As it happened, the Navy never ceased to risk its ships in the waters of the Solomons, but the naval lifeline to the troops ashore stretched mighty thin at times.
At least in the Marines’ minds, Navy ships ceased to be the only lifeline for the defenders.
Suddenly he felt a determined tug at the lifeline about his waist, and as this was the usual code query as to how he was, he gave Bob a responding tug.
A final glance at his chum showed him that Bob, now steadied down to desperate work, was turning the big wheel with one hand and holding the lifeline in the other, ready to pay it out.
He answered with one "all right" signal, but still the tugs continued, at both lifeline and air line.
Lashing the end of the lifeline to the stern, Tom ran down into the cabin and brought forth several rockets.
And now Sam noticed that the lifeline was drifting idly at the stern, and there was nothing to do but to haul it in again.
Then the lifeline was thrown, but it fell short and did him no good.
So long as a strain was kept upon the hauling line, the hooks would bite, and the lifeline would be quite safe.
The two men on the ledge fell backward, as their lifeline collapsed; the blocks, with no weight to hold them taut dropped from the rock; and the two poor wretches sliding down the incline towards the pit dragged the tackle after them.
Although the comforting touch of the lifeline was not for him, his nerves were steady, and he did not falter on the glassy, inclined way.
He snapped one end of his lifeline into a ring at his belt, tugging strongly on it several times.
He drew his lifeline taut and tied the loop to his belt, leaving the end of the line still snapped in place.
While spacesuits had magnetic shoe soles to keep their wearers in contact with the hull, a lifeline was a safety factor in case they happened to break that contact and drift away from the ship.
The lock empty, he twisted the knob that opened the outer lockdoor, then snapped the other end of his lifeline to a ring just beside the opening doorway.
Half my memories were doubled, half my lifeline crooked and twisted, three new moles upon my sword-hand.
I didn't say aloud that a Changing cosmos is worse than none, but I found myself sending a prayer to the Bonny Dew for my father's repose, that the Change Winds would blow lightly across the lifeline of Anton A.
Lifeline lengthened by a Big Change after his first death and at latest report Commandant of Toronto, where he maintains extensive baby farms to provide him with breakfast meat, if you believe the handbills of the voyageurs underground.
Resurrection is like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly: a third-order being breaks out of the chrysalis of its lifeline into fourth-order life.
