The drifter grated her fenders alongside and made fast.
As she approached the stern of the Flagship, however, the uproar subsided, and the densely thronged drifter was white with upturned, expectant faces.
The drifter rounded an outlying promontory of one of the islands, and Thorogood raised his hand.
As thedrifter drew near the different classes of ships became distinguishable.
A drifter hove in sight, shaping course for the Fleet Flagship.
The drifter that had altered course slowly came round again when the last of the Destroyers swept past, and the three figures in the bows ducked as she shipped a bucket of spray and flung it aft over the tiny wheel-house.
There was gratitude and passionate loyalty in the demonstration, and it continued long after the figure on the quarterdeck had turned away and the drifter had resumed her noisy, triumphant tour of the Fleet.
The drifter crept up under the quarter of a Battleship that towered above them into the grey sky.
The skipper of thedrifter jerked the miniature telegraph to "Slow," and a hoary-headed deck-hand stumped into the bows with a heaving line coiled over his arm.
The flotilla altered course disdainfully to avoid a steamdrifter which wallowed through the wake of the Destroyers in the direction of the distant fleet, still shrouded by the morning mist.
Obedient to the warning wail another drifter altered course in reluctant compliance with the Rule of the Road.
There is scarcely a drifter or patrol-boat without one or more sets of boxing-gloves, for there is no form of sport quite so well calculated to exercise both mind and body in restricted quarters.
He had not seen anything of the Dawsons or the Drifter since he had fallen into the water of the bay.
The Drifter was the name of the new model aero-hydroplane concerning which Dave had received a letter from the Interstate people that day, but written the day previous.
I am pretty certain that theDrifter left Bolton on a due northwest course," and Dave drew from his pocket the card he had got from the tramp.
As has been said, the Driftercould carry five passengers, and they were not crowded or uncomfortable.
The only criticism he could make was that several times Jerry took some big risks in daringly banking, when the least variation of the wind would have made the Drifter turn turtle.
He drove ahead at a six hundred feet level and waited for the Drifter crowd to indicate what their purpose was.
Our belief is that the Drifter was selected as the nearest and highest type of aircraft in existence.
Have the Interstate people no theory as to the way the Drifter was stolen, and the motive for the theft?
The Drifter has got to be found," resumed the manager.
He and his son carried the bundle up to the Drifter and managed to stow it aboard.
It was two days after the young aviator had told his friends at Columbus the name of the person he suspected of stealing the aero-hydroplane, the Drifter from the Interstate Aeroplane Company.
In fact, after one or two circles, like a huge bird swooping after prey, the Drifter came almost directly over them.
The persons, however, who stole the Drifter knew that would come about.
I suppose they, dragged me aboard of the Drifter from the water, but what about Hiram and the Monarch II?
He is to ride post haste horseback ten miles west of that place to where the Drifter people have a camp in what they call Big Moose Woods.
There was a pause; slowly the girl's eyes began to smolder, and as she went on in her deliberate way, memory set a tragic shadow over her face.
Gray wondered why he had not thought of Dietz before he came to Texas; it would have made things much easier.
No one in the world can teach trawler or drifter men, who spend less than a month ashore in the twelve, seamanship.
The three of us will have an eye on all the prisoners then, till I can get some fellows up from the drifter to escort them.
Craning my head to the left I could just spy a small vessel of the trawler or drifter type lying close inshore.
The last man had just got into the water when a heavy swell rolled along, lifted the drifter's bow, and exploded the mine, which blew half the drifter into matchwood.
As far as can be gathered from the circumstances, the drifter must have struck the mine with her keel dead amidships, and when the smoke cleared away there was nothing to be seen on the water beyond a few broken pieces of wood.
She was then told off with another drifter to anchor in the vicinity of the Shipwash to work the hydrophones during the night.
There is also a serious danger of a mine fouling a vessel's anchor and coming up with it to explode under the vessel's bows, as is shown in the case of the drifter Cape Colony, whose crew experienced a miraculous escape from death.
Looking along, one saw a couple of men standing in each drifter and, with the leisurely haste of seamen, drawing in their nets.
Another driftercame alongside and took in the sixth net.
Two boatloads of net and fish followed, and finally the drifter herself was beached.
In the end we hauled the smaller ones, leaving the Cock Robin and the drifter upon the beach.
In rough broken seas the open beach drifter must be handled skilfully indeed, if she is not to fill and sink.
The buildings, evidently, belonged to the Double A ranch, and the country was all the Drifter had claimed for it.
The break made a sort of gorge, which widened as it receded, and Sanderson suspected the presence of another basin beyond the butte--in fact, the Drifter had told him of the presence of another basin.
There had been more--the Drifter told a complete story.
So you came here because the Driftertold you there would be trouble--and a woman.
Even when the Drifter was tellin' me about you, I was sure of you.
If the Drifter hadn't told me mebbe I wouldn't have seen.
They are, it is perfectly true, granted a sum of money by a paternal Government wherewith to purchase their kit, but brass buttons and best serge suits do not blend with life on board a herring drifter at sea in all weathers.
Then there are always mines, contact with one of which may pulverise an ordinary wooden drifter into mere matchwood.
The tension relaxed, a subdued cheer broke from the crew of the drifter as she gathered speed, and the Morse lamp winked its order for concerted action to the other drifter somewhere in the darkness around.
For these reasons all eyes and ears on the drifter were strained to catch the first glimpse or sound, and dead silence was maintained.
There was a scramble for oilskins on Drifter 42 as the rain came hissing down like a flood released.
The troopers had then searched their prisoner and to them a loaded money belt worn by a drifter did not make good sense, either—unless too much sense on the wrong side of the ledger.
You go ridin’ ’round with gold on you—more money than any drifter ever sees in ten years or more.
A lone drifter on patrol speaks us and reports no enemy sighted in the area: an auxiliary cruiser with a destroyer escorting her passes south on the rim of the landward horizon.
The issue was not considered--though Skipper Joseph Watt must have had no doubt that he was steering his drifter towards certain destruction.
In all its bearings, the comradely action of the Gull was but a foreshadowing of Gowan Lea's assistance to Floandi in the raid by Austrian cruisers on the drifterline in the Adriatic.
There was no sign of life on her, but a patrol drifter was standing by with a crowd of men on her decks.
Anchored off the point was a small steam yacht, either a converted drifter or built on drifter lines.
Presently the stentorian voice of the quartermaster is heard in the officers' messes: "Fourth Battle Squadron's drifter alongside.
On December 2 I said "good-bye" to the staff of the China and embarked in a drifter for the beach.
Time after time our drifter parts her securing lines and is blown away from the ship's side, or crashes into another astern.
How would you like to go out to an amateur theatrical performance in an open picket-boat in wind and rain, and return in a drifter through raging seas in a full gale?
But at last the drifter draws alongside and we hastily scramble up the rope ladder and make a bolt for the gunroom.
Remember, you are free, absolutely free--this old drifter isn't to count.
To be a weak copy of Freddy would be contemptible; it would be better to be an out-and-out failure and drifter for the rest of his days.
That old drifter won't like living in a tent or a caravan, on twopence a day, when he's sixty!
He doesn't want a drifterfor a brother-in-law, if he's any common sense in his head.
He cast off his holds on the window frame and clumsily worked the drifter controls.
Sollenar, manipulating the helium-filled plastic drifter far above him, steered himself with jets of compressed gas from plastic bottles in the drifter's structure.
Illustration: Skipper of Drifter (who has been fined thirty-five shillings for losing a pair of binoculars).
We sped by a lightship, the drifterhaving only one dim glim at her masthead.
Hadkinson stayed here, as he had some important local business to settle, and the delegate and I left in the armed drifter about nine-thirty.
Drifter 'Laughing Lassie' of Peterhead," was the reply with an unmistakable Scottish accent.
With the utmost alacrity the master of the drifter gave the necessary orders.
