an unbreathable fabric

[…] that fellow (the chief), his two brothers, and about a paddockful of young Samoan bucks haven’t slept at all for this two weeks.

This doctrine, once fully established, will add a great facility to business, and prevent unnecessary delays: for example —in former times a minister would have been exceedingly hampered with such a promise as we have here cited: he would have shifted, and delayed, and played the backgame to have got rid of it, or to reconcile the breach to his conscience and reputation: but here you see there was no unnecessary delay; the business went on; and he who acknowledged that he had given his word in a private capacity, brings the book to prove that as a first lord of the treasury he was not bound to adhere to it, — and this is sound casuistry.

This time, the engine roared and the kite rocked against the brakes then sluggishly rolled down the strip.