And your sister, no doubt, eager to marry anybody, poor child, for the sake of getting away from that very lovely dungeon of Lady Maulevrier's, snapped at the chance; and by a mere fluke she becomes a countess.' Lesbia ignored these consolatory remarks.

Whenever one of these lulls occurred, the men would haul upon the line, gradually getting nearer and nearer to the fish, until they were within fifty feet of his tremendous flukes.

The only real objections are the statements that hallucinations are always morbid (which is no longer the universal belief of physiologists and psychologists), and that the alleged coincidences of a phantasm of a person with the unknown death of that person at a distance are 'pure flukes.'

"That is exactly what I wish to know," answered Sir Bale; "because, although I can't, of course, believe that he's a witch, yet he has either made the most marvellous fluke I've heard of, or else he has got extraordinary sources of information; or perhaps he acts partly on chance, partly on facts.

Posted with his back against the upright fluke of a condemned anchor, on a wharf a little apart from that occupied by most of the other spectators, he had remained an hour in the same position scarcely bending his look to his right hand or to his left.

Instantly the broad flukes of the tail were tossed into the air, and, for a single second, spread like a canopy over Buzzby's head.

As the truth, that was unassailable; but as diplomacy it was a wretched fluke.

At first he supposed the animal meant to make fight, and set upon him with its tremendous jaws; but it seemed that caprice or alarm directed the movement; for, after coming within a hundred yards of the boat, the creature turned and commenced sculling away to windward, with wide and nervous sweeps of its formidable flukes.

Farley's opinion was that Dave was done for, unless he could land some lucky fluke in a knockout blow.