"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... near a fisherman, who like them was gazing seawards, when the child went skimming past along the shore. Mrs. Netherby asked the fisherman about her, and learned the secret of the sea's motherhood. She had been washed ashore from the wreck of a vessel; and was found on the beach, tied to a spar. All besides had perished. From the fragment they judged it to have been a Dutch vessel. Some one had said in her hearing—'Poor child! the sea is her mother;' and her imagination had cherished the idea. A fisherman, who had no family, had taken her to his house ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm, or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had over-topped his fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... a pipe, which in turn after divers wanderings led through a hole in the roof, offered an exit for the smoke. Needless to say, this offer was frequently ignored. Around this fireplace was a foot-railing constructed from the main spar of a crashed Handley-Page. The rest of the furniture fortunately was not homemade. Large easy-chairs and lounges, the gift of a friendly merchant of Nancy, often made progress from one end of the room to the other,—a ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Derbyshire spar produced by the crystallisation of earths, in the way you have just explained? I have been in some of the subterraneous caverns where it is found, which are similar to those ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... stupendous size was the least of the wonders of the place, for running in rows 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 ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... he makes some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves, And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck." ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... the horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... excitement that day; but a greater was in store. In the afternoon, Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal officers of the ship, being at dinner in the captain's cabin, in came the officer of the watch, and reported a large spar ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... pendency^, 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^, flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c v.; beetling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... warm from the scene of altercation. Some sailors being aloft in the main-topsail rigging, the captain had ordered them to race down, threatening the hindmost with the cat-of-nine-tails. He who was the farthest on the spar, feeling the impossibility of passing his companions, and yet passionately dreading the disgrace of the flogging, threw himself desperately down to catch a rope considerably lower, failed, and fell senseless on deck. He only survived ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "piece of Spar, seven feet long, and weighing two hundred pounds, has been taken from the great Spar Cave near Dubuque." We were not previously aware that O'BALDWIN, the "Irish Giant," was serving out his term of imprisonment, in the Spar Cave, but the thing has ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... illustration of the same principle. The heat required to generate the spark is intense; and the mechanical action, being moderate, must, to produce fire, be in the highest degree concentrated. This concentration is secured by the collision of hard substances. Calc-spar will not supply the place of flint, nor lead the place of steel, in the production of fire by collision. With the softer substances, the total heat produced may be greater than with the hard ones, but, to produce the spark, the heat must ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... sea; the Moon thrown from a volcano, has no atmosphere, and is frozen; the earth's diurnal motion retarded; it's axis more inclined; whirls with the moon round a new centre. 67. IV. Formation of lime-stone by aqueous solution; calcareous spar; white marble; antient statue of Hercules resting from his labours. Antinous. Apollo of Belvidere. Venus de Medici. Lady Elizabeth Foster, and Lady Melbourn by Mrs. Damer. 93. V. 1. Of morasses. Whence the production of Salt by elutriation. Salt-mines ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... they hurried away to leeward, indicated that mischief was in the air, and that there was every probability of the soundness of the renovated rigging being promptly tested. The wind and sea were making, with swift roaring anger, but not a stitch of canvas was taken in, every spar and rope-yarn aboard was feeling the strain as the clipper was crashed into the surging waves which flowed between the shores of an iron-bound gulf. The vessel was swept with exciting rapidity towards ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... is explained by the slow carbonization of the anhydrous lime under the influence of the air; the external layers passing to the state of carbonate of lime or Iceland spar, which, as well known, has great influence on polarized light. This transformation, which takes place without disturbing the crystalline state, does not lead to any general modification of the form of the crystals, and the final product of carbonization ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... hulk yonder, I would not return! But who are you, sirrah, that dares to usurp my power? Now, upstart, you shall know your place!" and he seized him by the collar, bore him aft, lashed him to a spar, called for the cat, and lifting it high in air,—it falls, but the cursed invention of man's cruelty falls wide of its mark! Ere its descent had scarred that fair brow, a rush was heard from the main gangway, and old Neptune, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... rigging of the mainmast, which had been thrown back on the rock. They were eager to get across, for they had no food and no water on the rock. Several attempts were made to heave a rope to the man on the island, but in vain, the distance was too great. At length a short piece of a spar was fastened to the end of the signal halyards. How eagerly it was watched, as it floated now in one direction, now in another; gradually it drew out the line; it was hoped that it might be drifted by some ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... first idea that struck the captain was, "the utter impossibility of finding anything in this way, in all Leaphigh, befitting a lord high admiral of his length of keel; for, as to going in an ordinary monikin queue, why, he should look like a three-decked ship, with a brig's spar stepped for a lower mast!" Dr. Reasono, however, had kindly removed the embarrassment, by conducting him to the cabinet of natural history, where three suitable appendages had been found, viz., two fine relics of oxen, [Footnote: Cauda Bovum.—BUF.] and another, a capital specimen, that had formerly ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... without accomplishing anything decisive. Farragut had carefully studied the situation, and, confident that the passage could be made, determined it should be done, no matter at what cost. On the night of the 23d his vessels were stripped of every rope and spar that could be spared, the masts and rigging of the gunboats and mortar vessels being trimmed with the limbs of trees, to conceal their ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... bows seems to be spar varnish. This keeps out moisture. It has two disadvantages, however; it cracks after much bending, and it is too shiny. The glint or flash of a hunting bow will frighten game. I have often seen rabbits or deer stand until the bow goes off, then jump in time ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... was the rejoinder, as he peered into the obscurity where I lay. "Ay, Typee, my king of the cannibals, is it you I But I say, my lad, how's that spar of your'n? the mate says it's in a devil of a way; and last night set the steward to sharpening the handsaw: hope he won't have the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... at the present day under the name of the Phase Law. We know that by phases are designated the homogeneous substances into which a system is divided; thus carbonate of lime, lime, and carbonic acid gas are the three phases of a system which comprises Iceland spar partially dissociated into lime and carbonic acid gas. The number of phases added to the number of independent components—that is to say, bodies whose mass is left arbitrary by the chemical formulas of the substances ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... nights, be they summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... hill supported by my brother on one side and our friend on the other, and returned to the latter's home for tea, after which our host showed us some remarkable spar stones—dog-tooth spar we were told was their name—found in the lead mines, whose white crystals glistened in the light, and I could see by the covetous look in my brother's eyes that he was thinking of the rockeries ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... broadside on to the wind and tide, whilst others made sail, as the only alternative to escape from what they evidently considered certain destruction. At daylight on the morning of the 12th, not a spar of the boom was anywhere visible, and, with the exception of the Foudroyant and Cassard, the whole of the enemy's vessels were helplessly aground. The flag-ship, L'Ocean, a three-decker, drawing the most water, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... torpedoing of the Aboukir two sailors found themselves clinging to a spar which was not sufficiently buoyant to keep them both afloat. Harry, a Salvationist, grasped the situation and said to his mate: "Tom, for me to die will mean to go home to mother. I don't think it's quite the same for you, so you hold to the spar and I will go down; but promise ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... justice of his cause, and also to the darkness and his own mother-wit and great skill in seamanship, to make his own escape after the battle, resolutely putting out of his head the fact that the loss of a spar or two would in all probability result in the capture of his own ship. To sum it all up, Jones was not a man to decline battle when there was the slightest prospect of success, and the very audacity of the present situation enchanted him. All the lanterns of the Ranger ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the board, and her mainyard in the slings, and the hull, rigging, and sails were completely torn to pieces. The fire was kept up for fifteen minutes longer, when the main and foremast went, taking with them every spar except the bowsprit, and leaving the Guerriere a complete wreck. On seeing this Hull ordered the firing to cease, having brought his enemy in thirty minutes after he was fairly alongside to such a condition, that a few more broadsides must have ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... begun to reel, but she clung to the central idea, as one in deep waters clinging to a spar. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... That made the least stop, when their angry hands Were lifted up against some known friends face; Then coming to the body of the army He shews the sacred Senate, and forbids them To wast their force upon the Common Souldier, Whom willingly, if e're he did know pity, He would have spar'd. ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... as we go," said Quarles, interrupting our little side-spar. "Miss Day volunteered no statement when I talked of love. Could she have made an unqualified denial I think she would have done so. I did not ask her a direct question on purpose; I thought she would be more likely ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... what to say to you. I am in a town which, for aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my friends out of the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily career is very regular and ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... matter, which now forms a snow-white, highly crystalline basis to a breccia, including small pieces of black, glossy scoriae. A little above this, where the lime is less abundant, and the lava more compact, numerous little balls, composed of spicula of calcareous spar, radiating from common centres, occupy the interstices. In one part of Quail Island, the lime has thus been crystallised by the heat of the superincumbent lava, where it is only thirteen feet in thickness; nor had the lava ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... almost like a stab. The child has told the truth unwittingly. Violet is like a person drowning in a wide dreary ocean, when some stray spar floats thitherward. It is not a promise of ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... end. The sail is lateen, with a boom upon one mast; the prow and stern curve to a high point, and the depth being considerably greater than the width, the proa would, if unsupported, capsize instantly, but a hollow log or heavy-pointed spar rests on the water, parallel with the windward side, and, being secured in place, acts as an outrigger and removes the danger of overturning. The same name is applied to the boats used by the Malays, and which are propelled by both ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. Gilman had expressly desired ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... set fire that evening to the "Charon" frigate, making a sight of marvellous grandeur, for the ship became one mass of fire from the water's edge to her spintle-heads, all her ports belching flame and each spar and every rope ablaze at the same moment. The morning of the 11th found fifty-two pieces of artillery mounted and hurling a storm of projectiles into the British lines; and that evening, a second parallel was opened, bringing the guns of the besiegers less than three hundred ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... his fine hair cropped to the roots; his 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, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... biscuit tin, and a spar of firewood, and stood by while Rube handed out to him the dripping combs ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... 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 were enow besides. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... as a steamship, mistress of her own movements, scorning the control of the elements, and keeping straight on to her destination in storm and calm alike. But in some respects the weak is strong. The ship is equal to most of the chances of a sea-experience. If the spar break, it can be replaced. If the storm rend the sails to ribbons, there are skilful hands which can find or make new ones. But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works and improvements of a thousand years,—the "wave line," the spar, the sail, and all,—and with them the men of the sea. It may be that "Leviathans" will march unheedingly through the mountain waves,—that steam and the Winans's model will obliterate old inventions and labors and triumphs. Blake and Raleigh and Frobisher and Dampier may be known ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... canvas and rope and spar—we know that his price is fair, And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... We began to spar at each other in as knowing and English a way as we knew how—keeping a very respectful distance indeed, and trying to bear ourselves as scientifically as we could, with a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... had a more adroit counsel. Like a good lawyer, Douglas seemed to feel himself in duty bound to spar for every technical advantage, and to construe the law, wherever possible, in favor of his client. At the same time he did not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... circumstances, on board an English vessel, though the First Lord of the Admiralty should be looking on. The raft was now thrown into the sea. Kate jumped after it, and then entreated the captain to follow her. He attempted it; but, wanting her youthful agility, he struck his head against a spar, and sank like lead, giving notice below that his ship was coming. Kate mounted the raft, and was gradually washed ashore, but so exhausted, as to have lost all recollection. She lay for hours until the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... visit (the remains) of that genuine Republic of ours!...[676] Observe my strength of mind and my supreme indifference to the Felician[677] one-twelfth legacy, and also, by heaven, my very gratifying connexion with Caesar—for this delights me as the one spar left me from the present shipwreck—Caesar, I say, who treats your and my Quintus, heavens! with what honour, respect, and favours! It is exactly as if I were the imperator. The choice was just lately offered him of selecting any of the winter quarters, as he writes me word. Wouldn't you ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... been rowing but a short distance in advance of the end of the bowsprit, but Captain Martin now made his way out to the end of that spar, and told Ned that he was going to give him a good deal more rope in order that he might keep well ahead, and that he was to keep a sharp lookout for craft at anchor. Another quarter of an hour passed, and Captain ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... posts from place to place—of men And manners treating with a flying pen; Not he who climbs, for prospects, Snowdon's height, And chides the clouds that intercept the sight; No curious shell, rare plant, or brilliant spar, Enticed our traveller from his house so far; But all the reason by himself assign'd For so much rambling, was a restless mind; As on, from place to place, without intent, Without reflection, Robin Dingley went. Not thus by nature:- never man was found Less prone to wander ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... opponents may be 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, up rose 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 two hundred yards' law, and then ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... on Derby Street, in a region of rigging and sail lofts, block and pump makers, ships' stores, spar yards, gilders, carvers and workers in metal. There was a strong smell of tar and new canvas and the flat odor that rose at low water. Sailors passed, yellow powerful Scandinavians and dark men with earrings from southern latitudes, in red or checked shirts, ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as soon as the frost and snow were gone, Quinbey employed laborers to flatten the ground near his house to the extent of a hundred feet by ten; then, with stakes, he laid out the plan of a ship's deck. Next he contracted with spar makers, ship carpenters, and ship chandlers for material and labor; and before June three masts were erected, each with topmast, top-gallant, and royal mast, the standing rigging of which was set up to strong ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... on by Messrs. William and Robert Tindall, the former of whom resided in London; he was one of the half-dozen great shipbuilders and owners who founded "Lloyd's." Splendid East Indiamen, of some 1000 tons burden, were then built at Scarborough; and scarcely a timber was moulded, a plank bent, a spar lined off, or launching ship-ways laid, without my being present to witness them. And thus, in course of time, I was able to make for myself the neatest and ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... difficult plan is to fasten the rectangular frame on first and then apply the fabric.) The same course is followed in dealing with the elevator, which is fixed, however, not to the rod, but to the 4-inch horizontal spar, HS1, just behind it, in such a manner as to have a slight hinge movement at the back. This operation presents no difficulty, and may be effected in a variety of ways. To set the elevator, use is made of the short vertical mast, M1. A small hole is pierced in the front side ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... went back to destroy these. The spars were separated and allowed to drift, as the set of the current would soon take them ashore out of harm's way. This got rid of everything except the lower part of the mainmast. As this heavy spar itself might be the means of sinking a vessel if left adrift, tossing on the waves, the Miami parbuckled the big timber on board, chopped it into small pieces—none of them large enough to do a vessel any damage—and set ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... that extended along on the outer side of the quay, a very large, square net suspended in the air. It was hung by means of ropes at the four corners, which met in a point above, whence a larger rope went up to a pulley which was attached to the end of a spar that projected from the stern of a boat. The net was slowly descending into the water when Rollo first caught a view of it; so he ran across, and looked ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... be said to form a transition link between marble and common stone. It belongs to the Dolomitic group of rocks, which forms so large a part of the romantic scenery of South-Eastern Europe, and yields all over the world some of the best and most ornamental building-stones. In this group calc-spar or dolomite wholly replaces the quartz and films of argillaceous matter, of which, especially in Scotland, micaceous schist is usually composed. There are many varieties of cipollino, the most common being the typical marble, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... fellow," John Wilkes said, "and was as smart a sailor as any on board till he had his foot smashed by being jammed by a spare spar that got adrift in a gale, so that the doctors had to cut off the leg under the knee, and leave him to stump about on a timber toe for the rest of his life. I tell you what, Master Cyril: we might make the thing safer still ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... Ironsides at anchor lay, (sl.) In the harbor of Mahon [Footnote 1]; A dead calm rested on the bay,— The waves to sleep had gone,— When little Jack,[Footnote 2] the captain's son, With gallant hardihood, Climbed shroud and spar,—and then upon The main-truck ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... he was no match for his heavier opponent if they came to hand grips, Hal stepped quickly back and threw himself into an attitude of defense. It was the lad's plan to stand off, if possible, and spar. ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... her feet, The wandering bird draws in her weary wings, And drops into the waves, whose uncheck'd roll The hills have drown'd; and with un'custom'd surge Foam on the mountain tops. Of man the most They swallow'd; whom their fierce irruption spar'd, By hunger perish'd in their ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... a searchlight she can suffer a sea-change From a collier to a Shamrock under sail, From a Hyper-super-Dreadnought, old Leviathan at range, To a lightship or a whaler or a whale; With some canvas and a spar She can mock the morning star As a haystack or the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... last scarcely a timber or plank of the wreck was to be seen. What hope of escape had either of us? The foaming waters raged around, and we were half perished with cold and hunger. On looking about I found a small spar washed up on the rock, and, fastening our handkerchiefs together, we rigged out a flag, but there was little chance of a boat putting off in such weather and coming near enough to see it. We now knew that we were not far off the Land's End, on one of two rocks ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... to be lusty, as the saying is—that is, in good condition. It's very strange that Mrs Oxbelly has an idea that she is not large. I cannot persuade her to it. That's the reason we always spar in bed. She says it is I, and I know that it is she who takes the largest ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... East, it saw daily the armed strength of England sweep proudly by. Now a squadron of men-of-war: not the hideous, shapeless ironclad of to-day, but the traditional three-decker, with its tiers of snarling teeth and its beauty of white-bellying canvas and majestic spar. Now a troopship with its consorts, two, or three, or more, tightly packed with their living cargo—whole regiments of red-coated soldiers on their way ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... characterless streaks of light. Nine years later Dr. Henry Draper of New York got an impression of four lines in the spectrum of Vega. Then Huggins attacked the subject again in 1876, when the 18-inch speculum of the Royal Society had come into his possession, using prisms of Iceland spar and lenses of rock crystal; and this time with better success. A photograph of the spectrum of Vega showed seven strong lines.[1415] Still he was not satisfied. He waited and worked for three years longer. At length, on December 18, 1879, he was able to communicate to the Royal Society[1416] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... bachelor's hall upon the beach. It was raining smartly by the time the tavern was reached, nearly a mile down the bank. Our advent caused a rare scurrying to and fro, for two commercial "drummers," who were to depart by the early morning boat, occupied the "reg'lar spar' room," the landlady informed us, and a bit of a cubby-hole off the back stairs had to be arranged for us. Guests are rarities, at ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... found, and whose presence it was hard to explain. Schists and different productions of limestone were found in abundance, as was also a sort of strange, transparent, colorless crystal, which has a refraction peculiar to Iceland spar. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... atomic weight 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 called Bolognian phosphorus. In 1774 K. W. Scheele, in examining ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... 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 voice be heard—"In the name ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... 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
... in a great degree, departed. The foremast alone remained, and of this even the head was gone, a circumstance of which Captain Truck complained more than of any other, as, to use his own expressions, "it destroyed the symmetry of the spar, which had proved itself to be a good stick." What, however, was of more real importance, it rendered it difficult, if not impossible, to get up a spare topmast forward. As both the main and mizzen-mast had gone quite near ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... danger in our way of life. The accident to which I have referred was this:—We had sighted a little full-rigged ship very close under our board in a haze; she sailed near as well as we did—I should be nearer truth if I said, near as ill; and we cleared the bow-chaser to see if we could bring a spar or two about their ears. The swell was exceedingly great; the motion of the ship beyond description; it was little wonder if our gunners should fire thrice and be still quite broad of what they aimed at. But in the meanwhile ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 stayed in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stimulus from his intercourse with his brother and Ranney, and profiting by their hints and suggestions, he plunged more eagerly into law-books than ever. He constructed a light boat, with a pair of sculls, and rigged also with a spar and sail, with which to traverse the pond, with places to secure it on the opposite shores; and early passers along the State road, that overlooked the placid waters, often marked a solitary boatman pulling a little skiff ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... their desperation, and the British had to fight a new battle between decks with half their force while the ship was slowly getting under weigh. The fire of the batteries was furious, but, curiously enough, no important spar was struck, though some of the boats towing alongside were sunk. And while the batteries thundered overhead, and the battle still raged on the decks below, the British seamen managed to set every sail on the ship, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... godsend to her, and everybody else. She still talked revolution, and she was always ready to spar with Lord Buntingford, or other people. But all the same Lucy Friend was often aware of a much more tractable temper, a kind of hesitancy—and appeasement—which, even if it passed away, made her beauty, for the moment, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conciser and equally humorous manner. It was to him that Farrar turned for an encouraging acquiescence when one of his latest Newmarket anecdotes threatened to fall flat, and with it all he found time for an occasional spar with Signor Bruno, just by way of keeping that inquiring gentleman upon ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the surrounding expanse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being washed ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... 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 new ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... almost immediately solved. Fluorescence is a property which some transparent bodies have of producing, either on their surface or within their substance, light different in color from that of its origin. This happens, for example, when green crystals of fluor spar afford blue reflections of light. Glass may be rendered fluorescent, as is seen in the Geisler and Crookes tubes. Edison conceived the project of using this phenomenon to get back the invisible rays ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... on the stump of the mast, threw their weight on the spar projecting over the side, straight as a lance towards ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... their chronometers pop up in Shanghai a year later, I'm tellin' ye. There ain't nobody ever saw this here Devil's Admiral, sure enough, that lived to tell it, but ships don't always go down in deep water and never a boat got off or a life-preserver or a spar or a door ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... responsibility. sorgfri, carefree. sorglig, sad, sorrowful. sorgls, carefree. sorgsen, sad. sorl (-et), hum, commotion. sorl|a (-ade, -at), to murmur. sotad, sooty. sova (sov, sovit), to sleep. spak, meek, tractable. spar|a (-ade, -at), to save, spare. sparr|e (-en, -ar), rafter. speg|el (-eln, -lar), mirror. spegelklar, clear as a mirror. spegelvg (-en, -or), clear, calm water. spegl|a (-ade, -at), to reflect, view in mirror. spel ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... boat,' said I, 'and when she fills I will cling to a spar. I will not die until my strength is exhausted and I can breathe no longer.' Here the conversation ended, when the captain covered his head with a blanket. I then wrote the substance of our misfortune in the log-book, and also a letter to my mother; rolled them up in a ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... drowning man feeling his last floating spar wrenched away from him, the White Linen Nurse dug her finger-nails frantically into every reachable wrinkle and crevice of the ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... And if there were a lack of competitors, the ridicule of fools would not deter us from hanging up a lifeless image and practising at that. Or if we had no adversary at all, animate or inanimate, should we not venture in the dearth of antagonists to spar by ourselves? In what other manner could we ever study the ...
— Laws • Plato
... although he himself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some extent as means to an end, that, when his eyes had been opened to its presence, he clutched—like a drowning man who seizes upon a spar—clutched and held fast to his talent. But the necessary insight into his powers had first to be gained, for it was not one of those talents which, from the beginning, strut their little world with the assurance of the peacock. He was, it is true, gifted ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... pistol-shot, till half past 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; and Captain Thompson himself badly wounded, without ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... to have 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 ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... The child ran back, surprised to her knee. But the two, standing before each other in sunlight with clasped hands, had heard nothing, had seen nothing and no one. Three feet away from them in the shade a seaman sat on a spar, very busy splicing a strop, and dipping his fingers into a tar-pot, as if utterly unaware of ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... sunlit cordage Behold the climbing tar, With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide, Climbing a shadow-spar! Up the glassy stream with issuing steam The cutter crawls again, All winged with cloud and buzzing loud, Like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... at length; the sails untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... she caught sight below her of Mrs. Talcott's old straw hat moving among the borders; and, in the midst of the emptiness, the sight was strength and hope. The whole world seemed to narrow to Mrs. Talcott. She was secure and real. She was a spar to be clung to. The nightmare would reveal itself as illusion if she kept near Mrs. Talcott. She ran down ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man welcomes a spar. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... be. By mornin' she'll be strewed along the shore and not a spar to mark where she's ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... which were three tattooed bands, and possessed a little, long-armed, spare figure, bent and wiry. He clambered up and down his mast, fetching things at his master's behest; leapt nonchalantly for our rail or his own spar, as the case might be, across the staggering abyss; clung so well with his toes that he might almost have been classified with the quadrumana; and between times squatted humped over on the rail, watching us with ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... 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 her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... crew of the Adur came ashore and dined with us, and, as usual, I read Divine Service. On the following morning I went aboard the schooner and examined the log-book and charts. We painted the Red and Black Beacons, and Mr. Adams having trimmed up a spar, we erected a flagstaff thirty-four feet high. I occupied myself the next day with preparing a report to be sent to the Colonial Secretary. My brother went off to the boat and brought ashore the ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... 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 as ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... wood, or even bones; but sometimes the beds and paths were on the same level, and then there were the same edgings that we now use, as Thrift, Box, Ivy, flints, &c. The paths were made of gravel, sand, spar, &c., and sometimes with coloured earths: but against this Lord Bacon made a vigorous protest: "As to the making of knots or figures with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Indian had 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 timber. The two ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... Saucie! Companion! tis the Guise, but yet those termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd. Companion! He's jealous, by this light. Are you blind of that side, Duke? Ile to her againe for that. Forth, princely mistresse, 125 for the honour of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... selves mightily for Roasting a Hare with a Pudding in its Belly; when alas he has roasted an Ox with a Pudding in his Belly. There was no Man like him for Invention and Contrivance: And then for Execution, he spar'd no Labour and Pains ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... conditions and constituent particles of the boiled or calcined seed, there is no more doubt that nature would respond to the environing conditions, and give forth the proper expression of plant-life, than there is that crystals of spar would make their appearance in an overcharged bath chemically prepared for that purpose. It is not the albuminous substance enclosed in the seed, but the vital principle therein—that continuously imparted to nature from the great vital fountain of the universe—which burgeons forth into ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... artillery and cavalry, were encamped around him, and any violent movement on his part would have been sure to result in an ignominious disaster. The doughty old farmer, who was not less than six feet three in his stockinged feet, held on to him as a drowning man clings to a floating spar. It was not possible to get away without resorting to violence; and if he offered any resistance to what, just then, looked like manifest destiny, the rebel soldier would become an ally of the farmer, and the women could call in the sentinels, ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... over, and you should have seen it. From top to bottom it was one mass of holes. One bullet passed through my combination and hit a can of tobacco. Another cut a main spar on one of my wings, and another hit my stabilizer, tearing it half in two. One other hit my gas tank and put a hole clear through it. Luckily my gas was low and it did not explode, but, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... or two of water in their path over the ice, so long as the foundation remained firm, drew up a long spruce pole from a neighboring fence, and, shooting it forward through the first stream of water, passed over upon it to the uncovered ice; and then, drawing their spar-bridge to the water next the other bank, went through the same process, till they had all reached the opposite shore ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... slice from top to bottom will give us a tolerably even admixture of the different ores. This is always desirable to a certain extent, since the ores being of different constitution, the one materially assists in the reduction of the other. Thus an ore containing a large proportion of fluor-spar may with great advantage be employed to flux another containing felspar or quartz, which substances are almost infusible alone. Indeed, the judicious admixture of ores constitutes the most important vocation of the smelter; and it is to this that the copper-houses of Swansea are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... loaded, a few religious books, a copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield," twenty-six silver spoons and forks, and many other articles. The Esquimaux related that the men dragging the boat "dropped as they walked." The other boat was crushed in the ice. No trace, but a floating spar or two, and driftwood embedded in ice, was ever found ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... don't want no dabs o' paint as you can't tell what they are, Whether they're shadders or fellers' faces or blocks or blobs o' tar, But I want gear as looks like gear an' a spar that's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... must leave this place which was to Louis the fetich of his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the trouble nature had cynically laid upon him. He had clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar. To him it was the charter from which he could appeal to the world as the husband of Madelinette Lajeunesse. To him it was the name, the dignity, and the fortune he brought her. It was the one thing that saved him from a dire humiliation; it was the vantage-ground from which he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ether, his suggestive views of the structure of crystalline bodies, and his explanation of opacity, slight as they are, will possibly surprise the reader by their seeming modernness. And none can read his investigation of the phenomena found in Iceland spar without marvelling at his insight ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... Sea brake upon the poop and quarter, upon us, as it covered our ship from stern to stem, like a garment or a vast cloud. It filled her brimful for a while within, from the hatches up to the spar deck. . . ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... was cumbered with that weight of osier and of weed, which yet he never yielded, because it had been her trust. With each yard that the tide bore him forward, by so much it bore us backward. There was but the length of a spar between us, and yet ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of Iceland spar with a hammer, all the pieces will have shapes of a certain kind, but that does not imply that the Iceland spar was constructed for the purpose of breaking up in this way when struck. The atomic theory implies that of all possible compounds ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... eternity: Awhile he holds some false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguished face and flying hair Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... buries in the sod the stubble of the corn-field. Nothing signaled her destruction except the exclamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew went to the bottom together. Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailor's hat, no remnant of sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all. The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm, cruised round the spot for a few hours, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... white spar, with arrow head "above heart." Nicely carved, with ears and with small pieces of turquoise inserted for eyes; designated by Mr. Cushing as Prey God of the Hunt. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona in 1881 • James Stevenson
... a safe place on the table, put the hat on it and answered, not sparringly, there was nothing to spar about, but ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the two parties. Hillyar, however, told Porter frankly that he should not throw away the advantage given by his superior force, for the event of a naval action was ever uncertain, liable to be decided by the accidental loss of an important spar or rope; whereas, by keeping his two ships together, he thought he could effectually blockade the Essex and prevent her renewing her depredations upon British commerce until the arrival of other ships of war which were on their ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... is not an abortive genius, for his ideas do not come to utter shipwreck in the perilous passage; they often lose a spar or two, they sometimes appear in a more or less dismantled condition, but they retain their masts; they come in with some yards of canvas still set, and the severest criticism that can be passed on them is, "With a little better luck that would have been a very fine thing indeed." ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... it is possible that the lad might catch fever, or be killed in an affray with natives, that must, of course, be faced; but as a sailor he runs the risk of shipwreck, or of being washed overboard, or killed by a falling spar. Everything considered, I think the idea of his going with you is a good one. I don't suppose that many guardians would be of the same opinion, but I have been so many years knocking about in one part of the world or another, ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... desperate, indeed; but Lieutenant Cushing was as cool and determined at that moment as one could be under the most agreeable circumstances. He knew that the decisive moment had come, and he did not allow it to glide from his hands. He seized the lanyard to the torpedo and the line of the spar, and crowding the spar until he brought the torpedo under the over-hang of the Albemarle, he detached it by one effort, and the next second he pulled the lanyard of the torpedo, and exploded it under the vessel on her port side, just below the port-hole of ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... of confidence, Sir,—and there is no secret or mystery associated with the matter. Gloria was, like myself, cast up from the sea. I found her half-drowned, a helpless infant tied to a floating spar. It was on the other side of these Islands—among the rocks where there is no landing-place. There is a little church on the heights up there, and every evening the men and boys practise their sacred singing. It was sunset, and I was wandering by myself upon the shore, and in the church ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... old Portuguese colony, is only forty miles from Hong-Kong. The arrangements on the river steamers are rather peculiar, for only European passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to the lower decks, which are enclosed with strong steel bars. Before the ship starts the iron gates of communication are shut and padlocked, so that all Chinese passengers are literally ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... a gale off the coast of Biscay, and rode it out without the loss of a spar or a yard; indeed, without the slightest accident or rent ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... approach peace to all mortals brings, Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings, Sole comforter of minds which are oppress'd— Lo! by thy charming rod, all breathing things Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possess'd, And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings Thou spar'st, alas! who cannot be thy guest. Since I am thine, O come,—but with that face To inward light, which thou art wont to shew— With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe; Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace, Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... finding in the naval yard, a spar of the New Zealand cowrie pine (dammara) large ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... knows," ses Alf; "but there was four of them saved, so why not five? Mightn't 'e have floated away on a spar or something and been picked up? Can't you dream it three nights running, and tell 'er that you feel certain sure ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the 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 gloomy forebodings ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... it!" commanded Darrin, placing himself at the head of the spar. Farley took hold ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... unconscious, drifting in the ocean, clinging to a spar, and were brought here by a sailing vessel. You had a fracture of the skull and you were half drowned. It is supposed that you were one of the passengers of the Abyssinia, which took fire and went down two days after leaving Cape Town, but as several ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the disaster. I was by her side when the steamer was struck. We had both concluded to go on deck to join you. With the first terrible lurch we were both thrown headlong into the water. I did my utmost to save her, but it was not to be. A floating spar struck her, and she went down before ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... sailed the "Southern Cross" with not a spar carried away or sail lost, perfectly sound, and in a fit state to be off again at once. She left England on the same day that we did, and arrived just a fortnight after us, and this is attributable to her having ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, 5 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: 10 They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of this ruined millionaire, who was contending desperately against his creditors for the vain appearance of splendor, with the despairing energy of a ship-wrecked mariner struggling for the possession of a floating spar. Had he not confessed to M. Fortunat that he had suffered the tortures of the damned in his struggle to maintain a show of wealth, while he was often without a penny in his pocket, and was ever subject to the pitiless surveillance of thirty servants? His agony, when ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... learned what makes the might of words,— 55 Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... 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 under the old Aqueduct Bridge. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... upon, small objects and, by collecting to a focus the 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, ...
— 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
... myself afloat. Just then a shout reached my ears, and I saw Bill seated astride a piece of timber, not far from me. With my remaining strength I made towards it, and he, seizing me by the shirt, hauled me up, and made me fast with some rope attached to the spar. ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... main-mast had been just discovered to be sprung, in such a manner as to render the rigging of another top-mast very dangerous; and that, therefore, he must rig something lighter in its place. He also informed me, that he had lost his main-top-gallant-yard, and that he neither had another, nor a spar to make one, on board. The Resolution's sprit-sail top-sail yard which I sent him, supplied this want. The next day, he got up a jury top-mast, on which he set a mizen-top-sail, and this enabled him to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... anchor lay, In the harbor of Mahon; A dead calm rested on the bay— The waves to sleep had gone; When little Jack, the captain's son, With gallant hardihood, Climbed shroud and spar—and then upon The main-truck rose ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated in an almost ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... but downwards it is every bit the Father. And who forsooth should not beleeve it, if it be a son. Every one is in an admiration. O me, what a pretty sweet Infant! Nurse, you have drest it up most curiously! And truly there's no cost spar'd for the having very ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... hardy pony, the solitary patrol starts upon his lonely way. He rides up the centre valleys, ever and anon mounting a grassy hill to look seaward, reaches the West-end bar, speculates upon perchance a broken spar, an empty bottle, or a cask of beef struggling in the land-wash—now fords the shallow lake, looking well for his land-range, to escape the hole where Baker was drowned; and coming on the breeding-ground ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... articles which were obtained. Among them were the smith's forge, some piping and the tripod, which the doctor especially asked for. For some of them Jerry or Pat dived into the hold. Others were found on the spar-deck and the after part of the ship, where they were got up without difficulty. Tom and Gerald, when they came on deck, frequently took a glance around to see how the weather looked, and were satisfied that there ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... order to ignore the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr. and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a few ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... intend erecting this magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you intend ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... and even fear. He held to the theory that this radical and ghastly change must be caused by some obscure dementia, some secret overturning of the mind; but he was obliged to confess to himself that he held to it only because, otherwise, he would be floating helpless, and without a spar, upon a tide of perplexity and confusion. He could not honestly say that he was able to put his finger upon any definite signs of madness exhibited by Valentine, any that would satisfy a mad-doctor. He could only say that Valentine's character had been strangely beautiful ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... better sailed. Jammed, or on the wind, she was like a hare before the hounds, so quickly did she go. Her slim black body, her white, beautifully set sails—not a strake or an inch of canvas on her that he did not know and love. And more thought was given by him to the proper peaking of a spar and the exact setting of a leech than to the profits of the cargo. It was like having one's own country, and his cabin aboard was like his own castle—the little stateroom with the swinging-lamps, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne |
