What is "chancing"

Usage examples of "chancing".

But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah following us, though at a distance.

But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.

But struggling out of it again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted, — ‘Sail on the whale!

It was far enough from the house to be safe from the risk of others chancing by, and so overhung by trees and rampant shrubs that she need not fear any stray beam of light, a pertinent consideration as she'd been unable to change her gown.

But struggling out of it again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,--"Sail on the whale!

But presently, chancing to look aside, he beheld a head low down amid the underwood, a head huge and hairy with small, fierce eyes that watched him right bodefully, and a great mouth that grinned evilly.

From this hazardous enterprise he was, however, exempted by a lucky accident that happened to his disturber, whose head chancing to pitch upon the corner of a chair in his fall, he was immediately lulled into a trance, during which the considerate lady, guessing the disorder of her gallant, and dreading further interruption, very prudently released him from his confinement, after she had put out the light, and in the dark conveyed him to the door, where he was comforted with the promise that she would punctually remember the rendezvous of next day.

But, chancing to meet with an old acquaintance, whom I did not at all desire to see, I found it convenient to withdraw softly to Rotterdam.

I believe it must have killed me, only that that man of mine, chancing to catch sight of the rogue as he was about to fire, fairly knocked me out of my seat.

He boasted ardently of his fighting father, and, chancing to be near the Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia of his father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and he put it in these words, following: "My father's the one to lead an army!

Old Jolyon knew this, for he had surreptitiously bought them from time to time, after chancing to see his son's name signed at the bottom of a representation of the river Thames in a dealer's window.

One nice old General, going towards Cigars, was obliged to step quite out of the way, and chancing to look up and see Mrs.