Word: shortly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Digging by Hand. The drill ran into trouble just short of the 100-ft. mark. In relays, men were lowered by a hoisting bucket to dig the rest of the way by hand. It was grueling work. Dirt and rocks as big as a man's head had to be hoisted up bucket by bucket. Burly Bill Yancey, a 38-year-old sewerage contractor who had been on a wartime underwater demolition team, dug for two hours and 20 minutes before he was hauled...
Again & again, the word would come from somewhere: "Only a couple of hours more now." Again & again, there were fresh delays: Tempers were short; arguments flared over what might have been done. At last diggers, deep in the shaft, began to tunnel laterally toward Kathy's iron prison. Whitey was only a few shovelfuls away from the well pipe, when he was hauled to the surface, his face angry and set. There was water in his boots. Slowly at first, then faster, water poured into the tunnel. Digging stopped...
...polo jargon, one notch short of perfect. For handicap purposes, rated players are graded each year by the polo association of each country on the basis of all-round performance, from zero goals...
Deep in the Mojave Desert, across the San Gabriel Mountains and 70 miles inland from Los Angeles, lies a strange, unnatural lake. It is eleven miles long and four miles wide, with clearly defined shores and what look like beaches. But, except for a short time after a rare desert rain, the lake has no water. Its smooth and precisely level surface is cement-hard dark-red mud. Its one surface craft is a weathered wooden dummy battleship, built long ago as a bomber target. Above it, in the bright desert sky, thunder the real craft of Muroc Dry Lake...
Cardenas, "but I'm supposed to tell him.") Another short silence. Then Cardenas counted the last ten seconds: "Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five ["He always misses one of them," says Chuck] three-two-one-drop...