"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in full possession of the ship from a little past midnight until eight o'clock of the following evening. One of them, venturing near the skylight, was shot in the breast by the captain, and then the two coolies rushed forward and threw a spar overboard. One of them jumped into the sea and clung to the spar, while the other dropped down into the between-decks, where he proceeded to set the ship on fire. Seeing this, the sailors who had barricaded themselves in the forecastle broke out, and two of them proceeded to hunt the coolie down ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... lips again. He had to spar for time: to divert for a while the vengeance he knew possessed the other's mind, so that he might find ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... your pains Shall be well spar'd, and your deep eloquence Be worthily applauded amongst ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... true, is it, sir? I didn't know but it might turn out to be galley-news. Pray what is the rumpus all about, Admiral Bluewater? for, I never could get that story fidded properly, so as to set up the rigging, and have the spar well ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... said the shoe man. "I had called on him many times. He was such a thoroughbred gentleman and treated me so courteously that I could never press matters upon him. There are merchants, you know, of this kind. I'd really rather have a man spar me with bare 'knucks' than with eight-ounce pillows. This gives you a better chance to land a knock-out blow. But there is a way of getting at every merchant in the world. The thing to do ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... simple torpedo, at the end of an ordinary boat's spar. Then came the special torpedo boat with its great speed, then the revolving cannon and rapid-fire gun to meet the torpedo boat. At present the possible rapidity of fire is much greater than can be utilized, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... naval retreats ever recorded, in which skillful seamanship won the race. There was almost a dead calm. Down went the boats of the Constitution, with long lines attached to them, and strong sweeps were used with desperate energy in towing her. A long cannon was placed at the stern on her spar-deck, and two others were pointed out ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... he labours to bring forward into light. If he can convince you or himself of the principle a priori, he generally leaves the facts to take care of themselves. He leads us into the laboratories of art or nature as a showman guides you through a caravan crusted with spar and stalactites, all cold, and dim, and motionless, till he lifts his torch aloft, and on a sudden you gaze in admiration on walls and roof of flaming crystals and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... 1112. Spar bridges.—This name is applied to bridges built of round timbers lashed together. Intermediate points of support are provided by inclined frames acting as struts to transmit weight from the middle of the bridge to the banks. The single-lock and ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... telling her he was prepared to marry her as soon as she played her harp like King David. The intense folly of his asking a girl to play like David made me despise him, but he was splendidly handsome and strong, and to see him put on the gloves for a spar with big William, Kiomi's brother, and evade and ward the huge blows, would have been a treat to others besides old John of Dipwell Farm. He had the agile grace of a leopard; his waistcoat reminded me of one; he was like a piece of machinery in free action. Pleased by my enthusiasm, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right into those ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... chipper as a mack'rel gull on a spar-buoy, "what's the outlook for to-morrer? The Gov'ment sharp says there's a big storm on the way up from Florida. Is he right, or only an 'also ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... their little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the open door, as it flew back violently on its frail hinges. Antonina changed colour, and shuddered involuntarily, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... projects to the mutineers he left behind, knowing that even if all who were set adrift in the boat had perished, the story of the mutiny would be learned by the first ship that visited Tahiti; a worm-eaten spar lying on the tide-mark, at an island situated directly down-wind from the Society Islands, so far from proving that the Bounty had been there, indicated the exact contrary. But it is to be remembered ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rays of the sun, to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting different kinds of stone into groups of figures, houses, mountains, and sometimes into whole landscapes, they discover more of persevering labour, of a determination to subdue difficulties, which were not worth the subduing, than real ingenuity. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... fight on the spar is the most fun. Two gladiators armed with pillows sit astride a spar and try to knock each other off. It requires a good deal of knack to keep your balance while some one is pounding you with a large pillow. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... and though the flood of light that dyed the water blood-red struck out every rope and spar distinct and clear, his straining eyes could see no living soul aboard. As they came nearer, they could distinguish the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... talent. On Sheen's next visit he was introduced to a burly youth of his own age, very taciturn, and apparently ferocious. He, it seemed, was the knife and boot boy at the "Blue Boar", "did a bit" with the gloves, and was willing to spar with Sheen provided Mr Bevan made it all right with the guv'nor; saw, that is so say, that he did not get into trouble for passing in unprofessional frivolity moments which should have been sacred to knives ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... having lost her mizzenmast, and with twenty of her crew killed and thirty wounded. Sterrett, having no orders to make captures, threw all the guns and ammunition of the Tripoli overboard, cut away her remaining masts, and left her with only one spar and a single sail to drift back to Tripoli, as a hint to the Bashaw of the ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... flew aloft, Ned Davis being among the first drawing out their knives from their pockets as they did so. In a few seconds the ropes were severed, and the mast and spar fell overboard, with the still loudly flapping sail. At the same moment the crew throwing themselves out on the fore-topsail yard, that sail was quickly reefed. "You must take another reef in it, Mr Matson," said the commander, ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... considered together. Thus we see that given an unchangeable crystal with cleavage planes evident, it is possible easily to reproduce the same form over and over again by splitting, whereas by simply breaking, the form of the crystal would be lost; just as a rhomb of Iceland spar might be sawn or broken across the middle and its form lost, although this would really be more apparent than real, since it would be an alteration in the mass and not in the shape of each individual crystal. And given further cleavage, by time or a sudden breaking down, even ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... nothing standing above her lower mastheads; here a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and the crew busy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only too well were the hulls of ships which had ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... office in this enlightened age breaking loose in that manner! It's suicide. He could be arrested for the attempt in this State. Is that strong enough for you? You surely know how I feel now, don't you? Come on, Betty dear! Let's not spar in that foolish way any longer. Remember all I said yesterday. It goes double today—really, I ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... down there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his shipmate came and told her? Here is a little ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... this that lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I sat and lived. I put her before the fire; I heated ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... over his shoulder and found Eudena already vanished into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya preferred to spar in the water below him until the others were beside him. Human tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the tactics of the pack. Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and rushed. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... ways—by reflection, by transmission, but most commonly through what I have here, a prism of calcite, or Iceland spar, commonly called a Nicol prism. Light fully polarized consists of vibrations transverse to the direction of the ray, all in one plane. Ordinary light has transverse vibrations in all planes. Certain substances, due to their molecular structure, are ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly over backwards, and all the contents spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Spar' ta—a town in the southern part of the Peloponnesus, on the Eurotas. It was the chief city of Lacedaemon and the home of Menelaos and Helen. It had no walls, but its acropolis was covered with temples. Ancient Sparta was noted for the bravery of its people. At present Sparta ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... the "unplumbed, salt estranging sea" lies Stephen, the boy Prophet—who even while the tempest was hurling his army to death on the open sea, proved the sincerity of his piety; for clinging to a spar, while drifting to a certain doom, he led his little flock in song and prayer, and even as wave after wave dashed over the deck, above the roar of the tempest could his clear triumphant young ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... stream she dwelt, 'twould seem, Yet stream nor breeze could bar Her little boat, that to a nook, Dark with the pine-tree's spar, Each evening Ronald saw shoot up As constant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... post-chaise. I took the letter to the post myself, for the old man would trust nobody but me, and indeed would have preferred taking it himself; but in winter he was always lame from the effects of a bruise he had received from a falling spar in the battle ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... charge to go with him to the river. The little boy was very timid and refused to embark on a steering oar that Paul found near the shore. A steering oar consists of a plank securely pinned into a spar about thirty feet long and used on stern and bow of a raft to guide it. Paul at last half forcibly seated him on a block of wood on the steering oar and procuring a pole they started on their voyage. All went well until they had passed ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... flying on board the frigate several minutes, and yet no symptoms of any preparation for an answer could be discovered. At length the halyards moved, and then three fair, handsome flags rose to the end of le Feu-Follet's jigger yard, a spar that was always kept aloft in moderate weather. What the signal meant Raoul did not know, for though he was provided with signals by means of which to communicate with the vessels of war of his ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... All around was the sea, tossed into giant waves, curling and breaking about the stranded vessel. He noted the life-like shading of the green and white billows; the ice that covered every shroud and rope and spar; and peering out of a cabin door was a woman holding a babe in her arms. In a way it was a ghastly picture, and one that held his attention ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... Shell hurdles, 120 yards, ten flights. Dig and I were in, and had to beat 191/2 seconds. I felt jolly miserable, I can tell you, at the start, and that ass Dig made it all the worse by fooling about just to show off, and making believe to spar at me, when he was shaking in his shoes all the time; Marky wasn't much better, for he came and said, 'You'll have to run your very best to win it.' As if we didn't know that! He don't deserve a testimonial for doing a thing ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... fortunately for the wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and muttered a ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... a ship of Rio Sailed out into the blue, And nine and ninety monkeys Were all her jovial crew. From bo'sun to the cabin boy, From quarter to caboose, There weren't a stitch of calico To breech 'em - tight or loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... but capable of being shifted from side to side, so that the enemy's marksmen may never know exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be enough to blow a fatal breach ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... first ferocious hail the halyards had been let go by the run, and all our crew had bolted aloft. A few bronzed bandits posted abreast of each mast kept them there by the menace of bell-mouthed blunderbusses pointed upwards. Lumsden and Mercer had been each tied flat down to a spare spar. They presented an appearance too ridiculous to awaken genuine compassion. Major Cowper was made to sit on a hen-coop, and a bearded pirate, with a red handkerchief tied round his head and a cutlass in his hand, stood ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... you talk, as in your latest letter, of the making of yourself. It seems so much more possible than that I could do the same. But I am a miserable groping creature, cast on a sea of doubt, rejecting one spar to grasp another, and crying all the time against the storm, for help. I do not know another man who has tortured himself so insistently with the problems that are unsolvable. You are firmer in your grasp, and when you get something ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... down, every one," shouted Shaddy. "Lower that spar, my lads," he added, in the patois ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... you, my noble prince, With other princes that may best be spar'd, Shall wait upon ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... prophecy. Sicily (sis' i ly). The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Silenus (si le' nus). The foster-father of Bacchus. Sleipnir (slap' ner). The swift eight-legged horse of Odin. Sonmus (som' nus). The king of sleep. Sparta (spar' ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... The Captain attempted to spar with her a little longer. Winnington meanwhile stood, a silent listener, amid the group round the tea-table. He—and Dr. France—were both acutely conscious of the realities behind this empty talk; of the facts recorded in the day's newspapers; and of the connection ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and far (Spectral sail and ghostly spar) Through the mist-banks a vessel glides Biding the ridge of the ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... this spar would entail danger of a crash, or having their landing-gear torn away, which would prove a disaster. Consequently Jack held himself in readiness to once more start his engine when sufficiently near the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... killed and wounded was very evenly distributed throughout the fleet. Only the rear ship lost an important spar,—the main topmast. It was upon her, as already mentioned, and upon the two leading ships, the Exeter and Isis, that fell the heaviest fire, proportionately, of the French. From the position of the seven van ships of the ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... avenue we had left, we passed a number of stalactites and stalagmites, bearing a remarkable resemblance to coral, and a hundred or more paces beyond, arrived at a recess on the left, lined with innumerable crystals of dog-tooth spar, shining most brilliantly, called Angelica's Grotto. One would think it almost sacrilege to deface a spot like this; yet, did a Clergyman (the back of the guide being turned,) deliberately demolish a ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... to get the fish on board? Nothing easier, since the little "Swallow" could run along so nicely under the stern of the great steamer, while a large basket was swung out at the end of a long, slender spar, with a pulley to lower and raise it. Even the boys from Long Island were astonished at the number and size of the prime, freshly caught blue-fish to which they were treating the passengers of the "Prudhomme," and the basket had to come and go again ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... dear Lady Kicklebury! [To T., who has come forward.] They spar so every night they meet, Touchit. ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... were flickering out, in favour of the calm blue of a summer night. He was still by the river-side. Turning suddenly, he met a man, so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped back, to avoid a collision. The man carried something over his shoulder which might have been a broken oar, or spar, or bar, and took no notice of him, but ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... except the towing torpedo of the boat in front of us in the line fouled a submerged spar, or a bit of wreckage, and exploded right under our bow. 'If we had been a few yards closer we would never have been ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... the two last especially, you find 'em exactly as they are describ'd by Plutarch, from whom certainly Shakespear copy'd 'em. He has indeed follow'd his original pretty close, and taken in several little incidents that might have been spar'd in a Play. But, as I hinted before, his design seems most commonly rather to describe those great men in the several fortunes and accidents of their lives, than to take any single great action, and ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... hurricane swept over the deep: it passed, but not a spar remained to the dismantled bark. The tapering masts, the long graceful yards were gone, the cordage having snapped at every point where its support was needed—snapped by the fury of the tempest, as if wantonly cut by a sharp knife. The boats—the crew's ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the down-haul over the windlass, and jumped between the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while we got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off of the boom. For some time we could do nothing but hold on, and the vessel diving into two huge seas, one after the other, plunged us twice ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst of light, struck the ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their breadth in the middle about half an inch, but pointed at both ends. The upper surface of ice having this structure sometimes looks like greenish velvet; a vertical section of it, which frequently occurs at the margin of floes, resembles, while it remains compact, the most beautiful satin-spar, and asbestos when falling to pieces. At this early part of the season, this kind of ice afforded pretty firm footing; but, as the summer advanced, the needles became more loose and moveable, rendering it extremely fatiguing to walk over them, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... space she could see the folk busy on the beach below like a swarm of small black insects, and continually augmented by those who, having run off to snatch their Christmas dinner, were returning to the spoil. Some lined the edge of the breakers, waiting the moment to rush in for a cask or spar that the tide brought within reach; others (among whom she seemed to descry Young Zeb) were clambering out with grapnels along the western rocks; a third large group was gathered in the very centre of the beach, and from the midst of these a blue wreath of smoke began ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... aloft to secure it. So great was the fury of the tempest that in an instant the well-worn sail was torn into ribbons, and great pieces of it were blown away, like little white clouds played upon by the lightning. Worse than this, two of the men on the topsail-yard were wrenched from their hold on the spar, and hurled into the darkness beneath them, one falling into foaming waters, and the other striking senseless upon ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... boxing and immediately on her arrival hunted up the butler to spar with him, being ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... had been unshipped, and attempted to be laid between the ship's side and some of the rocks, but without success, for it snapped assunder before it reached them. However, by the light of a lanthorn which a seaman handed through a sky-light of the round-house to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered a spar which appeared to be laid from the ship's side to the rocks, and on this spar he resolved to attempt ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... cried the sailor, "have a care; you should keep a brighter look-out. You've run me down, and might have carried away a spar ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... Horrible! Till now all hearts were with you: I withdraw For one. Too horrible! But we mistake Your purpose, Pym: you cannot snatch away The last spar from ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... daughter, "you'se my moder an' I ought ter be de fust one ter help ease you up. I just dun declar dat you'se got ter take Vilet ter help you up. I kin spar her, an' I will spar her. She's strong an' gwine on twelve, an' de babies is gitten so dat dey ain't aroun' under my feet all de time. Vilet's spry an' kin run here an' dar an' fill de orders. She'd ease you up ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... and keep his spar clear," cried our captain. "Squirt away, Neb, and let us see what you ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Lucilius spar'd neither the Small nor the Great, and often from the Nobles and the Patricians he stoop'd to the Lees ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... plane and has a bit of the God in him, though the hero may have feet of clay and body of beast. Such were the old Vikings of the North, who spent their lives in elemental warfare, and rode out to meet death in tempest, lashed to the spar of their craft. And such, too, were the New World Vikings of the Pacific, who coasted the seas of two continents in cockle-shell ships,—planks lashed with deer thongs, calked with moss,—rapacious in their deep-sea plunderings as beasts of prey, fearless as the very spirit ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... ravine, with huge piles of gray rock jutting out more and more, till they nearly meet at top. Looking upward, through this narrow aperture, you see, high, high above you, a vaulted roof of black rock, studded with brilliant spar, like constellations in the sky, seen at midnight, from the deep clefts of a mountain. This is called the Star Chamber. It makes one think of Schiller's grand description of William Tell sternly waiting for Gessler, among the shadows of the Alps, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Pendency. — N. pendency[obs3], dependency; suspension, hanging &c. v.; pedicel, pedicle, peduncle; tail, train, flap, skirt, pigtail, pony tail, pendulum; hangnail peg, knob, button, hook, nail, stud, ring, staple, tenterhook;; fastening &c. 45; spar, horse. V. be pendent &c. adj.; hang, depend, swing, dangle; swag; daggle[obs3], flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c. v.; beetling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 137.37 [O16]), one of the metallic chemical elements included in the group of the alkaline earths. It takes its name from the Greek [Greek: barus] (heavy) on account of its presence in barytes or heavy spar which was first investigated in 1602 by V. Casciorolus, a shoemaker of Bologna, who found that after ignition with combustible substances it became phosphorescent, and on this account it was frequently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock; The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Carleton to put the extensive fortifications of Quebec in a state of repair at a time when there was not a single article of material in store with which to perform such an undertaking....My first object was to secure stout spar timber for palisading a great extent of open ground between the gates called Palace and Hope, and again from half-bastion of Cape Diamond along the brow of the cliff towards Castle St. Lewis. I began at Palace Gate, palisading with loopholes for musketry, and made a projection ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the sultry sky of July with a hot and vaporous stillness. The whole air was full of blue haze, that softened the outlines of objects without hiding them. The sea lay like so much glass; every ship and boat was double; every line and rope and spar had its counterpart; and it seemed hard to say which was the more real, the under or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... is to get on board the boat in which they are to be placed—you might find out which it is from your friend in prison—hide down in the hold until the guards leave her; then join them; and when she sinks fasten them to a spar and drift down the river with them till out of sight of the town, when Pierre could row ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... 'Viking' had been wrecked between Iceland and Newfoundland the numerous vessels that follow the same route to reach Europe would certainly have seen some trace of the disaster. But no, not a single floating plank or spar did they meet on the whole of this route, which is so much frequented at the conclusion of the fishing season. Still, we must take measures to secure information of a more positive nature. If we receive no further news of the 'Viking' ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... each other if they could be brought together, sheeted, in many places, with a glittering, calcareous deposit, and gradually approaching each other overhead—imagine this, and you will have an idea of the Blue John mine, into which we descended. The fluor-spar taken from this mine is of a rich blue color, and is wrought into vases and cups, which were ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... himself on many fields and survived the war. While making a voyage on the steamer Vera Cruz he was shipwrecked off the Florida coast, August 29, 1880. He heroically aided others to escape death, and with almost superhuman exertion kept himself afloat on a broken spar for twenty hours, and thus reached shore, only to sink ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... poured in broadside after broadside, double-shotted with round and grape; and without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Hull, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... rubies of yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there's enough of in you, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... till house lights glinting behind the blinds and hurrying figures of a 'night-shift' show that we are near the river and the docks. A turn along the waterside, the dim outlines of the ships and tracery of mast and spar looming large and fantastic in the darkness, and the driver, questioning, brings up at a dim-lit shed, bare of goods and cargo—the berth of a full-laden outward-bounder. My barque—the Florence, of Glasgow—lies in a corner ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... you had come back to Widow Rippet's, for ye would hae spar't me a hard ride. Scarcely had ye ta'en the road when my Lord mindit that he had neglekit to gie you the sign, by the which ye were to make yoursel and message kent to his friends, and I was sent ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... second I saw the mass of spar all tangled up with sail rise up on a wave as it drifted past. I found myself wondering why we had all been in the shadow of death only a couple of minutes before. There was no thought of danger now. I ran below for the balsam, which I found ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... from Cochin in India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, the hugeness of the whole is apparent, and far beyond the mould ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... doing nothing to help himself. Presently the boat was thrown up on the shore, and the fishermen ran down and collected in a little crowd round it. Looking down at the helpless man, still clinging to a spar and drenched with foam and sea-water, they soon saw he was not one of their people. "A Dane, a Dane!" they murmured with sullen hate. Then one who had served in St. Edmund's army suddenly gave a wild exclamation. "By Heaven," he said, "it's Lothparch!" Lothparch was ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... 1642. The rock is of trap, greenstone, or whinstone, which miners call iron-stone and Cornishmen 'blue elvan:' this diorite, composed of felspar and the hardest hornblende, contains granular iron and pyrites like silver. Some specimens are beautifully banded in onyx-fashion and revetted with 'spar' (quartz) of many colours, dead-white and crystalline, red and yellow. We find the same trap on the mainland. Near the smaller Akinim or Salt-pond village there is a mass threaded with quartz-veins from north to south (1 30'), bossed by granite dykes [Footnote: It is ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... capsized her. Brock being a good swimmer, struck out to get clear of his companions, his ears assailed by their cries, mingled with the hissing of water and the howling of the storm. After a moment or so he swam back to help an old man to get hold of a spar; he then himself got on the boat, and stood upon its side; but finding that she was gradually settling down, he again struck off. By this time he supposed that all his companions were lost; and he began to think of the awful position ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... amongst broken oars, and tangled rigging and floating bottom-boards; one voice less, two less, a smashing sea and then no voices at all, no boat, no men, no anything but the howling wind and the driving spray, and he himself, Logotheti, gripping a spar, one of those long booms the fishermen carry for running, half-drowned again and again, but gripping still, and drifting with the storm past the awful death of sharp black rocks and pounding seas, into the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted taffrail. Her eyes were travelling ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was in these cases what looked, Sir Henry said, exactly like ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harboured to the last, And just as Herve Riel hollas 'Anchor!'—sure as fate Up the English ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... three in the afternoon; when Le Genereux, with a light breeze, passed the Leander's bows, and brought itself on the starboard side, where the guns had been all nearly disabled by the wreck of the spar, which had fallen on that side. This necessarily producing a cessation of the Leander's fire, the enemy hailed, to know if the ship had surrendered. Being now a complete wreck; the decks covered with killed and wounded; ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour. And I when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him Who once beside ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... exact bearings of the point at which the boats had disappeared, and during the night, which turned out gusty and threatening, kept making short tacks, while lanterns were hung at the mast-heads, and a huge torch, or rather a small bonfire, of tarred materials was slung at the end of a spar and thrust out over the stern of the ship. But for many hours there was no sign of the boats, and the crew of the Dolphin began to entertain the most ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a floating spar of an idea swept my way and I seized upon it as the last hope of ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... first one formed. After a little practice you can tie this knot almost instantly and by merely throwing a couple of turns around a post, two half-hitches may be formed instantly. This knot will hold forever without loosening, and even on a smooth, round stick or spar it will stand an enormous strain without slipping. A more secure knot for this same purpose is the "Clove Hitch" (Fig. 36), sometimes known as the "Builders' Hitch." To make this, pass the end of rope around the spar or timber, then over itself; ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... a couple of sailors began to haul at the rope run through the block; it tightened, and with a cheery "Yo-ho!" they ran up what seemed to be the dead body of a big negro, whose head and arms hung down inert as he was hoisted on high; the spar to which the block was fastened swung round, the rope slackened, and the poor wretch plumped down on the deck, to lie motionless all of ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... barite is a heavy white sulphate of barium, frequently called "barytes" or "heavy spar." Witherite, the barium carbonate, is a much rarer mineral but is found with barite ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... about. Quick, lower the sail down, there is not a moment to lose. No, wait until I bring her up head to the wind. Now, then, down with it. Now unstep the mast, lash that and the boom, the other sail, and its spar together; that is the way." And with their joint efforts the work was accomplished in a couple of minutes. "Now, then, fasten this rope to your end, Luka; I will tie the other end to mine. That is right. It is long enough ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... at some of us carrying away a spar before long," he said. "The wind is freshening, and we shall have to shift topsails and ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 'How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold! Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... roughly trimmed these giant oars, with the help of an assistant, who in the meantime seemed to have no other duty except to puff his charred black pipe, the old "Baptiste" balanced the piece of timber on a rock. Carefully testing the spar, in order to get the exact point of equilibrium, the oar maker then made a rectangular hole through the six inches of ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... little spar between Ponny and 'Pater' Evans. Ponny lets fly with great vigour: 'Punch is standing still now; used to take the lead, but no longer dares to do so. Avancons!' waving hand excitedly. Pater calmly answers that the times are altered, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... want bucking. It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You know—eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going to spar three rounds with our boy from the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... other, anxious to display his familiarity with the technicalities of her profession. "'E wouldn't take 'is turn to be attended to aboard of us—we was in a Destroyer, an' picked 'im up 'angin' on to a spar. Would 'ave the doctor fix up a German prisoner wot was bleedin' to death. Said 'e wasn't in no particular 'urry, speakin' for 'isself. An' 'im a-bleedin' to death, too. As fine a gentleman ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... each other and at the schooner. One man had been washed overboard; another, struck by a falling spar, still lay insensible; the rest were weary and exhausted. Thanks to the skipper's foresight, the Aguila had suffered less than we had expected, and he exclaimed cheerfully that the damage could soon be repaired. But though our good ship remained sound, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... when we came to a dead stop, struck with awe at the grand sight that met our view. The walls and roof of the cave were lit up, as it were, with star-like gems, while some hung down like glass drops from the roof, and some rose up from the ground at its sides like blocks of spar. I broke off a piece and put it on ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... English boats were plying busily about, picking up those who had leapt overboard in time. Some were dragged in through the lower portholes of the English ships, and about seventy were saved altogether. For one moment a boat's crew had a sight of a helpless figure bound to a spar, and guided by a little childish swimmer, who must have gone overboard with his precious freight just before the explosion. They rowed after the brave little fellow, earnestly desiring to save him; but in darkness, in smoke, in lurid uncertain light, amid hosts ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time thou dwelt below, On in a course to heaven didst go. Not casten down with doubts and fears, Assured of heaven near thirty years. Labour thou didst in Christ's vineyard; Diligent wast, no time thou spar'd. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... so lass dich treulich warnen, O Mensch, vor solcher Liebe Garnen, Und spar dein Lieb' bis in die Eh', Dann hab' Ein lieb' und keine meh. Diesselb' Lieb' ist mit Gott und Ehren, Die Welt damit fruchtbar zu mehren. Dazu giebt Gott selbst allewegen Sein' Gnad' Gedeihen und milden Segen. Dass stete Lieb' und Treu' aufwachs' ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... forgiven for turning Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run - the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, uprose the lance- butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The Highlanders gave the fugitives ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... went to Belem one of father's outstanding ships arrived. She came into the harbor presenting the unusual sight of trying oil on deck. Black and greasy from hull to spar, she was a pleasant sight, for she was full of sperm oil. Little boys ran down to the house to inform us of that fact before she was moored. "Wouldn't Mr. Morgeson be all right now that his luck had changed?" ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... in sail, when it was discovered that the vessel was among breakers; and when she struck he was dashed from the rigging. He could give no account of what further happened, beyond remembering that he was clinging at one time to a spar, and saw his ship backing (as he ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... delicate features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something a long way off—almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up, as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and distinctness as it nears. There were nineteen years and three months still, however, between him ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... twilight or gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof. These were rough arches made of a transparent rock, incrusted with sheepsilver and rock spar, and other bright stones. But though it was rock, the air was quite warm, as it always is in Elfland. So he went through this passage till at last he came to two wide and high folding-doors which stood ajar. And when he opened them, there ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... forest was! The brook no longer murmured, the rustle of the leaves was without sound. A spar of sunshine, filtering through the ragged limbs of the trees, fell aslant her, and she stood in an aureola. As for my hero, a species of paralysis had stricken him motionless and dumb. It was all so unexpected, ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I have gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened either—nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as cheerily as you please—no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in the hold. I believe it ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... guns had roared, yet (though she was now so close that I made out her very rope and spar) she made no sign. In a little our guns fell silent also, wherefore, looking about, I beheld Don Miguel standing beside the tiller yet with his impassive gaze ever bent upon the foe; and, as I watched, I read his deadly purpose, and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... turtle detected in shallow water falls a comparatively easy prey, for on being hustled it soon loses heart and endeavours to hide its head, ostrich-like, when it is easily captured. None unacquainted with the skill with which the creature can spar with its flippers, and the effectiveness of these flippers, when used as weapons of defence, should venture to grip a turtle in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... was anchored at the foot of Walnut Street. On a brilliant morning early in February, 1776, gay streamers were seen floating from every masthead and spar on the river. At nine o'clock a full-manned barge threaded its way among the floating ice to the Alfred, bearing the commodore, who had chosen that vessel for his flagship. He was greeted with thunders of artillery and the shouts ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... aimed, if tha'd been spar'd, Of summat better to hev shared Ner what thi poor owd father fared, I' this cowd sphere; Yet, after all, aw'st noan o' ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... makeshift for a lost spar, it does not follow that a jury-woman is a make-shift for any body. In fact, the women who sit upon juries are not the sort of women who personally supply ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... swiftly along the high hedge, until he reached the machine. His attitude was that of an evil-doer. From his pocket he produced a small bolt of wood painted to resemble steel. He advanced to the left wing-spar of the monoplane and, apparently possessing expert knowledge of the point where it was the most vulnerable, he swiftly drew out a split pin, removed a small steel bolt at the end of the main-stay cable, and replaced it with the ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... as equals. To shrink away to a side-table and affect to be absorbed in some album or illustrated work; or, if you find one unlucky acquaintance in the room, to fasten upon her like a drowning man clinging to a spar, are gaucheries which no shyness ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... saint was preserved there for centuries. After the church fell into decay's early in the seventeenth century, the bell remained in the churchyard. The narrow-pointed spar of granite on which it rested still stands there. The bell, unfortunately, was wantonly removed, by Protestant strangers about thirty years ago, to the great indignation of the inhabitants of the glen, Protestant as well as Catholic; it ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... the upper deck, leading from the quarter-deck to the forecastle. These gangways were about five feet wide; and here the prisoners were allowed to pass and repass. The intermediate space from the bulkhead of the quarter-deck to the forecastle was filled with long spars and booms, and called the spar-deck. The temporary covering afforded by the spar-deck was of the greatest benefit to the prisoners, as it served to shield us from the rain and the scorching rays of the sun. It was here, therefore, that our movables were placed when ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an' troubles have come, an' mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An' mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an' mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an' shoo's flown far, far away aat ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... sand and seaweed, a woman with a little boy clasped in her arms! Both had been carefully lashed to a spar, but the child was held to the bosom of the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot that mortal hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which had streamed the woman's long, dark hair, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and I wish to have you know, I scorn to get a whore for any prince alive, and yet scorn will not help methinks: my Daughter might have been spar'd, there ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... she who had been a Bolingbroke set her thin lips together with the only consciousness of superiority to her husband that she had ever known—the secret consciousness that she was better born. Out of the wreck of her entire life, this was the floating spar to which she still clung with a sense of security, and her imagination, by long concentration upon the support that it offered, had exaggerated its importance out of all proportion to the other props among which it had its place. Like its imposing symbol, the Saint Memin portrait ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow |
