"Zigzag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burning in the kitchen, but the rays of the uplifted candle showed a zigzag crack on the wall ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... trenches proved to be a wall of mud, willow hurdles and sand bags; in reality two walls. I followed him down a short bit of zigzag ditch or communicating trenches and found myself in the trenches that will go down to history, the famous ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... little patches scratched and cultivated by the fellahin; but, unless on the great plains of Bashan and Esdraelon and Hamath, and on the uplands of Gilead, or where there is water for irrigation, you may ride for hours along the zigzag paths, over mountain and high-land, and before and behind extend the limestone and flinty rocks, white and blinding, and broken into fragments or burnt into powder. It thus happens that few tourists who pass ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... our zigzag through Belgium, following most of the time dirt roads which, though not of superlative excellence, were an improvement on stone blocks. It took us practically all day to reach Antwerp, a hundred and ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... than their master's held the lines, and they promptly became unmanageable. In vain Phaethon pulled at the reins; in vain he called the steeds by name. Up the sky they dashed, and then, first to the south, then to the north, they took their zigzag course across the heavens. What a sight it must have presented from below, this sun reeling crazily about the sky! Worst of all, however, the horses did not keep at the same distance from the earth. First ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a sick man who might soon be dying. One day the sick man was resting. Dr. Campbell went to the window to look out a little, while he was waiting. It was very early now in the southern springtime. The trees were just beginning to get the little zigzag crinkles in them, which the young buds always give them. The air was soft and moist and pleasant to them. The earth was wet and rich and smelling for them. The birds were making sharp fresh noises all around them. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... day, the ship ploughed remorselessly on. It was steered a bewildering zigzag course to outwit the submarines. The second day of the voyage saw us in the Bay of Biscay, a hundred miles off Cape Finisterre. The sun got steadily hotter, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... dun-colored boats were drifting in an azure sea out in the west, and a whippoorwill's plaintive wail sounded through the dusk from adown the fence-row. Up from the still earth there floated to my nostrils the incense of a dew-drenched landscape,—fresh, odorous, wonderfully sweet,—and a fire-fly's zigzag lantern came travelling towards me across the darkening meadow. Everything had become very still. It was that magic hour when the voices of the things of the day are hushed, and the things of the night have not yet awakened. Only at intervals the whippoorwill's call arose, like a pulse of pain. The ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... crash of thunder, like the sound of heaven's dome breaking in, it was so fearfully loud and awesome; and the reverberating roar was accompanied by a vivid flash of forked lightning, whose zigzag stream struck a tall tamarind-tree standing in front of me, splintering the trunk from top to bottom with a scrunching noise like that ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... whate'er his tongue In idle arrogance hath flung. 'Tis the world's way, the common lot— Foe tortures foe and pities not. Therefore I challenge him to dash His bolt on me, his zigzag flash Of piercing, rending flame! Now be the welkin stirred amain With thunder-peal and hurricane, And let the wild winds now displace From its firm poise and rooted base The stubborn earthly frame! The raging sea with stormy surge Rise up and ravin and submerge Each high star-trodden way! Me ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... its own, it made its zigzag way between birches, and alders, maples, and elderblow, carrying on its shining surface stray leaves, and water spiders that struggled to see which first should reach ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... steep, the rider would do well to lean forward and catch hold of her horse's mane, if he has one, or of the breastplate, so as to avoid letting her weight make the saddle slip, and also to put her weight well forward and thus assist the horse. She should let him take a zigzag course, and should on no account interfere with his head by pulling on the reins. We may notice that a waggoner with a heavy load always takes his horse in a zigzag direction up a steep hill, as it is easier for the animal, and allows him ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... effect to this is seen in electricity, which lies latent and viewless till by a sudden coalescing of its parts it manifests itself in zigzag lines and flashes of light ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... through the sky is serpentine, its stroke instantaneous and destructive; yet it is named Wi-lo-lo-a-ne, a word derived not from the name of the serpent itself, but from that of its most obvious trait, its gliding, zigzag motion. For this reason, the serpent is supposed to be more nearly related to lightning than to man; more nearly related to man than is lightning, because mortal and less mysterious. As further illustrative of the interminable relationships which are ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... up in smoke as the rest. You could not look in any direction in the city but what mass after mass of flame stared you in the face. To get about one had to dodge from one street to another, back and forth in zigzag fashion, and half an hour after going through a street, it would be impassable. One after another of the magnificent business blocks went down. The newer buildings seemed to have withstood the shock better than any others, except well-built frame buildings. The former lost some of the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... their beauty as for the purpose of conveying some meaning. The government of Egypt being almost entirely in the hands of the priests, these symbols were generally of a religious character, signifying power and protection. The principal ones were: The lotus, signifying plenty, abundance; the zigzag, symbolic of the river Nile; the winged globe or scarabaeus, signifying protection and dominion, usually placed over doors of houses; the fret, type of the Great Labyrinth, with its three thousand ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... take—about that there was no mistake—but never two of equal length, and the cart was rolling in a zigzag all the time. What a funny horse it was. It looked as if it was made of odd parts, so bony and misshapen was it. No two parts matched, and its limbs groaned ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... is coming this way; you have danced with him but once, and he is a very desirable partner; so, pray, accept, if he asks you," said Mrs. Carroll, watching a far-off individual who seemed steering his zigzag course toward them. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was not to be caught napping by any Hun making seemingly friendly proposals. Before the German had more than half executed the maneuver, Bangs was already shooting upwards in a zigzag course and by the time the other had gotten into position, Buck was swinging round far above, from whence, to outdo the other, he pointed his Nieuport downward pointblank at the ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Oblonsky aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds, and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... should have done so if the great streaks of lightning which now and then shot zigzag through the sky had taken the shape of words and bid us all beware. I was not one to be daunted, and knew no other course than that of advance when once a stroke of justice had been planned, and the direction for its fulfilment ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... in his right hand, and he drew it slowly back and sighted carefully at his brother. Victor was a fine thrower, and when the ball flashed from his hand it landed on the top of George's cap and burst into fragments. The sleeper was in the midst of a dream in which Zigzag played a leading part, and the youth's first impression was that he had received the full force of a kick ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... and Pop was tired. He decided to rest in the barren field, at its very edge in shade of the woods. He climbed the zigzag fence with some labour and at the expense of a few of his cherries. He sat down upon a little knob of earth, took off his hat, drew a red handkerchief from the inside thereof, and slowly wiped his ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... made Lake Torrens, and I was anxious to see if it hid any similar basin from my view; but it did not. Sand hills of a similar kind succeeded it to the westward, but there was no change of country. Although we had travelled many miles, yet the zigzag course we had taken had been such that at this point we were not more than sixteen miles from the pools we had left in the morning; and as the day had been intolerably hot, and we had found no water, I determined on returning to them; but I was obliged to stop for a time for Flood, who ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... Flemming had come up the valley of the Saint Gothard Pass, through Amsteg, where the Kerstelenbach comes dashing down the Maderaner Thal, from its snowy cradle overhead. The road is steep, and runs on zigzag terraces. The sides of the mountains are barren cliffs; and from their cloud-capped summits, unheard amid the roar of the great torrent below, come streams of snowwhite foam, leaping from rock to rock, like the mountain ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... many a municipality to build pavements and sewers before the population warranted, or manufacturers to extend their plants too rapidly, or banks to open branches that did not pay. Progress comes in zigzag fashion; now one need is stressed, now another. To each time its own task, to each the defects of its qualities. And if in the reaction from unexampled prosperity some of the expansion seemed to have come before its time, most ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... place of repentance" for him, and fled from it, it still pursued him, "holloaing after him, 'Return, return!'" And return he did, but not all at once, or without many a fresh struggle. With his usual graphic power he describes the zigzag path by which he made his way. His hot and cold fits alternated with fearful suddenness. "As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him up." "His life hung in doubt, not knowing which way he should tip." More sensible evidence came. "One day," he tells us, "as I walked to and fro in a good man's ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... pressed together it is difficult and sometimes impossible to force a way through, but when there is release of pressure the sum of many little gaps allows one to take a zigzag path.' ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... papal legate. To reach this stone is, for a stranger, a matter of some difficulty. From the Place by the Jardin des Plantes, it is necessary to plunge down a steep descent towards the railway station, and then one climbs a series of zigzag paths on a high grassy bank that brings one out upon the Place Huet. In one corner, surrounded by chains and supported by low iron posts, is the historic stone. It is generally thickly coated with dust, but the brass plate affixed to a pillar of the doorway is quite legible. ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... we descended the precipice, three hundred feet in depth, forming the wall of the old crater, but now thickly covered with vegetation. It is so steep in many places that flights of zigzag wooden steps have been inserted in the face of the cliff in some places, in order to render the ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the path appearing plain before us. We had no difficulty in following it up the lesser heights, around the base. It wound on, over rock and bog, among the heather and broom with which the mountain is covered, sometimes running up a steep acclivity, and then winding zigzag round a rocky ascent. The rains two days before, had made the bogs damp and muddy, but with this exception, we had little trouble for some time. Ben Lomond is a doubly formed mountain. For about three-fourths of the way there is a continued ascent, when it is suddenly terminated ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... dignitaries, Hunter, Wigfall, and Secretary Seddon, yesterday, it is reported that when Mr. Seddon explained Grant's zigzag fortifications, Senator Hunter exclaimed he was afraid we could never beat him; when Senator Wigfall said nothing was easier—the President would put the old folks and children to praying at 6 o'clock A.M. Now if any one were to tell these things to the President, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the great Protestant nations, the latter had been growing feebler and feebler for centuries, until it was abolished as an institution by Napoleon. Yet Italy in 1814 still lay helpless and divided at the feet of Rome. The Pope held under his immediate sway a large zigzag-shaped territory running across the centre from sea to sea, and, as spiritual leader of half Europe, he could at any moment summon to his assistance the Catholic chivalry of the world. "The Roman ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... leaders have often practiced the tactics of retreat and zigzag. We know that Soviet and Chinese communism still poses a serious threat to the free world. And in the Middle East recent Soviet moves are hardly compatible with the reduction of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... It was a zigzag course, and the way was strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but out of the wreckage John Quincy Adams always appeared, calm, poised and serene. When he opposed the purchase of Louisiana ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to take out of the city a load of women and children, and starting up suddenly and getting out of their reach. So, with the children, Mrs. Winslow, and a few articles of apparel hastily gathered together, he, by a circuitous and zigzag route, out of the city, made the trip and landed them safely in Burlingame at 4 o'clock. They could get no accommodation at the club, so they accepted the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Coleman in a tent, and the next morning (Friday) went to Mr. and Mrs. Will ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson
... time. Philomela returns once more to euphuism, but Greene is soon back again with A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, a piece of social satire, flying rather higher than his previous attempts. The zigzag is kept up in Orpharion, the last printed (at least in the only edition now known) of the author's works during his lifetime. Not till after his death did the best known and most personal of all his works appear, the famous Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... her head, called the watch-dog, and went out followed by her brother. Striding swiftly out of the village, she turned into a sunken road that wound among the vineyards, sending on the dog, to whom she made some gesture, which he seemed to understand, in front of her. He instantly began to run zigzag fashion, through the vines, first on one side and then on the other, always keeping within about fifty paces of his mistress, and occasionally stopping in the middle of the road and wagging his tail. He seemed to perform his duties as a scout in the ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... bonne. Je ne sais comment cela arrive. Il n'y a pas de motifs parmi ceux qu'on trouve heureux, que je n'ai pas ecrit entre deux baillements. Je pourrais," he went on, "vous montrer tel passage ou ma plume a fait un long zigzag parce que mes yeux se sont fermes et ma tete tombait sur la partition. On dirait, n'est ce pas? qu'il y ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization. Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... his minions, with one long, baffled, infuriated howl, shot upward into space. Simultaneously a great wind came roaring down the valley, uprooting trees, shaking the sturdy mission. Thunder detonated, lightning cut its zigzag way through black clouds like moving mountains; hail rattled to the earth; water fell as from an overturned ocean. And through all the bells pealed and the ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, A zigzag wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And, through the glass, the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... invaluable, and their feet more sure than those of men would be. I have seen them put both their fore feet out together, and let them slip, then drag their hind feet up to them, and repeat this process on descending the vitrified, and almost perpendicular roads of Madeira, taking a zigzag direction across the road each time. Mules do the same, and perhaps derive the faculty from their ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... around his neck, trailed out behind him. When we wanted to catch him, we generally had to start off in the opposite direction from him, for he was as cunning as a fox, and ever objected to being caught. In zigzag ways we moved about until he was thrown off his guard, and then by-and- by it was possible to come near enough to get hold of the long rope and haul him in. When once the collar was on his neck, and he had taken his place at the head of the party, he was ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... from the effects of her long sleep and the cold endured—it is a wonder how she had stood the latter at all—and when, with a subdued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself in flight, she nearly fell to the ground before righting herself and flying in a zigzag heavily ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Quin good-humoredly allowed himself to be conducted in a zigzag course to the imposing doorway of a large ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Pont-St.-Esprit, there is a beautiful view of the bridge at about two miles' distance, and a fine landscape of the country both ways. From thence, an excellent road, judiciously conducted, through very romantic scenes. In one part, descending the face of a hill, it is laid out in serpentine, and not zigzag, to ease the descent. In others, it passes through a winding meadow, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, walled, as it were, on both sides, by hills of rock; and at length issues into plain country. The waste hills are covered with thyme, box, and chene-vert. Where the body of the mountains has ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... looked, a zigzag ribbon of flame fluttered across the darkened portion, accompanied by a crash that seemed to shiver the earth. Fred Linden, who happened to be staring straight at the fiery burst, saw the upper part of a large cypress that leaned over the water, leap from the trunk as though it had been sawn short ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... for us. This is one of the advantages of the zigzag approach by the Fox River—travellers never take their friends by surprise; and when the whole circle sat down to the hospitable board, we were indeed a ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... cables, others had thick stems contorted in every variety of shape, entwining snake-like round the tree trunks or forming gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others, again, were of zigzag shape, or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from the ground ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... followed hard— Lightning broke forth out of the cloud, Zigzag and dart, cleaving their way Slantwise to earth, ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... foliage I had glimpses of some one coming slowly down the zigzag path. Presently, at one of the turnings half-way up the hill, appeared Mowbray Langdon. "What is he doing here," thought I, scarcely able to believe my eyes. "Here of all places!" And then I forgot ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... north and south valleys, and then recover their eastern or western course by bursting through the ranges at those points where the strata have been least inclined and the height consequently is less. Hence the valleys, along which the roads run, are generally zigzag; and, in drawing an east and west section, it is necessary to contract greatly that which is actually ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... be no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... narrow two-light windows of equal height, with a cinquefoil in the head of the central window and a quatrefoil in the head of the side windows; whilst above is a vesica, set within a bevelled fringe of bay-leaves, arranged zigzag-wise, with their points in contact—the last the subject of a well-known rhapsody by Ruskin. The root of the cathedral history in this case lies in the tower. It stands awkwardly a little out of line in the south aisle of the nave, an evident remnant of an older ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... stopping and starting and scuttling like a crab over the grass—sometimes upright like a man and sometimes on all fours like a beast. At last it stood up and ran from tree to tree in a swaying, moving zigzag. I could see then that it was a man, but for the life of me I could not remember where I'd seen his like. Then another cloud slid over the moon and the night was as ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... this fact, knowing as he did the impossibility of anyone ever reaching the fringe of that vast wilderness of mangrove islands in which many a fisherman had been lost, never to find his way out of the myriad of zigzag channels without the possession ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... we stand at eight o'clock, P.M.; wind ahead, and little of it, performing a zigzag march between Eleuthera and Abaco. On deck, the pretty widow lies in an easy chair, surrounded by her countrymen, who discourse about sugar, molasses, chocolate, and other local topics, together with the relative merits of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... century, when Clintonian and Bucktail, gradually absorbing the Federalists, severed the old Republican party into warring factions. In later years, Daniel S. Dickinson spoke of "the tangled web of New York politics"; and Horace Greeley complained of "the zigzag, wavering lines and uncouth political designations which puzzled and wearied readers" from 1840 to 1860, when Democrats divided into Conservatives and Radicals, Hunkers and Barnburners, and Hards and Softs; and when Whigs were known as ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of heath and bramble. The chief feature, however, is a dense growth in the centre, consisting of dogwood, water-beech, swamp-ash, alder, spice-bush, hazel, etc., with a network of smilax and frost-grape. A little zigzag stream, the draining of a swam beyond, which passes through this tanglewood, accounts for many of its features and productions, if not for its entire existence. Birds that are not attracted by the heath, or the cedar and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... took the veil, and William founded, at the same place, the Abbey of St. Stephen, of which Lanfranc was the first abbot. But fair as were the proportions of that exquisite building, noble as were its clustered columns, and rich as were the zigzag mouldings of its deep arches, its foundation was insecure, for it was on iniquity. It stood on ground violently taken from a number of poor people; and where could the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sort of thing, we may take the description of another object, a curious metal casket brought to Europe by a member of the Punitive Expedition. In design, according to Ling Roth, this casket "is bold and artistic; the high relief of the bizarre face and the zigzag conventionalized serpents and tadpoles being well thrown up by enchasing of the ground work. The proportions are all good, and this is especially the case with an enchasing of the enclosed lines." Ling Roth says that the relief portions are somewhat roughly cast, and the enchasing sometimes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the road to England started, and she could hear the rumble of the diligence which was going down to catch the night train to Empoli. The next moment it was upon her, for the highroad came towards her a little before it began its long zigzag down ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring thee word." So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept, And in the moon athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the shining levels of the lake. There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him, drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth And sparkled keen with ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Then the lightning was uninterrupted, and you could have read a book, or counted the trees, or viewed the lake by its constant blaze; while now and anon a wilder volley exploded, and a more furious flash flew its zigzag flight from ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Ben had taken his station, he saw, in the moonlight, Mr. Mudge coming up the road, on his way home. Judging from his zigzag course, he was not ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... across the arched passage from door to door, and it requires a guide (in my case, at least) to show you the way to the coffee-room or the bar. I have never been up stairs in any of them, but can conceive of infinite bewilderment of zigzag corridors ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tenth or eleventh round we hit her in the upper works, as was shown by a bright red and yellow flash near her funnel. This did not check her firing or speed in the least, in fact she seemed to be gaining on us. She also began to zigzag slightly and throw smoke bombs overboard, which were not so effective from her point of view as I had ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... isles; and on the limit of another flora also—of that of Italy and Greece. For as we descend into the glen, every lane-bank and low tree is entwined, not with ivy, but with a still more beautiful evergreen, the Smilax of South-eastern Europe, with its zigzag stems, and curving heart-shaped leaves, and hooked thorns; the very oak- scrub is of species unknown to Britain. And what are these tall lilies, which fill every glade breast-high with their sword-like ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... instinctive desire to rise, as if the bodily act in some wise betokened the mental action. The shrine in so exalted a position is of the simplest: a rude hut, with or without the only distinctive emblems of the cult, a mirror typical of the god and the pendent gohei, or zigzag strips of paper, permanent votive offerings of man. As for the belief itself, it is but the deification of those natural elements which aboriginal man instinctively wonders at or fears, the sun, the moon, the thunder, the lightning, and the wind; all, in short, that ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... declivity; they offer themselves less as a road than as a fall; they sink rather than incline. This one—probably some ramification of a road on the plain above—was disagreeable to look at, so vertical was it. From underneath you saw it gain by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff where it passed out through deep passages on to the high plateau by a cutting in the rock; and the passengers for whom the vessel was waiting in the creek must ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... clear trickles of water are drawn slantwise across the window panes, and one watches, absently, the curious behaviour of the drops. They hang bulging and pendulous, in one spot for some seconds. Then, as they swell, suddenly they break loose and zigzag swiftly down the pane, following the slippery pathway that previous drops have made. It is like a little puzzle game where you manoeuvre a weighted capsule among pegs toward a narrow opening. "Pigs in clover," they ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... they came to a winding staircase cut in the rock, which led them a zigzag course up through galleries and grottos looking out through curious windows and loop-holes upon the sea, till finally they emerged at the old sculptured portal of a shady garden which was surrounded by the cloistered arcades of the Convent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... gate in five minutes," said Cary, looking back and down longingly as his horse climbed the opposite hill; but a turn of the zigzag road hid the cottage, and the next thought was, how to effect an entrance into Stow at three in the morning without being eaten by the ban-dogs, who were already howling and growling at the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pace and delaying presented itself to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French. The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover. Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches, whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... deranged the siege operations of the House. The Assembly was now on the defensive, the governor of the province having been very considerably re-inforced by the energetic measures of the imperial authorities. It was not even considered prudent to make further zigzag approaches. The Assembly resolved upon keeping within their own lines and to defend themselves as well as they could from the vigorous sorties of the enemy, led on by Mr. Ryland. They requested that copies of any addresses to His Majesty by the Legislative Council of Lower Canada or by the Parliament ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... psychic smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and replied: 'I'll try, but I don't believe they can spell it.' 'Draw a straight line, then,' said I. 'I'll be content with a single line an inch long.' She laughingly retorted: 'It's hard to draw a straight line.' 'Very well, draw a crooked line. Draw a zigzag—like a stroke of lightning. Draw it in yellow. Draw a circle.' She said no more, but became silent, and we waited without change of position. Remember that I was holding the slate during all this talk. It did not ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... intelligence,' and the occult meaning of Z. Marcas requires a long and elaborate commentary. Repeat the word Marcas, dwelling on the first syllable, and dropping abruptly on the second, and you will see that the man who bears it must be a martyr. The zigzag of the initial implies a life of torment. What ill wind, he asks, has blown upon this letter, which in no language (Balzac's acquaintance with German was probably limited) commands more than fifty words? The name is composed of seven letters, and seven is most ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the chair in front of his desk and threw himself into the easy-chair which his guest had been occupying. A ray of city sunshine found its way through the tangle of tall buildings on the other side of the street, lay in a zigzag path across his carpet, and touched the firm lines of his thoughtful face. He sat there, slowly tapping the sides of the chair with his pudgy fingers. So a great soldier might have sat, following out the progress of his armies in different countries, listening to the roar of their ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... crooked, zigzag road that he had to travel, and rough and hard into the bargain. His one eye tingled and smarted, and his knees and elbows were rubbed to the quick; nevertheless One-eyed Hans had been in worse trouble than this in ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... distant flapping of pantalettes and frilled trousers, going up what seemed to be a ladder, farther back in the shed. So, with a dissatisfied cluck, Miss Petingill drew back her head, perched the spectacles on her nose, and went to work again on Katy's plaid alpaca, which had two immense zigzag rents across the middle of the front breadth. Katy's frocks, strange to say, always tore ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... whatever she said—even when she was most rude to her grandmother—she was never offensive. No one could have helped feeling all the time that she was a little lady.—I thought I would venture a question with her. I stood still at a turn of the zigzag, and looked down into the hollow, still a good way below us, where I could now distinguish the form, on the opposite side of the pond, of a woman seated at the foot of a tree, and stooping forward over ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... tea- house, and came up to it. It took three-quarters of an hour to climb the series of precipitous zigzags by which this remarkable pass is surmounted; darkness came on, accompanied by thunder and lightning, and just as we arrived a tremendous zigzag of blue flame lit up the house and its interior, showing a large group sitting round a wood fire, and then all was thick darkness again. It had a most startling effect. This house is magnificently situated, almost hanging over the edge of ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... across to the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of zigzag steps, by which the apparently inaccessible shelves and platforms circulated their gay life down to the gay heart of the place,—the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and cool, where one found the great casino and the open-air theatre, the exquisite orchestra, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... slow-gathering snows of mid-February had buried away every stump in the pasture lot and muffled from sight all the zigzag fences of the little lonely clearing. The Settlement road was simply smoothed out of existence. The log cabin, with its low roof and one chimney, seemed half sunken in the snow which piled itself over the lower panes of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Steep hills and zigzag roads, at every alarming angle of declivity, intercept the labyrinth of houses, which stand on each other's heads, or peep over each other's shoulders, and settle down on the ledges ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... the mouth of the mine, from which issued a narrow railway for the transportation of the salt-ore, and above, zigzag on the mountain-side, ran the conduit carrying the salt, still in liquid form, to the boiling-house. A waterfall four hundred feet high furnished power for the great pump. About the entrance to the mine clustered a number of buildings. Many carriages were already there, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... of vivacious children, we must sometimes follow them in their zigzag course, and even press them to the end of their own train of thought. They will be content when they have obtained a full hearing; then they will have leisure to discover that what they were in such haste to utter, was not ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... above the trail—gray, windowless, and forlorn; the trail dipped into the cool shadows, twisted through the mazy deeps of Wait-a-Bit Canon, clambered zigzag back to the sunlit slope, and curved round the hillsides to join, in long levels, the wood roads on ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the hill where our battery was making things so lively, they stopped firing to let us pass. We saw General Leggett, our Division Commander, come riding toward us. He was outside of our line of works, too. You know how we build breastworks—sort of zigzag like, you know, so they cannot be enfiladed. Well, that's just the way the works were along there, and you never saw such a curious shape as we formed our Division in. Why, part of them were on one side of the works, and go along a little further and here was a regiment, or part of a regiment on ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of a three-hour offensive patrol my pilot would often descend our bus to less than a thousand feet, cross No Man's Land again, and zigzag over the enemy trenches, where we disposed of surplus ammunition to good purpose. On cloudy days, with the pretext of testing a new machine or a gun, he would fly just above the clouds, until we were east of the lines, then turn round and dive suddenly through ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... lateritious; upper surface of first pair of wings fawn, with a reddish hue, densely covered with hair-like scales, with shorter and somewhat square scales beneath, the scales over the nervures, being reddish; an indistinct line of seven obscure spots still more indistinctly connected by a zigzag reddish line, runs across the wing nearly parallel to its apical margin, and nearer the tip of the wing than the middle. (In one of the two specimens this band of spots is obsolete, or nearly so, as are the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... rolled up his eyes, and kept asking if they were sure the old fellow had never been there before; and when we had got through the great zigzag with never so much as the ghost of a misadventure, and the signalling boats pointed to the deeper water beyond, the old fellow only laughed, and said, 'Ay, ay, my dear, a terrible dangerous navigation! Chalk it down, a terrible dangerous navigation! If you don't make a sputter about it, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hues, but all of surpassing brilliancy, and each outshining the beams of the meridian sun. He placed one of these shining gems in the other end of each rope, and then blew upon them until they exhibited signs of life. When the ropes began to move, their strange and zigzag motions, and the rattling of their tails, excited the mirth of the Great Being, who laughed loud and long at the oddity he had formed. That portion of them to which he had given rattles and the shining eye were appointed rulers ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... zigzag course, avoiding, in the mountains, all the usually traveled trails, he advanced on his route forty miles without seeing any very fresh Indian signs. As often as the moon was unclouded, the two men embraced the assistance of its pale light to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... of paces in front of me, the narrow zigzag path leading down between two other hotels to the ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... of queer-looking papers before them, some with old German-text writing, and others with zigzag marks—and they were so uncommon polite—they all three got up as I went in, and made me bows, one after the other, and said, 'Yours most obediently, Mr. Titmouse,' and a ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... a great, down-drifting pall of white. It was falling thick and fast when Alexander Jardine and Ian Rullock passed through the broken wall beyond the school-room. The pine branches were whitening, the narrow, rugged path ran a zigzag of white. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... said than done. Donald, who had his penknife ready, delighted M. Bajeau with his clever way of cutting out the page close to its inner side, and yet in a zigzag line, so that at any time afterward the paper could be fitted into its place in the book, in case it should be ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... measurements; because it is less influenced by temporary and extraordinary causes that may obscure the operation of those that are being investigated. On the other hand, the abrupt deviations of a punctilious zigzag may have their own logical value, as will appear in the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... of the fleet was unknown. As it proceeded at first southward and westward, the rumor grew that Newbern was to be attacked. But it was only the course of the channel which thus far shaped its course; and after a few zigzag turns, the cause of which was inexplicable to the green ones, ignorant of the shoals, it began to steer due north. Then all doubts with ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... moved away haltingly, then at a zigzag trot, and finally at a slow run. They disappeared around the corner, Bob Wharton leading, Bergman bent ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... comfort in the very miserableness of the cornstalks with their disheveled blades hanging like tattered banners and rattling discordantly in the rising wind. Wandering without purpose, Ralph followed the rows of stalks first one way and then the other in a zigzag line, turning a right angle every minute or two. At last he came out in a woods mostly of beech, and he pleased his melancholy fancy by kicking the dry and silky leaves before him in billows, while the soughing ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... Verbitzsky, still in the moonlight, slackened speed, half-turned as if in hesitation, then ran on more slowly, with zigzag steps, as if desperately looking for a way out. But he said to me ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... strips of Indian matting, cool chintz coverings, and furniture of the simplest maple and pine wood —a charming summer retreat, fitted up with unostentatious taste. There was a tiny garden at the back, shut in by a low chalk cliff, a rough zigzag path that goats might have climbed led to the downs, and there was a breach where we could enjoy the sweet air and ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... alternating current, owing to this surging movement, makes the poles alternately positive and negative. To express this more clearly, supposing we take a line (A, Fig. 112), which is called the zero line, or line of no electricity. The current may be represented by the zigzag line (B). The lines (B) above zero (A) may be designated as positive, and those below the line as negative. The polarity reverses at the line A, goes up to D, which is the maximum intensity or voltage above zero, and, when the current falls and crosses the line A, it goes in the opposite direction ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... two as canoemen. The Chipewyan's mode of using it is to sit near the middle and make 2 or perhaps 3 strokes on one side, then change to the other side for the same, and so on. The line made by the canoes is an endless zigzag. The idea of paddling on one side so dexterously that the canoe goes straight is yet on an evolutionary pinnacle beyond ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... wheelers in a way which meant imminent mix up, their legs over traces and behind whiffle-trees. On the right, of us was solid rock up, on the left solid rock down, one hundred feet to the stream, and just ahead was the sharp turn the road made to a higher ledge in its zigzag up the mountain. I had always intended to learn to drive four-in-hand, but this first lesson left me no pleasure in the learning. There were no little triumphs of difficulties mastered, no gentle surprises, no long, smooth, broad, and level stretches ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... me how easily, and with what instinctive fitness, the Norman builders, looking to the Greeks as their absolute masters in sculpture, and recognizing also, during the Crusades, the hieroglyphic use of the zigzag, for water, by the Egyptians, might have adopted this easily attained decoration at once as the sign of the element over which they reigned, and of the power of the Greek goddess who ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... shorten the distance home, as the hour was late and the bright moon threw some light even among the thick trees, he determined to take a footpath among the hills. This course led him close to the cabin of Simon Wiles, Sam Wiles' father. He was walking in a zigzag path, now watching the moonlight as it lilted down through the leafy canopy, making a dim but peaceful light around him; now listening to the sounds which exist in Kentucky forests in winter, the flight of nocturnal birds and moving of animals; seeing the ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... is so very zigzag," said Faith, "that I cannot follow it. How are you going to be ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of excess occurs in sickness as well as in health, and all the more because its determination is so difficult and the evil effects so indisputable. The dividing line in medicine, even between use and abuse, is so zigzag and invisible that common mortals, in groping for it, generally stumble beyond it, and the delicate perception of medical art too often fails ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... standing at the bottom of a chasm looking up two hundred feet or more to the castle walls, which were originally joined by a drawbridge. The castle was anciently called Dunchine, or the Fort of the Chasm. A zigzag path enabled us to gain the summit of the cliffs. The entrance to the castle was through a gateway, a ruined archway which still stands. Passing through it, we entered a court, called King Arthur's Garden, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... as the symbol of married love, so faithful are the male and female, being continually to be seen in each other's company. While they search for their food in pools of water along the coast, they nearly always bear each other company, swimming in zigzag, so that every now and then they brush past each other. If one of them is shot, the other flies away only for a short time until it observes that its mate is left behind. It then flies back, swims with evident distress round its dead friend, and pushes it with its bill to get it to rise. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... slippers splashed with mud. Their sombre eyes stared out from circles of Kohl, and, with stained, claret-coloured hands, whose nails were bright red, they clasped their light and bridal raiment to their prominent breasts. They were escorted by a gigantic man, almost black, with a zigzag scar across the left side of his face, who wore a shining brown burnous over a grey woollen jacket. He pushed the two women into the train as if he were pushing bales, and got in after them, showing enormous ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... with the scene the winter sun sank like a molten metal ball behind the smoke-stack forest, to set blood-red an hour later beyond the zigzag lines in France. ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Again, a road may wind its way through a narrow gorge, with precipices a thousand feet high on either hand, and down in the depths a wild torrent, crossed every here and there by massive stone bridges; or, over the open mountains a road will zigzag upwards to a pass in long loops, like the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... this to be our place of refuge in case of danger, sir," observed Ready; "and therefore I have selected this thick part of the wood, as it is not very far from the house, and by cutting the path to it in a zigzag, it will be quite hidden from sight; and we must make the path just wide enough to allow the wheels to pass, and stump up the roots of the trees which we are obliged to cut down, otherwise ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... abruptly, the hawk flew on over the tops of the hillocks, making unexpected zigzag rushes to right and left. But wherever he went, there the villagers had vanished, almost as if the wind of his approach had whisked them away. Baffled and indignant, he at last gave up the hope of a dinner of prairie dog, and dropped on a small rattler which ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... pratense perenne, which has reference to the mildly perennial habit of growth in this plant. In common phrase it is known by such names as Large, Tall, Saplin or Sapling, Giant, Meadow, Perennial Red, Red Perennial Meadow, Pea Vine, Zigzag, Wavy Stemmed, Soiling, and Cow clover or Cow grass. Each of these names has reference to some peculiarity of growth in the plant. For instance, the terms Large, Tall, Saplin and Giant have reference to the size of the ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... we took our meals is still clear in my mind. The floor was two inches deep in white sand, in which were carefully traced zigzag lines, with odd patterns in the corners. A bare table of well-rubbed mahogany stood in the middle, with a thin board or two laid on the sand, that the table might be set without disturbing the patterns, In the corners were glass-covered ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Deserves it not by them to've been predicted? Yet heard we not a whisper of it, Before it came, from any prophet. The suddenness of passion's gush, Of wayward life the headlong rush,— Permit they that the feeble ray Of twinkling planet, far away, Should trace our winding, zigzag course? And yet this planetary force, As steady as it is unknown, These fools would make our guide alone— Of all our varied life the source! Such doubtful facts as I relate— The petted child's and poet's fate— Our argument may well ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... zigzag trail under overarching, matted jungle, where great butterflies drifted by in the silence. No tattooed savage with club and javelin guarded the path; and when we forded the stream, we were free to roam where we pleased. No longer did the taboo, sacred and merciless, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... there were no branches in this zigzag staircase, which communicated directly with the top of the lofty plateau. When presently I felt the fresh mountain air upon my face, I wondered why I could perceive no light ahead of me. Yet ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... and making frantic efforts to push it off finally got it afloat, and with an oar shoved it into deep water and began to scull it out rapidly, making a zigzag ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... is not spiny like the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... what was apparently a ravine, and then came a flat bit with long grass at the sides and more flowers. They felt the grass flicking wet against their stockings, and the invisible flowers were everywhere. Then up again through trees, along a zigzag path with the smell all the way of the flowers they could not see. The warm rain was bringing out all the sweetness. Higher and higher they went in this sweet darkness, and the red light on the jetty dropped farther and ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... until the pinnacle was reached. Nearer, along the broad successive terraces of the opposite mountains, the evergreen pine, the cedar, with its stiff, angular branches, and the cottonwood, with its varied curves and bright colours, were crowded into bunches or strung into zigzag lines, interspersed with shrubs and mountain plants, among which the flaming cactus was conspicuous. To the right and left, the bare cones of the barren peaks rose in multitude, with their calm, awful forms shrouded in snow, and their dark shadows ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the screen, and had seen the old sailor unsteadily keeping his watch, and fancying himself once more at his duty on board ship. "This is an uncommonly lively vessel in a sea-way," he used to mutter under his breath, when his legs took him down the passage in zigzag directions, or left him for the moment studying the "Pints of the Compass" on his own system, with his back against the wall. "A nasty night, mind you," he would maunder on, taking another turn. "As dark as your pocket, and the wind heading us again from the old ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... spread out, and out, as it sailed in from seaward, and on, and on, until it gradually covered the whole scene from our view, (shipping, and harbour, and town, and camp, and sugar estates,) boiling and rolling in black eddies under our feet. Anon the thunder began to grumble, and the zigzag lightning to fork out from one dark mass into another, while all, where we sat, was bright and smiling under the unclouded noon—day sun. This continued for half an hour, when at length the sombre appearance of the clouds below us brightened into a sea of white fleecy vapour like wool, which ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
