They just tautened all my nerves and made me feel that all my questions were impertinent, and all my good wishes flat and empty, and that I resembled a visitor to a Zoo.

He went ahead; he stopped and braced himself; he tautened the rope about her waist and said: "Come on.

The mania for murder that obsessed him tautened his sinews.

Jack Harpe's figure tautened in a flash.

Now, when they had made an end of tautening the rope, I perceived that it was, at last, well clear of the weed through all its length, being at its lowest part nigh twenty feet above the surface, and, at that, a sudden thought came to me which sent me hastily to the bo'sun; for it had occurred to me that there existed no reason why we should not pay a visit to those aboard the hulk.

Then the rope tautened.

Every once in a while it would hold back till the tow-rope tautened, then come leaping ahead and sheering and dropping slack till it threatened to shove its nose under the huge whitecaps which roared so hungrily on every hand.

Another signal, after a brief wait, and the drum rolled faster, the line tautened like a fiddle-string, and the ponderous machine vibrated with the strain of its effort.

Luckily, the hawser as it tautened, brought a fluke directly under the yard, within the Flemish horse, the brace-block, and all the other ropes that are fitted to a lower yard-arm.

Primers were placed in the vents of the already loaded guns, and the gun-captains stepped back, tautening the lock-strings, and bending down to glance along the sights.

The music filled the air with heavenly harmony, and it set him to vibrating like a tautened string; it rippled forth, softer than the breeze, more haunting than the perfume of the frangipani.

At ten o'clock the Ebba was still rocking lazily at anchor, her stem up stream and her cable tautened by the rapidly ebbing tide.

Almost immediately the hawser tautened, and the Ebba, though not a stitch of canvas had been set, sped off in an easterly direction at a speed that could not have been less than ten knots an hour.

Their bare feet must have been literally as tough as horn; for when one of them roped a big bull he would brace himself, bending back until he was almost sitting down and digging his heels into the ground, and the galloping beast would be stopped short and whirled completely round when the rope tautened.

We then sat down by the roadside and superintended the righting of the saddle and the tautening of the girths by several natives, who "took in the slack" with an energy that must have made the poor elephant very "uncomfy" about the waist!

The silence tautened, stretched to the breaking-point.

As he slid it to his lips, they tautened.

The Legionaries' hearts tautened again with faith in this strange, this usually silent and emotionless man whose very name was unknown to almost all of them.

Discipline had tautened again.

His powerful frame tautened; his thick, corded neck swelled with the intensity of his emotion as his head went forward, staring.

Owing to the rising and falling of the mast, the hawser now tautened with a jerk which flung the voyager up against it or even over it, and now drooped in a large bight which let him down into the seethe of water and foam that had just rushed over the vessel, forcing it down on its beam ends.

The tow-line had now tautened, at right angles to the two boats, and the predicament was laughable.