"Raft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old raft, lying at one edge of the pond, under the willow tree. "I'll play on the ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... several axes in reserve, it is doubtful whether they would have been able to get sufficient fuel for our purpose. When they pitched the wood off the rocks into the harbour, it sank immediately, giving them a great deal of trouble to fish it up again. Neither could they raft it as intended, but were compelled to load it into the boats and make several journeys to and fro before all they had cut was shipped. Altogether, I was glad that the wooding had not fallen to my share. On board the ship fishing had been going on steadily most of the day by a few hands told ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Francois. "I should like to see a canoe made from three trees! Is it a raft you mean, ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... snow-white. The stone parapets of bridge and tower shine against the purple of the mountains, which are low in tone, and look like hovering storm-clouds. Across the fields dun oxen pass to their labour; through the shadows peasants go their way to mass; down the river a raft drifts slowly, with the pearly water swaying against the canes; all is clear, tranquil, fresh ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the shore. A multitude of hands went up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher. There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her crew, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... in shallow ponds or slow streams. They are flattened, and on one edge, or both, and at the apex is a spongy ridge. Very likely, by this time, the reader has surmised that this serves the purpose of a raft to float the small seed within, which would sink at once if separated from the boat that grew on its margins. In this connection may be studied achenes of water plantain, Alisma, bur reed, cat-tail flag, arrow grass, burgrass, numerous pondweeds, several buttercups, the hop, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... then offered no effective resistance. The obstructions had been opened to remove accumulated raft, and could not be closed; and the fleet moved slowly up to seize the rich prize that lay entirely ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... of the question that the crew of the Brilliant could be allowed to remain on the island. Some of the pirates suggested that they should be put on a raft, towed to leeward of the island, and, when out of sight of it, be cast adrift to float about until they should be picked up or get blown on one of the numerous islands that lay to the southward of the rendezvous. Manton and Scraggs advocated this plan, but ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... however, was loyal to his allies until, on the 14th of June, his army was almost annihilated at Friedland. This loss compelled him to enter into negotiations. On June 25, 1807, the two emperors met on a raft at Tilsit. Napoleon was prepared to do almost anything that would induce Alexander to cease interfering in Europe. An offensive-defensive alliance was concluded, whereby Napoleon agreed not to oppose the expulsion ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... Rand arose, replaced the book on the shelf, sat down at his desk, and began to unfold papers. "Work!" he said presently, in a dull voice. "Work! That is the straw at which to catch! Perhaps one might make of it a raft to bear one's weight. I have known the day when in work I have forgotten hunger, thirst, weariness, calamity. I have worked at night and grudged an hour to sleep. What I have done, cannot I do again? But I would work better, Tom, if ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... the hold, it appeared to them that the water was rising; if so, the ship must have sprung a serious leak. With the scanty supply of provisions they had obtained, they hurried on deck to report what they had remarked. Considerable progress had been made with the raft, but without food and water it could only tend to prolong their misery. Reuben, with three other men, were therefore ordered below, to get up any more provisions which they could find. They very soon returned with the only things they could ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... more at the cottage for me, and now all I wanted was to get on board of the Splash. My skiff was destroyed, and my pursuer would not permit me to build a raft. I could have swum off to her; but the water might injure, if not ruin, the priceless document in my pocket. Tom was at my heels, and all I ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... hour the boat appeared. It came from down the river, propelled close inshore by two members of their own party who had gone to fetch it. At first the travelers thought it a long, oblong raft. Then as it came closer they could see it was constructed of three canoes, each about thirty feet long, hollowed out of tree-trunks. Over these was laid a platform of small trees hewn roughly into boards. The boat was propelled by long, slender poles in the hands of the two men, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... the banks above and below. Below them was a great lake; beside and above them a swift, deep current broken by rapids. There was no crossing. They tried to gather willow faggots, and bind them into a raft. But the green wood sank so {101} easily that only one man could get upon the raft: to paddle or pole it in the running water was impossible. A line was made of strips of skin, and Richardson volunteered to swim the river so as to haul the raft across with the line. The bitter ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... the simpler; as for instance in his taking it from her that Miss Theale then could do nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think possible. "If we can't meet here and we've really exhausted the charms of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's one more ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... a stone, until he made them sharp like knives. With these, and no other instruments, he cut down some branches of trees, which he joined together with twigs and osiers, and as well as he could made a boat, or rather a raft, with which he crossed over the rivers. Thus he reached the Cape of Golfotriste, as was said before, where he happened to find a certain vessel of pirates who wore great comrades of his own, and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... these men springs naturally from the first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very special sense. The man with the talent to succeed ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... of fish the fishermen use hand-nets, which they throw into the sea from the shore; the larger species they kill with lances, one of which Ayd carried constantly with him as a weapon; there is not a single boat nor even a raft to be found on the whole of this coast, but the Bedouins of the eastern coast have a few boats, which may sometimes be seen in the gulf. We saw here a great number of porpoises playing in the water close to the shore. I wished to shoot at one of them, but was prevented by my companions, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... where the word [Greek text: tanaaekaes] is borrowed from the usual epithet of swords; "the long edge" is quite inappropriate to a woodcutter's axe. On Calypso's isle Calypso gives to Odysseus a bronze axe for his raft-making. Butcher's work is done with an axe. [Footnote: Iliad, XVII. 520; Odyssey, III. 442-449.] The axes offered by Achilles as a prize for archers and the axes through which Odysseus shot are implements ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... load up with the usual contraband, and then hover about outside the limits of the land. When they were convinced that the coast was clear of any cruisers they would run into the bay and land, sink or raft ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... border into Canada, followed by new restrictions, with severe penalties and powers of search hitherto unknown in the law of the United States. On Lake Champlain, on June 13, 1808, a band of sixty armed men fired upon United States troops, and carried a raft in triumph over the border. A prosecution for treason against one of the men involved was ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... of the wild animal is much more uniform than in the great raft of "domestic" mongrel specimens which make night hideous with their discordant yowls, although we sometimes see a high bred individual which, if his tail was cut off at half its length, might easily pass as an example ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... these were held in great dread, for if swimming became necessary, the plight of the little company, with the thermometer striking steadily below freezing point, would be pitiful indeed. The ranchman was resolved to save his wife and child from such an affliction, by constructing some kind of a raft, though the delay involved in such a work might solve the question of life ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... hitching his chair over, shouting, "Movie? Say, Sir Gerald, I supposed of course you had a raft of dames waiting to lead you out to ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... leg directly, and in a little while we got to the shore on a hastily constructed raft. After seeing the foreman safely cared for, and giving Mr. Devlin's manager the facts of the occurrence, more than sated with my morning's experience, I climbed the mountain side, and took refuge from the heat in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... therefore exerted themselves to the utmost to avoid them; whereas I could see no other way of escape, especially for the lady sitting beside me, than by boarding one of these very rafts. In order to effect this (against the wish of our two oarsmen) I seized with one hand a projecting peg on a raft we were passing and held our little vessel fast, and, while the two rowers screamed that the Ellida would be lost, quickly hoisted the lady out of the skiff on to the raft, across which we walked to the shore, calmly leaving our friends to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Jock stood up and laughed good-naturedly. "Go to bed and get up steam for to-morrer. When you see the whole collection you'll warm up your ideas. You're a terrible plucky kid to trust your own soul on a trifling little raft like this religion of yours. You better not overload it with more souls, though; the risk's ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... that it would be dangerous to apprize those on the opposite side of the river of their situation, by hallooing, Lewis set himself to work as silently, and yet as expeditiously [124] as possible, and with the aid of his little brother, soon completed a raft on which they safely crossed the Ohio; and made their ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... mangrove, very much dried, and lashed together in two places with the largest ends one way, so as to form a broad part, and the smaller ends closing to a point. Near the broad end was a bunch of grass, where the man sits to paddle; but the raft, with his weight alone, must swim very deep; and indeed I should scarcely have supposed it could float a man at all. Upon one of the rafts was a short net, which, from the size of the meshes, was probably intended to catch turtle; upon another was a young shark; and these, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... not satisfactory, any way you look at them), I turned me to the lake front of Buffalo, where the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and the locomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and the canal barges jostle the lumber-raft half a mile long as it snakes across the water in tow of a launch, and earth, and sky, and sea alike are ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... and boats, big and little, laden with stones and clods of earth. The boats are then attached to the Zinkstuk, and this combined flotilla is so disposed along shore that the current carries it to the place where the Zinkstuk is to be sunk. When the current begins to make itself felt, the raft is loaded by the simple process of heaping the contents of the barges upon the middle of it. The men form in line from the four corners to the centre, and the loads of stone and earth are passed on to the centre of the raft, on which they are flung; then the middle ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the valley of Raft River, which is tributary to the Snake River, and finally empties into the Columbia, we came to a deep, ditch-like crack in the earth, partly filled with water and soft mud. It was about a rod in width, but so long ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... into which we sink, and it is with great difficulty that we make progress. In some places the holes are so deep that we have to swim, and our little bundles of blankets and rations are fixed to a raft made of driftwood and pushed before us. Now and then there is a little flood-plain, on which we can walk, and we cross and recross the stream and wade along the channel where the water is so swift as almost to carry us off our feet and we are in danger every moment of being swept ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... sir," was the reply. "A number of logs broke loose from the raft and I had a hard time to collect them. There's a heavy sea runnin' ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... took hold of the planks at his side, and they heaved the rude raft into the sea. In an instant she was seized and whirled over the side; she instinctively held her breath, felt a shock, felt herself swallowed up in an awful, fathomless coldness, and then found herself floating below the huge towering hull ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... pond. It was Saturday afternoon. The nearest public-house was a mile away. Immunity from interference by the British workman was thus assured. It occurred to me that by placing my three depressed looking relatives on one raft, attacking them myself from another, taking the eldest girl's sixpence away from her, disabling their raft, and leaving them to drift without a rudder, innocent amusement would be provided for ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... couldn't bring the kid here—I'm not a horse. So I did the next best thing; I carried him down the old creek bed a ways, to where the water flowed into it. It was flowing easy then. I laced a couple of broken off branches together and made the craziest raft you ever saw. Then I laid the kid on it and held his head and poled with the other hand and that way we got down to the Hudson. I intended to get him to some house down there and then notify camp. He was ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... acquaintances, and just outside Ye Craftsman's Bookshop they ran into Nell Stanley, who they knew had no business at all there on Main Street at this hour of the afternoon. Nell was the minister's daughter, and there were a number of little motherless Stanleys at the parsonage (Amy said "a whole raft of them") who usually needed the older ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... things," replied Bobus. "The truest kindness to her is to get afloat away from the family raft as speedily as possible. She has quite ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stood by without saying a word. At last the father kissed his little girl, and lifted her on to the raft again. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... round two corners, how absorbing to stand and speculate on what might be coming round either corner, and which would yield a vision first! Perhaps there would come along a sandolo rowed by a man standing at the back, his two oars crossed gracefully; perhaps a floating raft with barefooted boys bestriding it; perhaps a barca punted by men in blue blouses, one at front and two at the back, with a load of golden hay, or with provisions for the Ghetto—glowing fruit and picturesque vegetables, or bleating sheep and bellowing bulls, coming to be killed by the Jewish ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... asked. "I shall be obliged to show him the door, yet, Josephine. You ought to snub him. He's worse than his pictures. Well, you've had a whole raft of folks ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... from the island was impossible, for it was four miles from the mainland, and they had no canoes, and the water was literally alive with sharks. Some of them, wild with terror, built a raft out of dead timber, and tried to put to sea. They were seen by the Rossel Islanders, pursued and captured, and slaughtered for the cannibal ovens, which were now never idle. Some poor creatures, who could swim, tried ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... that morning. We had driven all day with nothing to eat but a bit of war bread and chocolate, we were black with dust, there was not a crumb in the place that did not belong to the army, and we sat there in the thickening dusk, almost as much adrift as a raft in mid-ocean, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... that I did not recognise at first what they were. Our English Bladder-worts, as everybody knows, float in stagnant water on tangles of hair-like leaves, something like those of the Water-Ranunculus, but furnished with innumerable tiny bladders; and this raft supports the little scape of yellow snapdragon-like flowers. There are in Trinidad and other parts of South America Bladder-worts of this type. But those which we found to-day, growing out of the damp clay, were more like in habit to a delicate stalk of flax, or even a bent ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... attire, and in Persia the rule was that if a Jewish traveller died, the physicians took half his property. Petachiah saw through the real danger that threatened him, so he escaped from the perilous ministrations of the royal doctors, had himself carried across the Tigris on a raft, and soon recovered. Clearly, it was imprudent of a Jewish traveller to excite the rapacity of kings or bandits by wearing rich dresses. But it was also desirable for the Jew, if he could, to evade recognition as such altogether. Jewish opinion was very sensible on this ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... thought you was something or other—they's sech a raft of agents along; though my Mary tells me 'tain't a circumstance to the city—Mate works out in the city. Let me make you acquainted with Mis' Flaherty. She's the lady what lives in Bachelor's Row and takes in boarders and washin's—now, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... help their sickness or make an end of them. If they do not mend that night, the friends come and sit up with them, and cry for some time, after which they take them to the side of the river, laying them on a raft of reeds, and so let ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... a spit of land ran out against the current, and behind its shelter an eddy had collected a mass of uprooted trees and other flood refuse, all matted with green from the growth of wind-borne seeds. It was in reality a great natural raft, built by the eddy and anchored behind the little point. For this Grom headed with new hope. It might be strong enough—parts of it at least—to bear up the three fugitives. But their furious pursuers would surely not venture their giant bulks ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a battle royal. Whatever the thing was that had felt the spears, it certainly lost no time in showing its resentment. It thrashed the water into furious waves until I momentarily expected the raft ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... long trips, this one had what was called a "boat-bottom," intended to enable it to remain afloat with its burden in case of an accidental fall into a large body of water. Pludder saw that this fact would enable him to turn the wreck into a raft. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... improvement in water transportation is the giant raft, Fig. 30. When such a raft is made up, logs of uniform length are placed together, the width of the raft being from sixty to one hundred feet and its length, one thousand feet or more. It may contain ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... your 'Robinson Crusoe' and your 'Swiss Family Robinson' and you will know. We must make a kind of raft, so that we can go back and forth to the houseboat without getting wet every time we ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... it," said Mulroy. "I see something like a man lying on it, but whether he is dead or alive I cannot say. There is a flag, undoubtedly—but no one waves a handkerchief or a rag of any kind. Surely, if a living being occupied the raft he would have seen the ship by this time. Stay, he moves! No; it must have been imagination. I fear that he is dead, poor fellow. Stand by to ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the yellow eyes!" whispered Bob, beginning to bring his gun-stock nearer to his shoulder. "Say, there's a whole raft of 'em, Frank!" ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... the sedge-crowned God ascends From his verdant spring to light, And his raft's direction bends At the goddess' word of might,— While the hours, all gently bound, Nimbly to their duty fly; Rugged trunks are fashioned round By her ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... report, that he picked up Wyckliffe and four men off a raft, about six hours from Hobart. The rescued reported they had been capsized while trying ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... twelve o'clock, he and Johnnie Jones, dressed in their bathing suits, went in the water. The little boy considered bathing great fun as long as he remained close to shore where the water was shallow but he did not like it so well when Father carried him out to the raft, where the water was so deep that it reached the shoulders of the grown ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... crossing of the Brigade was a long job, and had to be carefully worked out. The raft held sixty men at a time, or thirty men and three horses; but as horses on a raft in the dead of night were likely to cause a fuss, we left them behind, to follow on in the morning, and crossed without them,—four and a half hours it took; and whilst the men were crossing we tried to ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... is said to have originated in the cele- brated French painting by Gericault, "the Wreck of the Medusa," now in the Louvre gallery. The Medusa was a French frigate wrecked off the coast of Africa in 1816. Some of the survivors, escaping on a raft, were rescued by a passing ship after many days of torture. Verne, however, seems also to have drawn upon the terrifying experiences of the British ship Sarah Sands in 1857, her story being fresh in the public mind at the time ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... knew of nothing. Gaspard offered to take Veronique on his back and swim with her to a place of safety. Pierre suggested a raft. Cyprien ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... be the first to point out to Orion, from Philip's point of view, that life was a post, a duty; and then, if his heart seemed opened to this admonition, then—but no, this must be all that could pass between them—then all must be at an end, extinct, dead, like the fires in a sunken raft, like a soap-bubble that the wind has burst, like an echo that has died away—all over and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not, undoubtedly Society is an old criminal: not much more advanced than the state of spiritual worship where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has a case for pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the bumping lumberer's raft; suitable along torrent waters until we come to smoother. Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting level?—enough to justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If Society is to subsist, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 1916, two days after the Hampshire went down, eleven men of the cruiser reached the Orkneys, after forty-eight hours buffeting by the waves upon a raft. The body of Colonel Fitzgerald was washed ashore the same day of the sinking, but the sea did not give up Kitchener or any of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... all cut away. The vessel was now little better than a raft, and was drifting at the mercy of the ocean currents. For my part I did not much care. I had no desire to go to Manilla or any where else; and the love of life which is usually so strong did not exist. I should have preferred to have been killed or drowned at once. Instead ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... ordered rafts to be constructed for the transporting of his men. When the vessels reached the canals, they were submerged, and the waters, swirling round and round as though driven by mill wheels, swept away two hundred men, twenty from each raft. On the third day they set about assaulting the city from the side on which the snakes and scorpions swarmed, but they failed to reach it, and the reptiles killed one hundred and seventy men. The king desisted from attacking the city, but for the space of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... raft, with its four prisoners, was driving faster now, caught by the swifter water. It was nearing ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... 'and there is none other: at the lower end the rocks rise sheer from out the water, and a little further down is a great force thundering betwixt them; so that by no boat or raft may ye come out of the Dale. But the outgate up the water is called the Road of War, as this is named the Path of Peace. But now are all ways ways ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... you to do so, the problem might not seem so hard, for there are not so many islands shown. The difficulty is that few maps show all of them, and even on the best of navigating maps there may be one or two that are not charted. The shipwrecked ones, providing they lived to get off on a life raft, or in a boat, might as likely have been driven to one of these little islands, ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... right here, Colonel. We ain't got what I wished; but we've taken 'em from friend and foe, and here comes the last of my boys with Major Skeene's big raft and, if I ain't mighty mistaken, with a bag o' charcoal aboard that must ha' ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... it does not kill, for he dared not kill him because of his station, deprives him who takes it of his reason, sometimes for ever and sometimes for a year or more. After this, said Kari, he remembered little or nothing, save long travellings in boats and through forests, and then again upon a raft or boat on which he was driven alone, for many, many days, drinking a jar of water which he had with him, and eating some dried flesh and with it a marvellous drug of his people, some of which remained to him in the leathern bag that has power ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current was, and keep ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... again burst out upon us. All we could do, therefore, was to continue going ahead as fast as possible. How thankful we felt that Marian had been sent on before us; for had we been compelled to tow or push the raft, our progress must of necessity have been much slower. We, of course, kept anxiously looking out for her and our father and Arthur, expecting every moment to come upon them; but we had not calculated sufficiently ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... as a drowning man might grasp at a good substantial raft that should come floating down ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... in progress. At first he was successful, but one day, while the men were busy laying their bricks in cement one of them drove into the roof, and a deluge of water burst in on them, and although they tried to continue their work on a raft the water prevailed and at last drove them out. They escaped with difficulty up one of the air-shafts. The water having put an effectual stop to the work, the directors felt disposed to give it up, but Stephenson begged for a ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the speech must be left to the reader, for with the last word some weighty solid crashed against the raft until it trembled throughout. Demedes stopped. Involuntarily his hand sought the dagger; and the action was a confession of surprise. An interval of quiet ensued; then came a trial of the lock—at first, gentle—another, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... you might say. It was at the Three Forks that Colter and Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles over the stones and cactus—till at last he killed his nearest pursuer with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... who arrived at the moment the first boatload from the camp reached the opposite bank of the Murray. By means of casks we floated the drays over the three rivers and, after two experiments with a raft, both partial failures, and while a third raft was in progress, of a more solid and better construction, we discovered that a canoe, of very large dimensions and paddled by the native boy Tommy, would prove the most expeditious as well as a safe ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... The captain of a small steamer running between Iquitos and Para, told me that on the preceding trip he had carried to a doctor a boy who had lost his arm from the bite of an alligator, while allowing his arm to hang in the water from a raft. The same captain, however, also informed me that he had been treed by one of these animals and compelled to remain "up a tree" for some time; so that I have some hesitation in quoting him as an authority upon the nature and habits of these alligators. The flesh of young alligators ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... child is sublimely made a sacred charge. He is pushed, on a little raft, across broad rivers by the swimming sailors; they carry him by turns through the deep sand and long grass (he patiently walking at all other times); they share with him such putrid fish as they find to eat; they lie down and wait for him when the rough carpenter, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... work of unloading the wreck. There was an inlet or mouth of a creek not far from the place where they first landed, and, constructing a raft on the wreck and loading it with arms, provisions, ammunition and tools, they took advantage of the tide to float it in to shore. This was repeated daily for weeks. Clothing, sails, provisions of all kinds, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... brilliant butterflies, among them a very large metallic green and black species (Ornithoptera priamus) and a large one of a bright blue (Papilio ulyses). The same afternoon we three went out shooting on the lake. Two of the Agai Ambu canoes were lashed together and a raft of split bamboo put across them, and two Agai Ambu men punted and paddled us about. Before starting we had first educated them up to the report of our guns, and after a few shots they soon got over ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... impatient shrug. He had forgotten his work while he thought about the girl, and there was much to be done. For one thing, he had come up to see if the smith had tempered some boring tools; and then he must send the Metis river-jacks to float a raft of props down to the mine. Pulling himself together, he set about the work with characteristic energy, but as he walked through the murmuring woods he unconsciously began to sing a romantic ballad he had learned ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... Blair's Chronology; that settles it. Adam and Eve, created Friday, October 28th, B. C. 4004. You've been in a ship for a good while, and here comes Mr. Darwin on deck with an armful of sticks and says, "Let's build a raft, and trust ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... transition between the earth and the sea. Another calls it "an immense surface of earth floating on the water." Others speak of it as an annex of the old continent, the China of Europe, the end of the earth and the beginning of the ocean—a huge raft of mud and sand; and Philip II. called it "the country ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... the current, with proper formalities shouted By the hoarse-throated stern-wheeler that pushed the black barges before her, And as she passed us poured a foamy cascade from her paddles. Then, as a raft of logs, which the spread of the barges had hidden, River-wide, weltered in sight, with a sudden jump forward the pilot Dropped his whole weight on the spokes of the wheel just in ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... if we have any real Christianity in us. The old Christ that we trusted at first was able to do for us all that we asked Him to do, but we did not ask Him at first for half enough, and we did not learn at first a tithe of what was in Him. Suppose, for instance, some great ship comes alongside a raft with ship-wrecked sailors upon it, and in the darkness of the night transfers them to the security of its deck. They know how safe they are, they know what has saved them, but what do they know compared with what they will know before the voyage ends of all the reservoirs of power ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Mines. Already men were at work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one of ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... solved the mystery. It was a rudely built raft with a stool upon it, and upon the stool sat a ragged urchin ten ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... my gun with me, as well as some provisions, which, of course, I did not wish to wet; and so I had to consider how I could get them over dry. A raft was the only means, but I reflected that it might prove somewhat difficult to tow. Still, I did not like to be beat, so I made signs to Jerry what I was going to do. With a hatchet which I carried in my belt, and with which I had provided myself to make an arbour for ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... granite buildings would have stifled him; and the zealous Adamses and the high-minded Quincys and Sewalls and all the rest would have bored him horribly. Probably the only item in the whole history of Quincy which would have appealed to Wampatuck in the least would have been the floating down on a raft of the old Hollis Street Church of Boston, to become the Union Church of Weymouth and Braintree in 1810. This and the similar transportation of the Bowditch house from Beacon Street in Boston to Quincy a couple of years later would have fascinated the red man, as ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... refused to hear Stallo. They had betrayed little interest in Crookes. At last their universe had been wrecked by rays, and Karl Pearson undertook to cut the wreck loose with an axe, leaving science adrift on a sensual raft in the midst of a supersensual chaos. The confusion seemed, to a mere passenger, worse than that of 1600 when the astronomers upset the world; it resembled rather the convulsion of 310 when the Civitas Dei cut itself loose from the Civitas Romae, and the Cross ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... hand at theorizing than in any necessity to ventilate some previous drifts from the beginning to the end of his book. You never feel yourself in a compact, water-tight boat, obedient to rudder and sail, but at most on a raft, drifting at the absolute gre of the tides, in a certain general direction, no doubt, but with no foresight of the specific intellectual port at which you are to bring up. Occasionally the mist condenses, the rain patters down, you catch a glimpse of far-off mountaintops, and suppose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... in unhappiness, called aloud for solitude. He must struggle alone through his deep waters: waters of the soul, wherein float neither life-preserver nor raft, rope or even light; neither coral reef nor oozy grave, for such as he. Darkness and struggle alike lasted till the end of his strength; but, with exhaustion and the coming of dawn, came at last one mighty breaker, by which Ivan was thrown high upon the strand ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... way to Trenton or to Philadelphia. In some places the speed is very great, almost equaling that of an express train. The passage of such places as Cochecton Falls and "Foul Rift" is attended with no little danger. The raft is guided by two immense oars, one before and one behind. I frequently saw these huge implements in the driftwood alongshore, suggesting some colossal race of men. The raftsmen have names of their own. From the upper ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... begun upon the construction of a raft, and was not in a home-going mood. Thus encouraged by his young friend the man who mended the boats sat ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... MODE OF CAPTURING DUCKS.—On the American rivers, the modes of capture are various. Sometimes half a dozen artificial birds are fastened to a little raft, and which is so weighted that the sham birds squat naturally on the water. This is quite sufficient to attract the notice of a passing flock, who descend to cultivate the acquaintance of the isolated few when the concealed hunter, with his fowling-piece, scatters a ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the other world existeth. Doubt not, O Krishna, the ancient religion that is practised by the good and framed by Rishis of universal knowledge and capable of seeing all things! O daughter of Drupada, religion is the only raft for those desirous of going to heaven, like a ship to merchants desirous of crossing the ocean. O thou faultless one, if the virtues that are practised by the virtuous had no fruits, this universe then would be enveloped in infamous darkness. No one then would ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... perfect trap," said Meta, trying to squeeze the muddy water from her own dress and Monica's. "I believe it's nothing but a kind of raft, made out of all the dead wood and rubbish that have accumulated in the lake. I expect seeds have blown on to it, and then trees and bushes have sprung up. Now I think of it, I don't believe it was in the same place last year, so it must be able to float. We shall have ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... carried out. The wanderers then make a raft on which they embark on a river which plunges into a cavern in the heart of a mountain; and after a time they emerge in the country of Arimaspia inhabited by the Cyclopes; and so on. The Gryphon story also appears in the romance of Huon de Bordeaux, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a sextant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we paddled ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... of the waters naught Was seen but here and there unfrequently A frail raft, heaped with languid men that fought Weakly with one another for the grass Hanging about a cliff not yet submerged, And here and there a drowned man's head, and here And there a file of birds, that beat the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... time, all was in readiness for a new start, and luckily provisions from the reductions on the Parana arrived. So they embarked again, and on the journey a raft in which a woman and two children were sitting upset, to Montoya's agony, as he knew that 'in that river there are fish that the people call culebras,* which have been seen to swallow men entire, and throw them out again with all their bones broken as if it had been done with ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... halted at the village of Sab. We here crossed the great river Sab by means of rafts, the mode of constructing which is certainly very ancient. They consist of leathern bottles, filled with air, fastened together with poles, and covered with planks, reeds, and rushes. Our raft had twenty-eight wind-bags, was seven feet broad, nearly as long, and carried two horse-loads and six men. As our caravan numbered thirty-two loaded animals, the crossing of the river occupied half a day. Four or five ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... moment on the site of the ship-yard from which, in March, 1862, twenty-one years ago, went forth the unmasted and raft-like "Monitor," with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its guarded mechanism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving turret, to that near battle with the "Merrimac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the destiny ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... to buy the turkey—the biggest gobbler he can get, he told me—for Mrs. Judy has a raft of young ones, 'all av thim wid appetites like a famine in ould Ireland,' he ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... and gathering wood and planks from the wrecks, wrought of them the semblance of a boat [to wit, a raft,] and bound it fast with ropes, saying, 'I will embark thereon and fare with this water into the inward of the mountain. If it bring me to the mainland or to a place where I may find relief and safety, [well and good]; else I shall [but] perish, even as my companions have perished.' ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... crossing the banks of the Ba-Woolima, a narrow, rapid, and deep river, which was then much swollen by the rains, They first endeavoured to throw across trunks of trees, but these were carried away by the stream. They next attempted a raft; but after the logs had been cut, the sick people were not able to drag them to the water side. But the negroes who were with them constructed a bridge in the most ingenious manner. It was formed of two ranges of a number of upright forked ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... ripped the cover from the coop, and the poor chickens were fluttering away in every direction, being blown by the wind until they looked like feather dusters without handles. The bottom of the coop was made of thick boards, so Dorothy found she was clinging to a sort of raft, with sides of slats, which readily bore up her weight. After coughing the water out of her throat and getting her breath again, she managed to climb over the slats and stand upon the firm wooden bottom of the coop, which supported ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... more than the sigh of a stray breeze, came from a point far up the stream. He listened and the sound pleased him. The lone, weird note was in full accord with the night and his mood, and presently he knew it. It was some mountaineer on a raft singing a plaintive song of his own distant hills. Huge rafts launched on the headwaters of the stream in the mountains in the eastern part of the state came in great numbers down the river, but oftenest at this time of the year. Some stopped at Frankfort, and others went into the Ohio for the cities ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cruelties by an overseer to a slave, that he twice attempted to drown himself, to get out of his power: this was on a raft of slaves, in the Mobile river. I saw an owner take his runaway slave, tie a rope round him, then get on his horse, give the slave and horse a cut the whip, and run the poor creature barefooted, very fast, over ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... less than three hundred yards away. He recognized it as a life raft. Now his spin brought him around to face it, and he saw it was parallelling his course. The ejection of the life raft must have caused the thump he'd heard before ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... salambao is a raft of reeds or bamboo; on which is erected an apparatus not unlike the mast and yard of a square-rigged ship. To one end of the yard is attached a net which may be raised from and lowered into the water. This contrivance is called by the natives timba. See full description of the salambao, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... Others seem to exist by the continuance of that first faith alone—a sheer optimism that keeps the courage alive and keen enough to seize hold of the slightest driftwood of opportunity, binding this flotsam into a raft that takes them triumphantly out on the high tide. For all the long drag, the anxiety, the physical strain, the harassment, failure in itself seemed as inherently impossible to Justin as that he should ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... called "the day of the poor." The goemon grows on rocks at a distance from the shore, and the peasants not having sufficient boats to collect it tie the heaps together with cords on to branches of trees and form a raft, on which the whole family is launched; a barrel is attached at the end, and the unsteady craft often rolls over and its cargo is precipitated into the water. The fine sands of the sea shore are also carted and laid on the heavy lands ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... point of my argument! A raft was found moored between four of the great pillars in the cistern, and there was a structure on it with furnished rooms. A small boat was used for ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... ship, and found that her stern lay lifted up on the bank. All the ship's provisions were dry, and, being well disposed to eat, I filled my pockets and ate as I went about other things, for I had no time to lose. We had several spare yards and planks, and with these I made a raft. I emptied three of the seamen's chests, and let them down upon the raft, and filled them with provisions. I also let down the carpenter's chest, and some arms and ammunition—all of which, after much labour, I got ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... lined up on the different decks saw life preservers floating by empty, a boat with its keel in the air, and bits of wood belonging to a raft evidently constructed in ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... printing. He was asked if there were any marks made on the rocks in any part of the country, and this led to his story. Lukerenga came from the west a long time ago to the River Lualaba. He had with him a little dog. When he wanted to pass over he threw his mat on the water, and this served as a raft, and they crossed the stream. When he reached the other side there were rocks at the landing place, and the mark is still to be seen on the stone, not only of his foot, but of a stick which he cut with his hatchet, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... descent, we had to construct new rafts at the different waterfalls. Sometimes we were carried down the rapids at the rate of ten miles an hour, or more, with considerable risk of destruction to the whole party, for we were always together on one raft." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... dried out, the cane assumes a permanent yellow colour; but if any is left, the cane darkens when soaked in water. When a large number of bundles has been collected, they are bound together to form a raft. On this a hut is erected, and two or three men will navigate the raft down river to the Chinese bazaar, which is to be found in the lower ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... been brought willfully to destruction; Kolina kneeled, crossed herself, and prayed; while Ivan deeply reproached himself as the cause of so many human beings encountering such awful peril. The rockings of their icy raft were terrible. It was impelled hither and thither by even huger masses. Now it remained on its first level, then its surface presented an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and it seemed about to turn bottom up. All recommended themselves to God, and awaited their fate. Suddenly ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... to Pelley River and found Marten very thick, so we concluded to trap there the next winter. We left our outfit here and began the journey down to Dawson, we had to shoot the far famed Whitehorse rapids. there are seven of them and they are about 3 miles long, and run like lightling, we boarded a raft were cut loose by a half breed Mucklock and away we went almost a mile a minute riding on the crest of the rapid rooling river. Here after the passing of the rapids we first met Swift water bill. so ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... "We made a raft and crossed the river, but the enemy's matchlock men peppered us so severely that we lost thirty English and fifty Sepoys in getting over. The enemy's entrenchment was not finished, but in front of it was a deep rivulet, which had ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... through various parts of the vast northern woods, between Maine and Alaska, and covered thousands upon thousands of miles by canoe, pack-train, snowshoes, bateau, dog-train, buck-board, timber-raft, prairie-schooner, lumber-wagon, and "alligator." No one trip ever satisfied me, or afforded me the knowledge or the experience I sought, for traversing a single section of the forest was not unlike making one's way along a single street of a metropolis and then trying to persuade oneself that ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... an hour, without seeming to take any farther notice of us. We were more curious than they, and observing them with our glasses from on board the ship, we saw some of them cross the river upon a kind of raft, or catamarine, and four of them carry off the dead body which had been covered by the boy, and over which his uncle had performed the ceremony of the branch, upon a kind of bier, between four men: The other body was still suffered to remain where ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... W. Marsh arrived at Mosul on the 20th of March, 1850, going by way of Beirut, Aleppo, Aintab, Oorfa, and Diarbekir; from this last place he floated down the Tigris on a raft supported by inflated goat-skins, in less than four days to his new home. He describes the river as breaking through between bold precipices, and scenery delightfully and unexpectedly romantic. Mr. Schneider was his travelling companion from Aintab to Diarbekir, and ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... one's friends, one's loved ones, yea, even one's would-be enemies is equivalent to leaving one's companions on a sinking raft and, without sentiment or remorse, save one's physical ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... spot which he had at first deemed totally uninhabited, and filled with the hope that the stranger might be able to give him some information relative to the geographical position of the isle, and even perhaps aid him in forming a raft by which they might together escape from the oasis of the Mediterranean, Wagner proceeded toward the mountains. By degrees the wondrous beauty of the scene became wilder, more imposing, but less bewitching, and when he reached the acclivities ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... with a large lumber raft this morning, descending from Pittsburg to Cincinnati. The half-dozen men in charge were housed midway in a rude little shanty, and relieved each other at the sweeps—two at bow, and two astern. It is an easy, lounging life, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... Thomas, commander of the gun crew on the oil-ship Vacuum. When the ship was sunk he cheered his freezing men tossing on an icy sea in an open boat far from land, until he at length perished, his last words those of encouragement. There is Lieutenant S.F. Kalk, who swam from raft to raft encouraging and directing the survivors of the destroyer Jacob Jones after a torpedo had sent that vessel to the bottom. There are those two gunners on the transport Antilles who stood serving their gun until the ship sank and carried ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... from the sides of the mountains, which render it impossible to walk along its banks. To reach the Tinguians, it is necessary to have recourse to a slight skiff, that can easily pass through the current and the most shallow parts. My guide and my lieutenant soon contrived to make a small raft of bamboos; when it was finished we embarked, Alila and myself, our guide refusing to accompany us. After much trouble and fatigue, casting ourselves often into the water to draw our raft along, we at length got clear of the first range ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... red. How often had the traveller seen such a sunset behind the blue summits of those hills before! Flowing yet nearer to him was the noble river Rhine, winding onward to the north, and bearing on its bosom many a little skiff which scudded quickly before the evening breeze, or raft of timber which floated slowly down its stream. How often had the stranger sailed in such little barks upon its surface, or bathed and fished in its waters! At his feet lay the little cluster of cottages which formed the village of Steinheim; and amid its clustering trees ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... took their stations at the four corners, to hold it together, and swim across with it; and in a moment more, all our earthly possessions were floating on the turbid waters of the Big Blue. We sat on the bank, anxiously watching the result, until we saw the raft safe landed in a little cove far down on the opposite bank. The empty wagons were easily passed across; and then each man mounting a horse, we rode through the stream, the stray animals following ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Spanish batteries, dropped her anchors in mid-channel between Churruca Point and Smith Cay, opened her sea connections, exploded a number of torpedoes hung along her sides at the water-line, and when she sank, hung on to a raft attached by a rope to the sunken vessel. They were rescued from this position by the Spaniards and thrown into Morro Castle, but were treated with the consideration and courtesy to which their gallantry entitled them. On the afternoon of the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... horrible task was finished. My next work was to look for the ship's boats, but they were gone, as I expected. I could not bear to remain in the ship; it seemed a vast tomb for me. I resolved to make some sort of raft, and depart in it. This occupied two or three days; at length it was completed, and I succeeded in setting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... landed at seven for breakfast, at the old Indian gardens; at eight went on; at ten reached the first portage, passed it in an hour; went on till one o'clock; afterwards passed two other portages of about three hundred yards each; and went on to the great raft of flood wood, being the fourth portage, where we encamped at three o'clock, at its head. Mosquitoes very annoying. Estimate our distance at ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the present moment the negro was placing in the water a curious-looking little raft that he had brought on one shoulder from its place of concealment. It was something like a flat-bottomed scow, the sides being just high enough to prevent whatever cargo it carried, from ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock |
