(..) the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard (..)
A piece of the backbone of an animal, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
The edge or rim of a cask, etc., formed by the projecting ends of the staves; the chamfered end of a stave.
puhekieltä To cut through the backbone of; to cut into chine pieces.
To chamfer the ends of a stave and form the chine.
puhekieltä A steep-sided ravine leading from the top of a cliff down to the sea.
J. Ingelow
The cottage in a chine.
1988,(w), (w), Penguin Books (1988), page 169
In the odorous stillness of the day I thought of the tracks that threaded Egdon Heath, and of benign, elderly Sandbourne, with its chines and sheltered beach-huts.