Drifter

“ The Drifter struck a course as true as a die. The splendid machine and the young aviator were both at their best. There was a last fading picture of a forlorn man convulsed with rage and despair. Then the two boy aeronauts turned their back on the enemies who had been hoisted by their own petard.
"It's great, its grand," cheered Hiram, bubbling over with joy, as the exhilarating air and their magical progress made him realize what freedom meant to its fullest extent.
"I don't understand. Your arm, Hiram?" said Dave. ”

“ On the night in question one of the Drifter Patrol had sighted a submarine on the surface, attempting to break through the vigilant cordon of patrol craft. Off went the drifter in jubilant pursuit, signalling to her consorts to join the hunt, and the remainder joined her like a pack of basset-hounds on the trail of an otter. The enemy destroyers, casting about in the darkness, sighted the “Tally-ho!{143}” rocket and swept down upon the drifters, intent upon their own business, from at least four quarters simultaneously. The Germans appear to have worked in pairs ”

“ The ordinary sailing drifter is rapidly being superseded by the steam drifter, partly because the greater power of the steam driven boat increases its capacity and scope, and, further, owing to the centralization of the industry at a few big ports at certain times of the year, these harbours are so crowded that it is almost impossible to handle a sailing drifter in them. ”

“ It may be necessary to inform some of my readers that a drifter is not necessarily a vessel that is content to start out on a voyage and rely on drifting to its destination, as its name implies. The term is derived from the drift nets used by these vessels for fishing in time of peace. They are, in almost all respects, small editions of the deep-sea trawler—minus [56] the powerful steam-driven winch for hauling in the trawl nets.
Yachting Monthly Some of the 550 Motor Launch Hulls being constructed on the Banks of the St. ”

“ The drift net is essentially a completely submerged, vertical curtain of netting, one end of which is attached to a boat called a drifter. The net extends in a straight line from the boat, and may be as much as three miles long. ”

“ He wants us to try and discover the Drifter. He says it's only a question of time, he and his men running down the smugglers. You see, Hiram, we are interested mainly in finding the aero-hydroplane, and getting it back to the Interstate people. ”

“ We sight few vessels. 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. A drift of smoke astern of us hangs in the clear [118] air, then resolves to a fast Cunarder that speedily overhauls and passes us. As though impressed by the mail-boat's progress, our sea-mate puts a spurt on and maintains a better speed than any she has shown since morning. She draws ahead and we are left with clear water to exercise the cantrips of our zigzag. ”

“ A ragged line of coastwise traffic, barges under sail, lighters in tow of tugs, and deepladen freighters hugging the swept channel along the coast, appeared as if by magic out of “the bowl of night”; from the direction of the chalk-cliffs came a division of drifters in line ahead. They passed close to the destroyers, and the figure on the leading destroyer’s bridge bawled through a megaphone. They were curt incoherencies to a landsman—vague references to a number and some compass bearings. A big man on board the drifter flagship waved his arm to indicate he understood the message ”

“ Those fellows on the drifter will have to shorten their warps as the tide rises and pay out when it falls. We, being alongside the drifter, simply rise and fall with her."
"But she goes out of harbour at four in the morning," remarked Hepburn.
"And we'll have to shift," added Mr. Armitage. "That's what I want to do—to shift on a falling tide on the mud, then by six o'clock we'll be able to clear our propeller. Now, who's for the shore?"
The Sea Scouts, after a "wash and brush up", landed via the deck of the drifter. ”

“ What I have said of the trawler skippers and crews also applies to those who man the North Sea drifters, which were taken from the fishing grounds to do their work among the minefields. These drifters are for the most part manned by hardy Scotch [190] fishermen, who, like the East Coast trawler men, took to their new work as a duck takes to water. These drifters are of lighter draught than the trawlers, and so can be employed in shallower waters. They proved of great service, not only in mine-sweeping, but also for laying mine nets and for carrying out exploratory sweeps. ”

“ The [86] drifters, punching and reeling up and down their ten-mile line of traps; the outer trawlers, drawing the very teeth of Death with water-sodden fingers, are grateful for their low, guarded signals; and when the Zeppelin's revealing star-shell cracks darkness open above him, the answering crack of the invisible destroyers' guns comforts the busy mine-layers. ”

“ Many drifters were also fitted for minesweeping in addition to the trawlers hitherto employed; and although there was some prejudice against these vessels on account of their slower speed, they proved to be of great assistance. Every available small craft that could be fitted for the work was pressed into the service, including a considerable number of motor launches. ”

“ The open places amid the drift were faintly shimmering, reflecting the feeble light that shone through the clouds from the stars; the drift itself loomed in fantastic shapes of pure black on the water. There were logs and patches of sticks and grass; lumps of straw-stacks; the rectangles and triangles of sides of buildings; barrels and hogs heads; tangles like jackstraws of lumber and trees. It was as if everything that will float had its kind in the masses, around which were straits and ponds and open waterways as smooth as blown glass. ”

“ The drift was twisting all around them, and they could see the big logs crawling through the mass, could feel them straining underfoot; and between them and the boat water appeared among the flotsam. It was a fearful moment, for the squeeze had ended, and the mass of drift was breaking up and separating in little lumps. They saw the house-boat settling down as the logs rolled and floated from under her. Their own island began to flatten down and spread out. Sib caught the unconscious boy in his arms, and held to the branch that he had used for a snub. ”

“ The day when a drift is to take place is kept a profound secret till it is proclaimed early in the morning. Then a messenger on a fleet horse is sent round very early to announce it. On certain tors are holed stones, and through these horns were formerly passed and blown on such occasions. There are drifts for ponies, and drifts for bullocks. A drift is an animated and striking scene. Horsemen and dogs are out, the farmers identifying their cattle, the drivers and dogs sending the frightened beasts plunging, galloping in one direction towards the place of gathering. ”

“ The size of the flood, the vastness of the surface, made the fugitive boy feel trivial and insignificant, and hidden from every one’s sight—as indeed he was. When Driftwood had had his supper, and was sound asleep in warm night-clothes which the shanty-boat women had given him, Jep turned the light in the brass lamp low, and, putting on a heavy woolen shirt, stepped outside to keep vigilant watch and guard.
There was no shore in sight that night—just the faintly glimmering, drift-shadowed gloom of wide surfaces and dark-softened, half-submerged woods. ”

“ A drift is really a crossing place over a river, which latter is called a sluit, if it has water in it, or a spruit if it is dry; and whether the drift is easy or difficult for wagons to cross depends on the banks and the bottom. Thus, a shallow drift gives no trouble at all; but if the banks are steep, the mules and oxen go down one side with a run, even if the brake be well screwed up on the wagons, and invariably get mixed up at the bottom, getting their legs over the traces and pole chain: or perhaps one is pulled down, when there is much confusion and delay. ”

“ He entered upon an acre of perfectly open water, and on the far side was running through a narrows hardly fifteen feet wide when he saw a black mass of drift shoving down across the way ahead of him. He heard the wet wood grinding and the dull snap of breaking branches.
Instantly he fell against the sweeps, to stop the boat in its course; he pulled out of the closing gap, and turned through the wide water to skirt around the moving mass—not for a moment worried, because he had seen in time the thrust of the coming squeeze. ”

“ Boxes and barrels, sections of fences squeezed upright into the drift, even a telegraph-pole, still erect, with wires dangling,—went by without causing comment. In a gray gust of rain the watchers saw a shanty-boat drifting down, turning around and around.
"Them shanty-boaters don’t care what they do, or where they go!" ”

“ But the revelations of the last few years prove, not only that man lived during the Drift age, and that he dwelt on the earth when the Drift fell, but that he can be traced backward for ages before the Drift ”

“ The drifting boy becomes a drifting business man, who sits still and lets those who row get away from him. The drifting lawyer sits and drifts, and waits, and sighs because people do not find out that he is great. He wears out pants instead of shoe leather. When you see a man the seat of whose pants are shiny and almost worn through, while his shoes are not worn, except on the heels, where he puts them on the table, and waits and dreams, you can make up your mind that he drifted instead of rowed, when he was a boy, out in a boat. ”

“ One can drift a riffle stern first that is too rough to ride any other way. Facing down-stream, and pulling against the current the headway of the boat is checked and it is easier to shoot it to right or left to avoid an obstacle. If the riffle is not too rough to make the control of the boat impossible when rowed bow-first with the stream, drifting means the cutting down of speed and the loss of much good time. ”

“ It seems to me that we must be drawing nearer to the land, and before evening we may be close enough to see what sort of a country it is. If the worst comes to the worst, we can launch the boat, and go ashore. It’s a little rough, but, after all, not too rough for the boat. I’ve been out in an open boat when the water was quite as rough as this. It seems rough to us, because the ship is water-logged, and is drifting every way—end on, side on, and so forth.”
“I wonder what land it is,” said Phil.
“If we only knew how the wind has been, we might guess how we have been drifting,” said Bruce ”

“ Drift is that motion and direction, by which a vessel is forced to leeward sideways, when she is unable any longer to carry sail; or, at least, is restrained to such a portion of sail, as may be necessary to keep her sufficiently inclined to one side, that she may not be dismasted by her violent labouring produced by the turbulence of the sea.
Page 77, l. 10.
And try beneath it the sidelong in the sea.
To try, is to lay the ship with her side nearly in the direction of the wind and sea, with her head somewhat inclined to windward ”

“ That was really the first thing which I saw—the light of the sun on the deck. I struggled up to a sitting position, feeling great pain in my head. Marah lying over the tiller was the next thing which I saw; he was dead, I thought. Then I realised what had happened; we had had a fight. We were not under control; we were drifting with the tide up and down, with our sails backing and filling; up and down the deck there were wounded men, some of them preventives, some of them smugglers—poor Hankin was one of them. ”

“ He was never in spirit alone. For night and day, sleeping or waking, pacing the beach or crouching over his driftwood fire, a woman's face was always before him,—the face for whose sake and for cause of whom he sat there alone. He saw it in the morning sunlight; it was her white hands that were lifted from the crested breakers; it was the rustling of her skirt when the sea wind swept through the beach grasses; it was the loving whisper of her low voice when the long waves sank and died among the sedge and rushes. She was as omnipresent as sea and sky and level sand. ”

“ Beating their way up the river flood was very different from coming down, and it was awe inspiring to the boys to press against the vast current, winding and curving to miss the onrushing chunks of drift. In eddies they could swing out into the reverse current and run with the circling waters, but at the heads of eddies they had to put on all their power and nose into the swirling sucks where the fast main flow insolently turned the eddy back into the true direction again. ”

“ Listen: there is no harm in the drifting hither. What sent her adrift?"
"I have sailed for a month with Danes," I said. "I have met with a man who once set a girl adrift."
As I said that I looked him meaningly in the face, and he grew pale.
"So," he said slowly, "you have heard that tale also. There was a Danish chapman who came to our haven at Mundesley, where I live, and told it there to me. That was a year after the boat was found. I bade him be silent, but there was no need. When he heard that the girl had become what she is, he fled the land. ”

“ In the drift it was always cool. The dirt kept sloughing down on us, and we had really gone in too far for our own safety, but the laymen cared little for that. At the end of the drift the roof was so low we were bent almost double, picking at the face in all kinds of cramped positions, and dragging after us the heavy bucket. To the big Slav it was all in the day's work, but to me it was hard, hard. ”