eldest son, Matthew Shore, was killed by the fluke of a right whale, at Christmas Island. The whale yielded seventy barrels of oil. Matthew ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... pieces of earthen jars and trees cut with axes, we found remnants of bamboo lattice work, palm leaves sewed with cotton thread into the form of such hats as are worn by the Chinese, and the remains of blue cotton trousers, of the fashion called moormans. A wooden anchor of one fluke, and three boats rudders of violet wood were also found; but what puzzled me most was a collection of stones piled together in a line, resembling a low wall, with short lines running perpendicularly at the back, dividing the space behind into compartments. In each of these were the remains of ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... sudden brightness but hid a black abyss of bitterness and apprehension. What she had told me had somehow stricken me dumb. There seemed a stark sordidness in the situation that repelled me. She had arisen and was about to step over the fluke of the great anchor, when I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Mr. Bordley's counsel that the greater part of my success was due. He taught me the folly of ploughing with a fluke,—a custom to which the Eastern Shore was wedded, pointing out that a double surface was thus exposed to the sun's rays; and explained at length why there was more profit in small grain in that district than heavy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... old Minerva-press idea that he would find a girl who would marry him for his own sake. And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry anybody, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and after darting at him two or three times managed to get fast and get him alongside. Just then it was reported that the boats to leeward were out of sight. That worried me some so I told the cooper to get the fluke chain on the whale and I would go aloft and see if I could ...
— Bark Kathleen Sunk By A Whale • Thomas H. Jenkins
... round, and verily no wonder! The Money-boxing Kangaroo is plucky: But when a chance-blow smites the jaw like thunder, A champion may succumb to fluke unlucky. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... got his Diploma on a Fluke, but when he appeared on the Rostrum between an Oleander and the Members of the Board, with Goose-Goose on the Aureole, the new Store Suit garnished with a leaf of Geranium and a yellow Rose-Bud, and the Gates ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... small fort should be erected at Tambisan or Tawi Tawi. But it is necessary to observe, the Sulo people do not practice diving at all, as is the case at Beharen and Ceylon, but only comprehend the slow method of dredging for the tipy with a thing like the fluke of a wooden anchor. It would be a desirable thing, in the event of prosecuting this valuable fishery as a national concern, to obtain forty or fifty Arab divers from Beharen, and perhaps an equal ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... it to you—it was all a fluke. But I don't blame you, Andy. I'll go and talk to the Stewards—they're all right; they only want to get at the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... out and stood on the steps, enveloped in a hospital aroma of broiled bones, lemons, and alcohol, and shaking his visitor affectionately by the hand—for he bore no malice, and the Lenten ditty he quite forgave as being no worse in modern parlance than an unhappy 'fluke'—was about to pull him into the parlour, where there was ensconced, he told him, 'a noble friend of his.' This was 'Pat Mahony, from beyond Killarney, just arrived—a man of parts and conversation, and a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be disgusted. "It was only a fluke after all," they said to each other. Colonel Drew was appealed to urge Monty to save himself, and he was on the point of remonstrance when the message came that the threatened strike was off, and that the men were willing to arbitrate. Almost before one could draw breath this startling news ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... goes, an' the 'Coffin's' brought up sharp; not a moment too soon, mayhap, for ten to one but you see an' hear the breakers, roarin' like mad, thirty yards or so astern. It may be good holdin' ground, but what o' that?—the anchor's an old 'un, or too small; the fluke gives way, and ye're adrift; or the cable's too small, and can't stand the strain, so you let go both anchors, an' ye'd let go a dozen more if ye had 'em for dear life; but it's o' no use. First one an' then the other parts; the stern is crushed in a'most afore ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... may make a lucky hit now and again by what is called a fluke, but even this must be only a little in advance of his other performances of the same kind. He may multiply seven by eight by a fluke after a little study of the multiplication table, but he will not be able to extract the cube root of 4913 by a fluke, without long training in arithmetic, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... have been if it wasn't for her beastly mother. Just because you found him out before us, by a fluke, you think you can preach to us about being rude to him. Well, you'd have been just as bad under the same circumstances, if not worse. The fact of you having spotted his game doesn't make it any the less disgusting. ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... a fast one. Starship was in town and looking for a new galley-boy. Dave did some glib talking and got aboard. It was a fluke thing, ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... day may still be chasing whale-brit round an Arctic iceberg. The whale mates, we are told, once and for keeps. Jogging along from one ocean end to another with the same wife for a thousand years without turning fluke to look at an affinity! Shades of Chicago and Pittsburg, hide your wings! Whales follow their annual migration as regularly as do moose and caribou on land, the seal and salmon in the Pacific. Seen first in May in Bering Strait, the Bowheads trend from here north ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... of the British army—it is amazing to think that there were only 45,000 men who had tried to stem the German avalanche—was developing into a run. Only some wild fluke of chance (the pious patriot sees God's hand at work, while the cynic sees only the inefficiency of the German Staff) saved it from becoming a bloody rout. It is too soon even now to write the details of it. Only when scores of officers have written their reminiscences shall we ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... producing another idea in case it should be wanted? That one little flash of inspiration she'd had, that had resulted in the twelve costumes for the sextette—where had it come from? How had she happened on it? Wasn't it, perhaps, just a fluke that never could be repeated? During those wonderful days she had had antennae out everywhere, bringing her impressions, suggestions from the unlikeliest objects. Now they were all drawn in and the part of her mind that had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Unless I'm a Dutchman there will be, after your new book is published. Of course, that is one of the things no fellow can find out. If he could, publishing would be less of a lottery than it is. A book is sometimes a success by the merest fluke; at other times, in spite of everything, a good book is a deplorable failure. I think yours will go; anyhow, I am willing to bet on it up to a certain amount, and if it does go, I want to have the first look-in at your future books. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... o'clock the next morning Ray greeted his ladies and helped them into the car. Giddy had put on a clean shirt and yellow pig-skin gloves and was whistling his best. He considered Kennedy a fluke as a ladies' man, and if there was to be a party, the honors had to be done by some one who wasn't a blacksmith at small-talk. Giddy had, as Ray sarcastically admitted, "a local reputation as a jollier," and he was fluent ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Philip Ray the miller's only son, And Enoch Arden, a rough sailor's lad Made orphan by a winter shipwreck, play'd Among the waste and lumber of the shore, Hard coils of cordage, swarthy fishing-nets, Anchors of rusty fluke, and boats updrawn, And built their castles of dissolving sand To watch them overflow'd, or following up And flying the white breaker, daily left The ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... us. We played most of the afternoon, and he suggested that I "come back in the evening and play some more." I did so, and the game lasted till after midnight. I had beginner's luck—"nigger luck," as he called it—and it kept him working feverishly to win. Once when I had made a great fluke—a carom followed by most of the balls falling into ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... I told you I had decided not to go to poor old Major Lessing's funeral for various reasons. I have a horror of humbug; and to pose as sole and chief mourner at the funeral of a man who had made me his heir by a fluke, and if he had lived an hour longer would have altered his will, seemed humbugging, to my mind. Also the funeral service, beautiful as it appears to those who can believe in it, means absolutely nothing to me; and I have scruples about appearing ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... with a calm deliberateness that rang hollow in her own ears, "so greatly that I am compelled to utter this protest. Now, to end a distasteful controversy, let me tell you what I know to be true. When the ship was stranded, and we all thought our only chance of safety was to take to the boats, by a fluke, the accident of the moment, I was left alone in the captain's cabin. The sea was breaking in through the doorway, and it brought an odd relief to my over-burthened mind when I endeavored to rescue the contents of a locker which, for ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... once a joy and a disappointment. Such marvellous angles and stop volleys off difficult drives! Yet immediately on top of a dazzling display Alonzo will throw away the easiest sort of a high volley by a pitiable fluke. ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... the plainest kind of fluke on the part of Maggie, who in her effort to instruct her brother, forgot one or two nice points, which oversight ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... a reasonable security. Experienced prospectors, experts in their line, had been seeking this symbolic well in the desert for twenty-five years and he, not by virtue of his skill or knowledge, but by a mere fluke, a glorious accident, had stumbled on it. It was hardly likely that another should have a similar experience, within the space of the next few months at any rate, and the next few months were all ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... to make false starts aplenty," Bud remarked after the first fluke. "Jeff and I have it out next. I'll just give Smoke another treatment." He dismounted, looked at Jerry undecidedly and slapped him on the knee. "I'm glad to have a friend like you," he said impulsively. ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... cried a broad-shouldered jack-tar, giving the fluke of the anchor a hearty slap with his hand after the housing was completed—"there, lass, take a good nap now, for we shan't ask you to kiss the mud again for many ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... in the place for years, but Mr. Williams quarrelled with Dr. Bevan, and his daughter dared not send for him, and as I was the nearest medical man, the servant came to me; it was just a fluke, ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Anthony's voice in a tone of great surprise. "So it is!" He leaped out and came around to Juliet's side. "What a fluke!" But the happy laugh in ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... insoluble; he had, without feminine help—save in the sense that ladies were dying to come to him and that he saved the lives of several—established a salon; but I might have guessed that there was a method in his madness, a law in his success. He hadn't hit it off by a mere fluke. There was an art in it all, and how was the art so hidden? Who indeed if it came to that was the occult artist? Launching this inquiry the other day I had already got hold of the tail of my reply. I was helped by the very wonder of some of the conditions ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... having been held to one lone and practically fluke touchdown, Delmar opened the second half with a drive of even greater power, calculated to put Elliott speedily to rout. The cream of the country's football teams had hammered steadily enough at Elliot's line to have worn it to shreds by now. No other eleven had stood up so long under Delmar's terrific ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... and kicked away the earth in different places, till he found where there was a good crevice between two pieces of rock, where, making use of the anchor as if it were a pickaxe, he dug out the earth till he could force down one fluke close between the stones till the stock was level, when he gave it a final stamp, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... being thrown on the island than to be carried past by a fluke of the wind!" he declared, and Thad believed so much the same way that he did ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... contemptuously; "that was a pure fluke. Any one could have caught that; and so it does not count either. I am ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... failed. The third was the lightning drop, straight over the plate. The batter poked weakly at it. Then Carl struck out and Manning following, did likewise. Three of the best hitters in the Eastern retired on nine strikes! That was no fluke. I knew what it meant, and I sat there hugging myself with the hum of something ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... mammals, living in trees and caves, one of them by himself, or a little group of them together, hit upon the use of articulate vocal signs as a means of conveying to his mates his needs, his fears, his desires and threats. It was probably by a happy fluke that he hit upon this use, or by some transcendent flash of insight due to a spontaneous variation of ability above that of the average ape; or else some unusual stress of hunger or danger of attack drove ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... snappers, even if they hooked more of sluggish fluke than of the gamier fish to tempt which the chopped bait is devoted, was so exciting that Betty, sailing the sloop, overlooked a pregnant cloud that streaked up from the horizon almost like a puff ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... don't care what it may be that stands in the way, we must brush it aside, and fight together to carry the day. Why, Chester will just go crazy if only we can down the boasting team that has never tasted defeat this season up to that fluke game, when they underestimated the fighting qualities of the rejuvenated Chester nine. And we can do it, Fred, we surely can, if only we pull together in team work, and every fellow stands on his honor to do his level best. You believe ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... Horace House!" cried Mr. Fox. The next moment every one was shoving and elbowing with their eyes fixed on the ball as it flew through the air. It dropped in exactly the right place, and Jack Vance, by some happy fluke, kicked it just as it touched the ground. Like a big round shot it whizzed through the posts, and there was a rapturous ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... on deck. With a crew of eighty all told, Lieutenant Thompson was in command, Lieutenant Bukett executive officer, and two midshipmen were the line officers. She was so slow that we could hardly hope for a prize except by a fluke. Repeatedly we had chased suspicious craft only ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... of a holy man called Kiranus. And there it happened one Sunday, as the people were at prayers and heard mass, that there descended gently from the air an anchor, as if it had been cast from a ship, for there was a cable to it, and the fluke of the anchor caught in the arch of the church-door, and all the people went out of church, and wondered, and looked up into the air after the cable. There they saw a ship floating above the cable, and men on board; and next they saw a man leap ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... are generally attributed to luck, if we could find the genesis of each one and trace its evolution or unfolding, we should probably not find more than one that could be associated with the things that happen by chance. The case of a man who achieved what is called a "lucky fluke" out of a piece of spoiled cloth is perhaps the only instance of its kind on record in the history of cloth manufacture. I have admitted that there are cases where advantage falls to a man which cannot be explained by anything he deserves, or has ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke—look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... plain clothes," he observed musingly to himself. "I wonder if it's just a fluke—or something else? ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... some American vessel. It was evident that she had been along the Gold Coast, and round the Bights of Benin and Biafra. The Captain stated that he was going to Prince's Island to procure anchors, having only one remaining, and that one, with but a single fluke to it. We afterwards learnt from the crew that he had endeavoured to enter the river Lagos, but had been fired on and forced to retire, by several Brazilian vessels lying there at the time. We conjectured that she had left the West Indies, on a pretence ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... I want you? She has traveled, she has studied, she is at home with grand dukes in Nice, and scribblers in a country village. She is wise without being solemn. She has courage, too, or I should not be here on a mere fluke. Now, my boy, you have given yourself due ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... take in practising upon a poor old woman who only by a sort of fluke isn't your grandmother?" ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... any other that might have been vouchsafed to him. And yet amidst it all he was somewhat ashamed of his pride. 'The man who can do it for himself is the real man after all,' he said. 'But I have got it by a fluke and by such a sad chance too!' Then he wandered on, thinking of the circumstances under which the property had fallen into his hands, and remembering how and when and where the first idea had occurred to him of making Clara Amedroz his wife. He had then felt that if he could ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... theory of mine that we are all born with a certain length of life in us, and, barring accident, that time we'll live. Well, of course this man had the accident of his stroke, which by rights ought to have done for him, but by some fluke he weathered it, and now he'll live out his time. If one could find out his ancestors and see how long they each lived, with a little calculation I could tell you how long he'd lie there.' With that the apothecary poked his patient in the cheek, and jerked him by the arm, to show Skelton ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... usual. "I never got it cashed, because I got by the very same post good news from England. My great-aunt Maxwell is dead at Bath and has left me all her money, twenty thousand pounds. Isn't it the luckiest fluke that ever was? But all the same it is a kindness that I shan't forget. You are an awfully good sort to have done it. Most fellows would have seen me in Halifax first, you know. And if ever you want a friend you'll know where to find him, that's all. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... "is it too dreadful and wicked and fast of me to go on playing? I don't care if it is. I must finish the game, and I'm going to win.—Oh, Lord Lindfield, what a fluke! Do you mean to say you are going to ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... would not understand that I could play billiards, and regarded every stroke I made as a fluke. For a beginner I didn't play so badly, I thought. I'm not so sure now; that was my opinion at the time. But young Dodd's scepticism and the "good baazness" finally cured me of my disposition to frequent the Eastry Arms, and so these noises had ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... on the whole meeting," answered Dick triumphantly. "And even that was a 'fluke,' because Bearwarden's Bacchante filly ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of them has anything to do with the conduct of the business of the company in which he invests, but one has got a tip from some friend or other who thinks he knows of a good thing. The work of the two men is exactly the same; it is a mere fluke that one gets a huge return and the other puts his money into a company which, without any fault on his ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... whale-killer had hurled his last lance, had killed his last whale. The dying monster, in making a last struggle with his enemies, had struck the captain with his fluke, and he sunk never ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... three hundred more waitin' on the tree for me to pick two weeks from last night if you'll say the word. It's just the same as I told you before. He's my meat. He still thinks I 'm a rube, an' that it was a fluke punch." ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... begin. They will take 20, 30, or 40—roughly equal numbers from both sides—every few hours as technical conditions allow. That will go on until East and West agree to drop this whole mad weapons race. It will be done quietly, peacefully. Nobody will be hurt except by a fluke. But if needs be, they will lift every major scientific brain off the face of Earth to stop the present drift to disaster for everybody. There are no weapons, no devices that you have at present, which can stop this plan going into effect. ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... and fishing as other seamen do, this position of the stock offers no impediment. The flukes were of the same dimensions as those of similar sized anchors with us; they were straight and not rounded, and there were no palms. There was also a kedge, with only one fluke. The cables were of rattan. The junk had no bitts, but to supply their place the strong beams across the deck had large holes for stoppers. The "wales" formed another singular feature of the vessel—airtight boxes, projecting three feet from the side; their object was to make the ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... matters. In imitation of these gentlemen she will assure those who care to listen to her, that she has had a real bad day, not having managed to get on to a single winner, and that if it hadn't been for a fluke in backing Tantivy, one, two, three, she would have been reduced to a twopence in the pound condition of beggary. She will then forget her imaginary losses, and will listen with amusement and interest while ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... was saying; a kind of bewilderment of joy possessed him—he could not keep his eyes off the dead stag—and now, if he had only chanced to notice it, his hand was certainly trembling. Probably Roderick did not know what a fluke was; in any case his ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... frightened rabbit burst out of a disturbed hole, and Geoffry, with a shout of delight, in pure instinct flung a stone. By a strange, unhappy fluke, expected least of all by himself, the stone hit the poor little terrified thing and it rolled over dead. He picked it up by its ears and called to them triumphantly to witness his luck, with boyish delight in the unexpected, though the chances were he would ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... ahead, I must pause to notice the naval regatta of the 23rd, and especially the race which came about between our cutter and a similar boat of the "Lily," which it will be remembered we beat at Chefoo recently; but so confident were the "Lily's" that our victory on that occasion was the result of a "fluke," that they challenged us again to pull for sixty dollars. The race was conclusive to the "Lily's," and they handed over the "Mexicans" with the best grace a small ship's company can be supposed to exhibit—on the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... round-worms or Nematoids. Flat worms, such as tapeworms and flukes, require secondary hosts. The immature and mature forms of tapeworms are parasites of vertebrate animals, but an invertebrate host is necessary for the completion of the life cycle of the fluke. The hog is the only specie of domestic animals that becomes a host for the thorn-headed worm. The round-worm is a very common parasite. There are many species ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... children, their clothes driven by the furious gale, with one hand holding on their caps, and with the other supporting themselves by the gunnels of the boats hauled up, the capstans, or perhaps an anchor with its fluke buried in the shingle, were looking on with dismay and with beating hearts, awaiting the result of the venturous attempt, and I soon discovered the form of Bessy, who was in advance ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... were deceiving them by a conjuring-trick, just as priests of strange cults deceive their votaries.... And further, you taught them that money had but one use—to be spent. You may—though by a fluke—have left a quantity of money to your widow, but her sole skill is to spend it. She has heard that there is such a thing as investing money. She tries to invest it. But, bless you, you never said a word to her about that, and the money vanishes now as magically as it ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... of this river is a group of islands, of which two only are of large size, namely, ROTTNEST and BUACHE. We anchored on the north side of the former, but broke the fluke, from the rocky nature of the bottom. On the North-East side of the island, the anchorage is better, since it is more sheltered. Rottnest Island is five miles long: it was discovered by Vlaming in 1696. Its shores ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... evil-looking snout was seen; then Red Chicken went quietly over the side of the canoe, descended beside the shark and tapped him sharply on the head. The fish turned swiftly to see what teased him, and in the same split-second of time, over his fluke went the noose, and Red Chicken was up and away, while his companions on a nearby cliff pulled in the rope and killed the shark with spears in shallow water. Red Chicken said that he had learned this art from a Samoan, whose people were cleverer killers of sharks than the Marquesans. It ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... waste time the way I do, trying to find these things out; when they do it's generally a fluke if they come across the key. It took me hours to disentangle the first of those advertisements—the rest ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... take any great credit for it, Mr. Jacobs. It was a fluke: just a fluke. I caught him red-handed; found him in the wood with the jewel-case in his hand. Yes, actually in his hand! He must have hidden it and dug ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... angularness^; aduncity^; angle, cusp, bend; fold &c 258; notch &c 257; fork, bifurcation. elbow, knee, knuckle, ankle, groin, crotch, crutch, crane, fluke, scythe, sickle, zigzag, kimbo^, akimbo. corner, nook, recess, niche, oriel [Arch.], coign^. right angle &c (perpendicular) 216.1, 212; obliquity &c 217; angle of 45 degrees, miter; acute angle, obtuse angle, salient angle, reentering angle, spherical angle. angular measurement, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Fresh meat in harbour runs away with great sums; and when the engine works, it consumes about half a dollar a day of oil. Besides all this, I have been obliged to hire three carpenters for ten days to repair damages done in late expedition. I had a fluke shot off a bower anchor at Tricheri, and ought to have another one. I must get a new main-sail made here. It is disagreeable to me to torment your lordship with all these statements, but you must be aware that a vessel like this cannot be sailed without great expense. There are here ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... he 's editor of a noos-sheet, and gits a thousand dollars a year—'tain't believable, but it's what they say—an' he thinks he knows it all. He got Fluke to take him out in his boat; he began to direc' Fluke how to do this, an' how to do that, and squallin' and flyin' at him. Fluke sailed back with him and sot him ashore. 'When I take a hen in a boat, I'll take ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Tally on. Aft and walk away with her! Handsome to the cathead, now; O tally on the fall! Stop, seize and fish, and easy on the davit-guy. Up, well up the fluke of her, and inboard haul! Well, ah fare you well, for the Channel wind's took hold of us, Choking down our voices as we snatch the gaskets free. And it's blowing up for night, And she's dropping Light on Light, And she's snorting under bonnets ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Over half the Fifes are missing, most of the Devons also, so-and-so killed, and so-and-so, and so-and-so. Kits lost, and tents burnt. From various reliable sources I have compiled the best account I can make of the affair, which we missed by the merest fluke, what men call chance, and here ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... perched himself on the weather gunwale, his weight there serving as ballast to keep the craft from capsizing. Yet, even so, everything had to be done with the utmost skill, for, with the mainsail up, the least fluke in handling the boat would send ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... Tech together, juniors. They enlisted in Boston, and they've kept pretty close tabs on each other ever since. They had their training over here in the same camps. In France, Pete got into spirals first, 'by a fluke,' as he put it; Bob was unlucky with his landings. But, some way or other, Bob seems to have beaten him to the actual fighting. Now they're in it together." And Laura smiled and then sighed, and the nimble fingers stopped work for a minute, only to ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... worse for you. You'll have to unlearn all you learned before you can get right down to human nature, and unlearnin' takes a lot of time. Some men can never forget what they learned at college. Such men may get to be district leaders by a fluke, but they never last. ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... Allenby was almost blinded by bright, naked light. Allenby's first impression was one of disappointment at the failure of the device. Jenkins was reliable, usually, and hadn't come up with a fluke yet. ...
— Pleasant Journey • Richard F. Thieme
... fluke of the starboard anchor of the Serapis hooked in the mizzen chains. It was lashed fast, and ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... the young negro's acquittal, had induced his sister to take him as gardener. His chances as a professional man in the city were no good. "He has had a terrible experience and has just escaped by a fluke" the brother had said. Cora Sayers had taken the young man. She had bound him to herself, ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... her finish, I exclaimed, "There's been a fluke somewhere, I'm afraid; but we are still in good shape, for the train can't possibly be here under an hour. I'll get my field-glasses and have another ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... trying to recover treasures from the vessel of the Armada sunk in Tobermory Bay. The Duke of Argyll has a cannon taken from Francis I. at Pavia, which was raised from this vessel, and, lately, the fluke of a ship's anchor brought up a doubloon. But the treasure still lies in Tobermory Bay. Mr. Frazer's tale merely is that a woman told a sailor to bid him leave a certain boy behind. The sailor did not ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... sir, I means the rale old gent as ye've heerd tell on, wot hangs out down below when he's at home and allers dresses in black to look genteel-like. Wears top-boots for to hide his cloven feet, sir, and carries a fine tail under his arm with a fluke at the end of it, same as that on a sheet-anchor—ah, yer knows the gent ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "What a princely gathering to see me carry out my bat! Don't grin, you fellows. I know it was a fluke—a dashed fine fluke, too. But it's what I always meant, after all. There's good old Monty, yelling himself hoarse in the pavilion. And his girl—waving. Sweet girl, too—the best in the world. I might cut him out there. But I won't, I won't! I'm ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... gent don't know. Take grizzly b'ars. Back fifty years, when them squirrel rifles is preevalent; when a acorn shell holds a charge of powder, an' bullets runs as light an' little as sixty-four to the pound, why son! you-all could shoot up a grizzly till sundown an' hardly gain his disdain. It's a fluke if you downs one. That sport who can show a set of grizzly b'ar claws, them times, has fame. They're as good as a bank account, them claws be, an' entitles said party to credit in dance hall, bar room an' store, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... monarch is dead. He lies just awash, gently undulated by the long, low swell, one pectoral fin slowly waving like some great stray leaf of Fucus gigantea. [Footnote: Fucus gigantea: fucus is a kind of tough seaweed.] A hole is cut through the fluke and the line secured to it. The ship, which has been working to windward during the conflict, runs down and receives the line; and in a short time the great inert mass is hauled alongside and secured by the fluke [Footnote: Fluke: one of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker |
