"Fluke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... finger-nail held to the candle, Or paring of paradisaical fruit, | lovely in waning but lustreless, Stepped from the stool, drew back from the barrow, | of dark Maenefa the mountain; A cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him, | en- tangled him, not quit utterly. This was the prized, the desirable sight, | unsought, pre- sented so easily, Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me, | eyelid ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... you get to know about me," Mr. Dunster asked, "and my errand? You couldn't possibly have got me here in an ordinary way. It was an entire fluke." ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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
... Mr. Ramsay, going straight to his point, as 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... slowly. "I've never known him fail yet in anything he set his mind to—at least, only once. And that was a fluke." ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... reflected, is that in the midst of a silly argument that you can shatter in ten words they will by a fluke insert some awkward piece of genuine ratiocination, the answer to which must necessarily ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that, Mallett, for the men would have marched all night, and, if necessary, all day tomorrow, to catch up. Still, it is a wonderful fluke that after all we should ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... heart-relation, the brain-relation ('the stranger in blood'), he alone should go untaxed altogether! Alas, the Inland Revenue Commissioners would charge him more than any, which shows that their above-mentioned touch of nature was but a fluke, after all. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... anchor on August 12, having on board 420 blacks—290 men and 130 women—all chained, and all held under by us twenty-two whites, of the which nineteen were women. The weather turned sulky almost from the start, and after ten days of drifting, with here and there a fluke of wind, we found ourselves off the Gaboon river. From this we crept our way to the Island of St. Thomas, three days; watered there, and fetched down to the south-east trades. The niggers were dying fast, and between the south-east and north-east trades, six weeks from our starting, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... ship alongside of the dead whale 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 see ...
— Bark Kathleen Sunk By A Whale • Thomas H. Jenkins
... ruined the crops and reduced many farmers to a state of destitution. Much of the grain was never harvested, whilst owing mainly to the excessive floods there commenced an outbreak of liver-rot in sheep, due to the ravages of the fluke parasite. This continued for several years, and the mortality was so great that its adverse effects upon the ovine population of the country were still perceptible ten years afterwards. A fall in rents was the necessary sequel ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he. "It's a lucky fluke for you, and I'm glad for your mater's sake. But I wouldn't say too much about it if I were you. It'll ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... Hoppner succeeded in getting clear, and then made sail to beat back to us. In the mean time the strain put upon the Hecla's hawsers being too great for them, they snapped one after another, and a bower-anchor was let go as a last resource. It was one of Hawkins's, with the double fluke, and immediately brought up, not merely the ship, but a large floe of young ice which had just broken our stream-cable. All hands were sent upon the floe to cut it up ahead, and the whole operation was a novel, and, at times, a fearful one; for the ice, being weakened by the cutting, would ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... "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 me may be doubly rewarded? Are you going to take ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... the bottom was hard, and difficult to get an 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 been ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... barest fluke that the manoeuvre should have worked so well. Harrison Smith stumbled heavily, grabbed at Dirk and missed him. Barraclough's foot just above his waist line destroyed the last of his equilibrium and over the edge he went into the shallow water ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... ruled, the Gulf States of the South would never have ordered their representatives to leave Washington on the election of Abraham Lincoln. The new administration could have done nothing with the Congress chosen. The President had been elected on a fluke because of the division of the opposition into three tickets. Lincoln was a minority President and was powerless except in the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... bill by the newspapers caused him to study its provisions with more care 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, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... spite 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 ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... were beginning to 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 ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... amazing fluke, there's a lull. One squadron has gone. Sir John is on his way down. Julian starts early next week, and Gerald a few days later. So within a fortnight we shall all be together. ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... 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 a ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... patience, though a loud voice seemed crying in his ears, "What will happen next? What will the end be—success, or a sudden fluke that will mean failure?" He barred his mind against misgivings, but he had hoped for some sign of life when he rode in sight of the white roofs; and there had ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... am very sensible of the honour of being P.R.S., but I should be much more sensible of the dishonour of being in that place by a fluke, or in any other way, than by the free choice of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... is not so very plain. They are sure to meet, or Mrs. Nicholson will bring them together in her tactful way. She has not much time to lose if the girl's glass ball yarn is true, and it may be true by a fluke. Jephson is rather bitten by a taste for all that "teleopathy" business, as the old Malaprop calls it. On the whole, I shall say no more to him, but let him play the game, if he goes to Walton, off his ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... made a magnificent fight for it, Mr. Trent," he said. "I'm afraid I only got the verdict by a fluke. Another time may ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... 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 some reason, had been scattered on the floor previously. Among ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... 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 ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... 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 told me that the girl and her old servant, Mrs. Sedgewick, ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... at Halifax, where they see the first contrast between Europe and America, and that contrast ain't favourable, for the town is dingy lookin' and wants paint, and the land round it is poor and stony. But that is enough, so they set down and abuse the whole country, stock and fluke, and write as wise about it as if they had seen it all instead of overlooking one mile from the deck of a steamer. The military enjoy it beyond anything, and are far more comfortable than in soldiering in England; but it don't do to say ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... 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 ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... that it had been plundered from 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 ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... best, and for two years now only picked 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 to ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... he'll live out his natural time. It's a 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 ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... the chances of 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 change ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... meantime, tired of 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 it, taking for the nonce a furnished house ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... women and 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 of all ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 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 the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... meantime the strain put upon the Hecla’s hawsers being too great for them, they snapped one after another, and a bower-anchor was let go as a last resource. It was one of Hawkins’s, with the double fluke, and immediately brought up, not merely the ship, but a large floe of young ice, which had just broken our stream-cable. All hands were sent upon the floe to cut it up ahead, and the whole operation was a novel and, at times, a fearful one; for the ice, being weakened by the ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... 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 ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Smith Mogyns, succeeded to the main portion of his wealth, and to his titles and the bloody hand of his scutcheon. It was not for many years after that he appeared as Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth de Mogyns, with a genealogy found out for him by the Editor of 'Fluke's Peerage,' and which appears as follows in that work:—'De Mogyns.—Sir Alured Mogyns Smyth, Second Baronet. This gentleman is a representative of one of the most ancient families of Wales, who ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that town there is a church which is dedicated to the memory 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 overboard, and dive down to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... 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 silence the ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... Besides 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. ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... 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 ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... in 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 fifty for a blood mare rejoicing in the ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... 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 ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... the sailor passed a stout new rope from a belaying-pin through this hole, and then he betrayed his watch on deck by hauling the end up with a clew, and gently returning it to the deep with a long grappling-iron made fast to it. This had not fluke enough to lay fast hold and bring the vessel up; for in that case it would have been immediately discovered; but it dragged along the bottom like a trawl, and by its weight, and a hitch every now and then in some hole, it hampered quite sufficiently the objectionable voyage. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 is there?" said Captain G. The leadsman sang out in a clear voice, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... the picture. "No! don't go hitting me with paint again, because it's true. You have been trying to fluke an expression on my face all the morning. Really, you haven't an idea what your picture ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... team of four years ago. He had just got the last place in front of Challis on the strength of a tremendous catch for the house second in a scratch game two days before the house-matches began. It had been a glaring fluke, but it had impressed Denny, the head of the house, who happened to see it, and had ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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
... 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
... 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 that, don't ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... run away with that there notion! No, 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 ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... pushing and aggressive, the individuals who will simply trample down their neighbours in order that they themselves may "survive"; or if, again, the Naturalist convinces him that all he has seen in the forest has come about by pure chance; that it is by a mere fluke that we find orchids and not mushrooms, men and not monkeys, at the head of plant and animal life; and that Nature herself is wholly indifferent as to which of the two establishes its preeminence—then he will feel the chill upon his soul, he will shrivel up within himself, the very fountain-spring ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... say the right thing, it was a most fearful fluke," I said, for I could not be silent. "I simply hate men who walk about patting themselves on the back because they have had what they call success with ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 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 ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and to do so with as much trouble to their owners as they possibly can. They die in the droughts when the grass, roasted to a dull white by the sun, comes out by the roots and blows about the bare paddocks; they die in the wet, when the long grass in the sodden gullies breeds "fluke" and "bottle" and all sorts of hideous complaints. They get burnt in bush fires from sheer malice, refusing to run in any given direction, but charging round and round in a ring till they are calcined. They get drowned ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... Blunt's bashfulness fell from him as the instruction proceeded, and he developed a certain expert dignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He treated Denton with the utmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit" now and then, to keep the interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy fluke of Denton's that covered his mouth ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... and thirst, in cold and nakedness. In perils too, so Gerda believed, of cattle; for these would stray in bellowing herds about narrow lanes, and they would all charge straight through them, missing the lowered horns by some incredible fluke of fortune. If this seems to make Gerda a coward, it should be remembered that she showed none of these inward blenchings, but went on her way with the rest, composed as a little wax figure at Madame Tussaud's. She was, in fact, of the stuff of which martyrs are made, and would probably ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... Cedric stands a very 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
... anchored under the land, but soon afterwards the wind blew so fresh, that the fluke of our anchor broke, and we were obliged to drop another; which was the last we possessed, besides a small stream anchor that was too light to use, excepting ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... 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, with the intervention of the quoin, supports the breech ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... suggestion of having had enough of the joke, was shortening 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 over a heap of stones and tilted against the low bank ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... 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 ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... game if played on honor. An English tennis champion was lately playing a rubber game with the American champion. They were even and near the end when the American made a bad fluke which would have lost this country its championship. The English player, scorning to win on an accident, intentionally made a similar mistake that the best man might win. The chief evil of modern American football which now threatens its suppression in some colleges is the lust to win at any price, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... river. If General Osbourne were a child, we might hope for the best; there is no doubt that he has been careless about Mar and Yolo, and that he was yesterday only saved from a serious disaster by a fluke, and the imperfection of our scout system; but the situation to the west and centre wears a different complexion; there his steady, well-combined advance, carrying all before him, contrasts most favourably with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over the lighter's forecastle. It came against the breast of Senor Hirsch, who simply seized hold of it, without in the least knowing what it was, but curling his arms and legs upon the part above the fluke with an invincible, unreasonable tenacity. The lighter yawed off wide, and the steamer, moving on, carried him away, clinging hard, and shouting for help. It was some time, however, after the steamer had stopped that his position was discovered. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... that portrait stuck over his mantel-shelf? Well! In poking about the room the other day, when the old man was out, I had a great find. Directly behind the picture is the door of a secret room, so neatly covered by the designs on the wall that it is not discernible. It was only by the merest fluke I discovered it. I was taking down the picture with the idea of "touching up" the face, when my knuckles bumped against the panels of the wall, touched a spring, and the door flew open, revealing an apartment ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... managers has seen me already. That was why I was so long. They's 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
... always do, any rigid plan being adhered to. Had there been a fresh breeze before the battle commenced, the chances are that the French would have secured a position that would have enabled more of the crippled ships to get into Cadiz, but even this is doubtful, as only a fluke of wind could have saved them from the strategy of the British Commander-in-Chief before the fighting began. Between eleven and twelve o'clock on the 21st October every humanly possible, detailed arrangement ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 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 clear of ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... bend the sainted knee, Invite all men their liberty to share, Seek public peace, defy the assaults of war, Plant, reap, consume, enjoy their fearless toil, Tame their wild floods, to fatten still their soil, Enrich all nations with their nurturing store, And rake with venturous fluke each wondering shore.— ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... 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 ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... water 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
... mention 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 ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... which the first and fourth are most likely to be the seat of parasitic infestation. The first stomach, or paunch, contains large numbers of minute parasites known as protozoa, which are too small to be seen with the naked eye. These small organisms apparently are in no way injurious. A species of fluke (Paramphistomum cervi or a closely related species) is occasionally found in North American cattle, especially grass-fed cattle, attached to the inner surface of the first stomach (fig. 12). This worm is about one-half ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... people seldom 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 came ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... 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 a ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... can you take in practising upon a poor old woman who only by a sort of fluke isn't ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... men, 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 ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... 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 Ajar Collar lashed ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... to concentrate his energies as to achieve his object. His objective would lack precision and therefore his efforts would lack intention. He would almost certainly be vague and listless at his work. It would seem always possible to pull the thing round by a happy fluke, it would rarely be absolutely clear that things were going wrong. The effort would be feeble and the result would be feeble. That is the danger of aestheticism for the artist. The man who feels that he has got nothing to do but to make something ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... 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 incidents of ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... 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 on board ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... succeeded in catching a fluke on the rail, and putting so much weight on it that the cockney could not prize it off. Immediately Hogan and another defender crawled to Mulcher's aid like big lizards. They thrust in sticks and spikes and prized vigorously, while the bullets were ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... 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 the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... wrong 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
... Sloan's ball on Bliss's forty-five-yard line. Only a fumble or some fluke could cause a score. Every player was on his mettle burning with anxiety to get his hands on that ball and scamper down the field to a touchdown and everlasting fame in the annals ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... this delay, the several movements on board, the subsequent signal of sailing, and of the impatience in the crowd, Wilder had been a grave and close observer. Posted with his back against the upright fluke of a condemned anchor, on a wharf a little apart from that occupied by most of the other spectators, he had remained an hour in the same position scarcely bending his look to his right hand or to his left. When the gun was fired he started, not with the nervous impulse which had made ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... a fluke," said Sidney lightly. "His real influence is only superficial. Scratch the Christian and you find ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... those waves which bore Cleopatra's vessel, when she went to meet Antony." Another was the moros musphonon, or girdle of invisibility. His trick, however, miscarried, and he then personated Pillage, the steward of Periwinkle's father, and obtained Periwinkle's signature to the marriage by a fluke.—Mrs. Centlivre, A Bold Stroke ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in plain clothes," he observed musingly to himself. "I wonder if it's just a fluke—or ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hundred tons of firewood at Scopulo. 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 ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... but my poor friends, whose business all this is, were running after them at least ten months ago. Sometimes they were in Russia, sometimes they showed up in Denmark, sometimes they got scent of them in Germany, and I am told it is the merest fluke that the Bonds did not come to Switzerland for the winter sports. And wherever they turned up they were always just on their way to England; either they had a poor sense of direction or, being bad sailors, were afraid of the crossing. There was never any knowing in what corner of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... out on? The living ones lying on the ground were asking that about themselves, too. There we were, all sitting up and asking whether we were alive or dead; and some were one, and some were the other. Sort of fluke, you know.' ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... ribs. This was the schooner laden with pipe-clay, out of which in a dangerous sea the captain and crew escaped in their own boat, as the lifeboat advanced to save them. Far away on the Sands you see the fluke of a ship's anchor, which from the shape when close to it we recognise to be a ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... Sir," he hastily added, in his orders to Trysail. "We are in no condition to sport with stock-and-fluke; have every thing ready to let go at a word; and see the grapnels ready,—we will throw them aboard the smuggler as we close, and take him alive. Once fast to the chain, we are yet strong enough to haul him in under our scuppers, and to capture ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... what I wish to know," answered Sir Bale; "because, although I can't, of course, believe that he's a witch, yet he has either made the most marvellous fluke I've heard of, or else he has got extraordinary sources of information; or perhaps he acts partly on chance, partly on facts. Be it which you please, I say he's a marvellous fellow; and I should like to see him, and have a talk with him; and perhaps he could ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... shape of his flukes; and two or three days ago, as he was soundin', I thought that the tip of the upper one looked as if it had been damaged—as if he had broken it floppin' about in some tight place; and ever since, when I have seen a whale, I have looked for the tip of that upper fluke, and there's that same old break. Every time I have looked I have found it. It can't be that there are a lot o' whales in here and each one of 'em with a ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... fourteen hundred a year, if you only look out for a good investment. A man with ready money at his own disposal can always get five per cent, at least. I never heard of such a fluke in my life." ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... after the trial, and 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 ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... old 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 ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... a fluke in it from beginning to end. I was never more astonished in my life. It seemed to me it was ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pony on the whole meeting," answered Dick triumphantly. "And even that was a 'fluke,' because Bearwarden's Bacchante filly was left ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... catch; crook, tenaculum, peavey, clives, agraffe, fluke, pot-hook, cant-hook, cleek, trammel, cottrel; snare, decoy, trap; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... after all virtually invited him), that she mentioned how only one song in a thousand was successful and that the terrible difficulty was in getting the right words. This rightness was just a vulgar "fluke"— there were lots of words really clever that were of no use at all. Peter said, laughing, that he supposed any words he should try to produce would be sure to be too clever; yet only three weeks ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... 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
... then endeavour'd to sweep the Anchor with a Hawser, but miss'd it, and broke away the Buoy rope.* (* The kedge is a small anchor. Sweeping is dragging the middle of a rope, or hawser, held at the two ends from two boats some distance apart, along the bottom, with the object of catching the fluke of the anchor as it lies on the bottom, and so recovering it. It is a long and wearisome operation if the bottom is uneven. Cook, however, having already lost one of his large anchors, could not ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... will continue to help us both in the Cabinet and in the House, and will be ready to advise the Under-Secretary and myself. I must, however, say how deeply grateful I am for our pleasant relations, which might easily have been a little strained from the fact that it was a sort of fluke that you were my Under-Secretary instead of being my colleague in the Cabinet. As it is, nothing could be more satisfactory and more pleasant to me, and the knowledge we have obtained of one another will strengthen and cement ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... to; 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 ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Portion of grass stalk bearing three encysted cercariae of the common liver fluke (Fasciola ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Offord had solved the 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 ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... dead whale floats, as we know. This whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible. ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Melrose likes being kind to people! Mrs. Warner told me so," remarked Rumple, with the air of knowing all that there was to be known. "He is most awfully rich, too, and he came into his money quite by a fluke." ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... hand, exhibiting the gold with the 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 this gold ounce, my boys! Huzza! huzza! cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast. It's a white whale, I say, resumed Ahab, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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 joyous ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... five hundred-weights) was lowered with the remainder of the chain. For a time this held the ship, but a gust of wind from the southeast caused it to drag. It was, therefore, hauled up and, on coming to the surface, was seen to have lost a fluke. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Cupples's face. 'You must not suspect me of empty paradox,' he said. 'My meaning will become clearer, perhaps, if I mention some things which do appear to me essentially remarkable. Let me see .... Well, I would call the life history of the liver-fluke, which we owe to the researches of Poulton, an essentially ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... thirty points last year," he went on. "Thirty-three, and forty-two the year before. Why, we've always simply walked them. It's an understood thing that we smash them. And this year they held us all the time, and it was only a fluke that we scored at all. Their back ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 are very rocky and difficult to land upon, particularly those of its northern ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... 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 ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... 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 ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... "It was only a fluke, then," said Hector, who, in spite of his sorrow for the wren, had felt some admiration ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... voice was better than any of the other 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
... said Thorndyke, enthusiastically, "and so is the whole device. See how perfectly it would have worked but for a mere fluke and for the complication of your presence. Supposing that I had been alone, so that he could have approached to a shorter distance. In that case he would not have missed, and the thing would have been done. You see how it was intended to be ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... a ball that was still coming. As a last resort Hugh meant to relieve Frazer, but only after the game was irrevocably lost; for he wanted to give the other every chance possible to redeem his former "fluke." ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... 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 ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... 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 even a mediocre individual to an ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... have lived 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, that's all." ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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
... slavishly the henchman of his party machine that no measure it may propose is too unsavory to enlist his Dugald Dalgetty loyalty. By your closed lips you countenance the land-jobbing steal which your great state Boss failed by the merest fluke to saddle upon the River and Harbor Bill passed by the last Congress, and purposes to press anew;—dare you vote against your owner, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... 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 seated in a hollow some distance ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... spread the news Uv how 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 ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... started to interrupt indignantly, but Lispenard continued, "Hold on till I finish. One at a time. Well. Miss Luck gets him chosen to a convention by a fluke and Peter votes against Costell's wishes. What happens? Costell promptly takes him up and pushes him for all he's worth. He snubs society, and society concludes that a man who is more snubby and exclusive than itself must be a man to cultivate. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... propagated by seed. A great authority, Mr. Rivers (9/101. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1863 page 643.) states that "seedlings from the ash-leaved kidney always bear a strong resemblance to their parent. Seedlings from the fluke-kidney are still more remarkable for their adherence to their parent stock, for, on closely observing a great number during two seasons, I have not been able to observe the least difference, either in earliness, productiveness, or in the size ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... merino ruins his man with greater celerity. Nothing on earth will kill cross-breds; nothing will keep merinos alive. If they are put on dry salt-bush country they die of drought. If they are put on damp, well-watered country they die of worms, fluke, and foot-rot. They die in the wet seasons and they die in ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... 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
... to me. From early childhood I was trained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potential of my mind into the System. Like every other paraNormal, I received my education by tapping Central for contact with information centers and other minds. But I was a fluke." His dark blue eyes twinkled. "Biological units are never so standardized that all of them fall under any system that can be devised. I functioned in this System, true, but I could imagine my mind existing outside, could see my ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... Just what his final fluke was I'm only givin' a guess at, but I judge that when Mr. Ellins called on him to point out the pirate hoard, now we were right on the ground, Rupert begun stallin' him off. Anyway, I saw 'em havin' a little ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... It was pleasing, it was soothing and gratifying, to feel that one could at any time win an equal fame if one chose to set pen to paper. And now, suddenly, the spring had been touched in me, the time was come. I was grateful for the fluke by which I had witnessed on the terrace that evocative scene. I looked forward to reading the MS. of 'The Fan'—to-morrow, at latest. I was not wildly ambitious. I was not inordinately vain. I knew I couldn't ever, with the best will in the world, write like Mr. George Meredith. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm |
