"Sprit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... smallness of that vivid object—a tiny warm speck of crimson lost in an immensity of gray tones. I was startled, as if of necessity the principal beacon in the water-way of the greatest town on earth should have presented imposing proportions. And, behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... plated with pieces of eight that rolled to a heaven by rum made mellow, Heaved and coloured our barque's black nose where the Lascar sang to a twinkling star, And the tangled bow-sprit plunged and dipped its point in the west's wild red and yellow, Till the curved white moon crept out astern like a naked knife from a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... down the rickety wharf and into the salmon boat. Likewise they stretched my boom and sprit until the sail set like a board. Some feared to set the sprit; but I insisted, and Charley had no doubts. He knew me of old, and knew that I could sail as long as I could see. They cast off my painter. I put the tiller up, filled away before it, and with dizzy eyes checked and steadied the boat ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... might end in my stumbling upon still more horrors—I went on to a trim little brig lying on the other side of her; a beautiful little vessel, with all her spars and rigging save her bow-hamper in perfect order for sea-going—but showing by her broken bow-sprit that she had been in collision, and by her depth in the water that after the collision she had filled. Naturally enough, her boats were gone too; and so I left her ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... their opinion from this circumstance. The perforation of the cartilage that divides the nostrils, and the strange disfiguring ornament of a long bone or stick thrust through it, was now observed, as described by Captain Cook; and the same appellation of sprit-sail yard, was ludicrously applied to it by the sailors. But several very old men were seen in this excursion who had not lost the tooth, nor had their noses prepared to receive that grotesque appendage: probably, therefore, these are marks of distinction: ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... we ought to ship a mast so's we could rig a sprit-sail in case the old horse should give ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... along, talking sort of wandering, till near midnight. The Injuns don't think his credit with the gods and the elements amounts to much, anyway. This morning I crossed to the north shore and saw more villages and plantations, and came back to Titiaca's village in a catamaran rigged with a sprit-sail. Now, this is a business opening, Tommy. And look here! The old man's notions, as he put 'em to you, they're a good thing. I didn't know how he'd take it, but I guess we can fix it. You see, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... up the burn it ran to the next house, and rolled its way to the fireside. The goodwife was stirring the soup, and the goodman plaiting sprit-binnings for the cows. "Ho, Jock," quoth the goodwife, "here come. You're always crying about a wee bannock. Here's one. Come in, haste ye, and I'll ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... Yonder the rebels die all night, all day, week after week, year after year. That black hulk you see yonder—the one to the east—stripped clean, with nothing save a derrick for bow-sprit and a signal-pole for mast, is the Jersey, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... one from Captain Burney describing the adventures of the Burneys and Lambs at Cowes. Lamb, says the Captain, on their way to Newport "very ingeniously and unconsciously cast loose the fastenings of the mast, so that mast, sprit, sails, and all the rest tumbled overboard with a crash." Lamb on his part is amusing about the Captain and Martin Burney, and says he longs for ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Achille bore down on the Brunswick's quarter, but was received by a tremendous broadside, which brought down her remaining mast, a foremast. The wreck prevented the Achille from firing, and she surrendered; but as the Brunswick was too busy to attend to her, she hoisted a sprit-sail—a sail put up under the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... hurry. I waited to give Charley all the time I could, and I pretended dissatisfaction with the stretch of the sail and slightly shifted the small tackle by which the huge sprit forces up the peak. It was not until I was sure that Charley had reached Dan Maloney's and was on the little mare's back, that I cast off from the wharf and gave the big sail to the wind. A stout puff filled it and suddenly pressed the lee gunwale down till a couple of buckets ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... the second time, than, smiting the table with his fist, he started up, and, with the most violent emphasis of rage and indignation, exclaimed, "D— my heart and liver! 'tis a land lie, d'ye see; and I will maintain it to be a lie, from the sprit-sail yard to the mizen-top-sail haulyards! Blood and thunder! Will. Bower a peer of this realm! a fellow of yesterday, that scarce knows a mast from a manger! a snotty-nose boy, whom I myself have ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... and unrevealed by the slightest gleam of light, merely a vast bulk, towering between sea and sky. Forking out, however, directly over where I clung desperately to the wet hawser, my eyes were able to trace the bow-sprit, a massive bit of timber, with ropes faintly traced against the sky, the rather loosely furled jib flapping ragged edges in the gusts of wind. Suddenly, as I stared upward, I became aware that two men were working their way out along the foot-ropes, and, as they reached ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... embarked on our return voyage. Raimundo cut two slender poles, one for a mast and the other for a sprit— to these he rigged a sail we had brought in the boat, for we were to return by the open river, and expected a good wind to carry us to Caripi. As soon as we got out of the channel we began to feel the wind—the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... who joined the Dominican order and set everything in his "Summa Theologiae," psychology, logic, policy, and morals. And thus it was that the Dominicans filled the world, upholding the doctrines of Rome in the most famous pulpits of every nation, and contending almost everywhere against the free sprit of the Universities, like the vigilant guardians of dogma that they were, the unwearying artisans of the fortunes of the popes, the most powerful amongst all the artistic, scientific, and literary workers who raised the huge edifice of Catholicism such ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola |
