Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
As the smooth-backed rollers passed to the southward, they hove the dory high and high into the mist, and dropped her in ugly, sucking, dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor, within a foot or two of the hidden rock. It was playing with death for mere bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till Long Jack rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding.
Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once. "Haul up, Penn," he said laughing, "er she'll git stuck again." They left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely.
No such item of news met my eye. Joyously I rose to go, when my eye fell on the Standard. Mechanically I opened it. 'Horrible Discovery near Roding. At once the truth flashed across me. The Morning Post had not contained the intelligence because, The Government had Boycotted the 'Morning Post'!
Lashed to the wind'ard buoy I was by a length of roding line, to my knees in water the better part of the time, and busy enough with the bailing. There was no steady looking to wind'ard, such was the weight of the bullets of water which the wild wind drove off the sea crests; but a flying glance now and again kept me in the run of it.
He found it impractical to remain longer in the stern attempting to scull. So very cautiously he set about his last defensive measure. Taking the two oars and the anchor, as well as the thwarts, he bound them together securely with the anchor roding. This drag he hove from the bow of the dory, and it swung the boat's head into the wind.
I passed a distracted day, now bounding forth half way to the railway station to meet Sir Runan, now speeding back at the top of my pace to welcome Philippa at the 'pike. As I knew not by what train Sir Runan would reach Roding, nor when Philippa might be looked for, I thus obtained exercise enough to make up for months of inaction. Finally the last train was due.
The cock-shuts, as they were called, were spread so as to do their work after sundown, and this is the meaning of Shakespeare's allusion to "cock-shut time." This "roding" is a curious performance on the part of the males only, and it bears some analogy to the "drumming" of snipe.
Fortunately, we do not in England shoot the bird in springtime, the season of "roding," but the practice is in vogue in the evening twilight in every Continental country, and large bags are made in this fashion. In its hungry moments the woodcock, like the snipe, has at once the advantages and handicap of so long a beak.
'She's a rum un, squire, your sister, she be, chuckled the Sphynx. 'William, I said, 'go to Roding, and bring back two nurses, even if they have to hire twenty drags to draw them here. And, William, bring some drugs in the drags. By setting him on this expedition I got rid of the Sphynx. Was he a witness? He was certainly acquainted with the nature of an oath!
The word "roding" is spelt "roading" by Newton, who thus gives the preference to the Anglo-Saxon description of the aërial tracks followed by the bird, over the alternative derivation from the French "roder," which means to wander. The flight is at any rate wholly different from that to which the sportsman is accustomed when one of these birds is flushed in covert.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking