[…] a team that have turned snatching relegation from the jaws of top-flight survival into an art form […]

They warped all his bowels about on the tide.

She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.

The practice was, before firing a shot for the purpose of blasting, to give an order to hap the crane, that is, to cover it, in order to protect it from the effect of the shot.