"Plank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assembly, which is the true cause of the display of energy. What happened in the Convention after the fall of Robespierre and the terrible Committee of Public Safety proves this, as well as the Chambers of 1815. Now, if the dictatorial power, placed in the hands of a few, has always been a plank of safety in great crises, it seems natural to draw the conclusion that countries controlled by elective assemblies must be politically and militarily weaker than pure monarchies, although in other ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... helmet, which was unscrewed and lay on the deck near his heavily-weighted feet. The dress was wet, and the man was enjoying a quiet pipe, from all which Edgar judged that he was resting after a dive. Near to the plank on which the diver was seated there stood the chest containing the air-pumps. It was open, the pumps were in working order, with two men standing by to work them. Coils of india-rubber tubing lay beside it. Elsewhere were strewn about stones for repairing the ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... weak in mind and body; and it was with the eagerness of a child that he pursued his exploration. He climbed far down upon the rocks; on the beaches he pursued the retreating breakers. The merest broken plank or rag of cordage was a treasure in his eyes to be secured at the peril of his life. To see him, with weak and stumbling footsteps, expose himself to the pursuit of the surf, or the snares and pitfalls of the weedy rock, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up a rickety staircase, a still more rickety ladder, and came to a platform at a level with the top of the organ; and all around them, reaching up out of the dim light below, were the open pipes. Passing hurriedly around, on a narrow plank, to the back of the organ, their agitated guide paused before a row of immense pedal pipes, and, without allowing his own eyes to look, he held the light that ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... free to go and ask their help to interest their own firms to secure another position for me. Their respect for me depended upon my ability to maintain my social position. They were like steamer friends. On the voyage they clung to one another closer than bark to a tree, but once the gang plank was lowered the intimacy vanished. If I wished to keep them as friends I ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... scuffling while each found a plank to suit him, all was quiet in the boat. Dick, who felt far too excited over the events of the night to be sleepy, had volunteered to keep watch, and, lighting another pipe at the lantern, smoked till it was broad daylight. Then he roused the crew, and in less than two hours afterwards ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... man with a large black beard and whiskers looked over the bulwarks, and seeing Mr Ward, came along the plank which connected the ship with the quay towards us. He shook hands warmly with Mr Ward, who took him aside, while I stood patting Solon's head and admiring the appearance of the ship—the neat way in which she was rigged and painted, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... making sleds after the manner of the country. They are made of a single plank turned up at one end like a fiddle head, and the baggage is lashed on in bags and sacks. Two other Indians arrived from ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... them to a little bridge of a single plank and a hand-rail, over which they crossed, and began to go up still among woods to the other side, where the bank was ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... little troubled with the thoughts of either wives or sweethearts. No one for the time dwelt on the somewhat serious work on which they were likely to be engaged the next day. At length, each man looked out for the softest plank he could find, and turned in to sleep, the officers enjoying no more luxurious couches than their inferiors; to some poor fellows it might be the last rest they were to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... sure, little goose. Wherever I feel water heaving under a plank, there I feel at home. I'll pick up some craft or other to take me off, never fear. I won't stay twenty-four hours in London, away from you on the one hand, and from somebody else on ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... ah ha, you'll have to catch him first," remarked Mr. Lilburn with a quiet smile; stepping from the plank to the wharf as ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... to want me. I am grateful, but I prefer to live here. My present income would make an undignified affair of life among the friends of other days. I'd feel continually as if I were overboard and holding on to a slippery plank. Down here I'm independent. I have enough for my needs and something to give—. That's a good-looking hat you have on. Did you get it ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... a green lane and across long meadow-paths dim in the moonlight. A nightingale was heard on this side and on that. Overhead they had a great space of sky with broken cloud full of the glory of the moon. The meadows dipped to a brook, slenderly spanned by a plank. Then there was an ascent through a cornfield to a copse. Rounding this they had sight of Brookfield. But while they were yet at the brook, Wilfrid said, "When is it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this arid region nature is abrupt, angular, and sudden—the plain squarely abutting the cliff, the cliff walling the canon; the dry water-course sunk in the plain like a carpenter's groove into a plank. Cloud and sky look the same as at home, but the earth is a new earth—new geologically, and new in the lines of its landscapes. It seems by the forms she develops that Nature must use tools that she long since discarded in the East. She works as if with the square and the ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... place on the left hand of O'Brien, who was in the middle. The sight of his two brother-martyrs capped and pinioned, and with the fatal cord around each neck, seemed to unman the poor fellow utterly. He stumbled on touching an uneven plank on the scaffold, so that many thought he had fainted; but it was not so, though he unquestionably was labouring under intense agony of mind. O'Brien, firm and unshrinking to the last, turned and looked at him encouragingly, and ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... know it by a remarkable knot in the wood, and by its being the next board, except one, to the wainscot, which fronts the door. At the distance of about a yard from that end, nearer the window, you will perceive a line across it, as if the plank had been joined;—the way to open it is this:—Press your foot upon the line; the end of the board will then sink, and you may slide it with ease beneath the other. Below, you will see a hollow place.' St. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... of the next few hours Keith got confused and mixed impressions of many things. The fortresslike warehouses; the plank roads; the new Jenny Lind Theatre; the steam paddies eating steadily into the sand hills at the edge of town; the Dramatic Museum; houses perched on the crumbling edges of hills; houses sunk far below the level of new streets, with tin cans and ducks floating around ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... have condescended to have noticed this place, had it not been that I wish you to observe a vessel which is lying along the pier-wharf, with a plank from the shore to her gunwale. It is low water, and she is aground, and the plank dips down at such an angle that it is a work of danger to go either in or out of her. You observe that there is nothing very remarkable in her. She is a cutter, ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his money, for his second wife was wealthy and would not need it. There might be business to do which would necessitate her presence in New York. At that moment she almost wished for an urgent summons from the New World. A few hours in a train, the crossing of a gang-plank, the hoot of a siren, and she would be free from all these complications! The sea would lie between her and Arabian—Adela Sellingworth—Craven. She would stay away for months. She would not ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... leaders were an ex-brewer, an ex-saloonkeeper and the chief liquor lobbyist of the state. It was evident that they were there to intimidate the party, and they did. The Democrats threw a bouquet to the women in the form of a plank and then quietly repudiated it. Practically the same thing happened in the Republican convention. They, too, endorsed a plank and "double-crossed." There was apparently no difference between the two dominant parties on that score. ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... that he might expect a continuation of hostilities as long as the stolen animal remained in his possession. And, that the messenger might see that I was in earnest, before he left me, I sent the carpenter to break up three or four canoes that lay ashore at the head of the harbour. The plank was carried on board, as materials for building a house for Omai, at the place where he intended to settle. I afterward went, properly accompanied, to the next harbour, where we broke up three or four more canoes, and burnt an equal ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... is necessary to place upon the sub-committee a recalcitrant or two. Then the method is somewhat different. The boss' platform is cut into separate planks and first one and then another of the faithful offers a plank, and after some discussion a majority of the committee adopt it. So when the sub-committee reports back there stands the boss' handiwork just as he has ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... the round of Ascalon's business section with the town's new peace officer, introducing him in due form. They stood now in front of the hotel, the plank awning of which extended over the sidewalk breaking the sun, Judge Thayer about to go ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... gone away to the right some time before, and was quite lost to view—had brought my friend's alpenstock, and was developing a considerable capacity for wielding it. He followed nimbly across; but the Kurd stopped on the edge of the snow, and stood peering and hesitating, like one who shivers on the plank at a bathing-place, nor could the jeering cries of the Cossack induce him to venture on the treacherous surface. Meanwhile, we who had crossed were examining the broken cliff which rose above us. It looked not exactly dangerous, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... surprised to know that I have dropped the radicals, with the exception of Thomson, and I fear he too must walk the plank and go by the board. I am becoming quite implacable toward these intelligent people, and the salon will soon be void of my presence. The spirit of it has gone already and cannot be revived. That is why I left my mother's home—because the spirit of home ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... bed-clothes, of any sort; for the thought of them had never entered my mind before going to sea; so that I was obliged to sleep on the bare boards of my bunk; and when the ship pitched violently, and almost stood upon end, I must have looked like an Indian baby tied to a plank, and hung up against a ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... however unpromising, is still open. Noble types of character may rest on only the native instincts of the soul or even on broadly interpreted utilitarian considerations. But if morality without religion were only a bloodless corpse or a plank in a shipwreck, there is now need enough for teachers to study its form, drift, and uses by itself alone. This, at least, is our purpose in considering the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... a cold perspiration starting on his temples when he remembered Mlle. Lucienne's pride, and that honor has her only faith, the safety-plank to which she had desperately clung in the midst of the storms of her life. What if she should leave him, now that the name he bore ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the breeze, darting down into the hollow between two seas, toiling heavily up the next wave, with death apparently close behind on the crests of two or three pursuing breakers, and then, with a puff which made every timber and plank quiver, the gale would almost lift us through a breaking wall of white foam, and, with more or less of the sea aboard, away we would go down the incline, a plaything of a boat, with a frightened little man at the tiller, and ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... married couple. Though the heroine is in peasant dress, she is treated with distinction by her captors. Her history moves them to tears, and they in turn are in the midst of relating to her the involved story of their courtship, when the vessel is wrecked by a gale. Borne ashore on a plank, Idalia is succored by cottagers, and continues her journey in man's clothes. She is loved by a lady, and by the lady's husband, who turns out to be her dear Myrtano. Their felicity is interrupted by the jealousy of Myrtano's wife, who appeals to the Pope and forces the lovers to separate ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... together. Even her mother and Phil would be outsiders. So would all her friends—Daisy Ellington and Frank Farrar ... and Steve Yeager if he lived. And he must live. She affirmed that passionately, clung to the thought of it as a drowning man does to a plank. He would get well—of course ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... the air, so that we cut and run a deal faster than we came. Of course the report soon got about that Captain Goss was an old pirate, or at the best an old bucaneer; and the Barking folks used to tell how many crews he had made walk the plank, and how there was blood-marks on his hands, which he used to try to cover with tar. But no one dared to say a word of this to him; and as he was a prime sailor, and even kind after his fashion, when he had taken first a reg'lar ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... sand, which his master had caused to be thrown over his remains. It is on this beach that the measure of the insults dealt to the poor negroes is filled. When the negro dies, his fellow-slaves lay him on a plank, carry him to the beach, where beneath high-water mark they hoe a little sand over him; but to the new negro even this mark of humanity is denied. He is tied to a pole, carried out in the evening and dropped upon the beach, where it is just possible the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... a fatal mistake in saying to her sister, "He will never come again," and so depriving her of the last frail plank of hope, and letting her sink in the waves of despair. Perhaps, after all, suspense is not the worst of all things to bear; for in suspense there is hope, and in hope, life! Certain it is that a prop seemed withdrawn from Nora, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... dock-yard, and passed on, saluting those whom he met, to the place where the Portuguese flag indicated the gondola of Lopez de Galle, which was prepared to receive him. They threw a carpet across the plank upon which Mary was to step in passing into the gondola. Mary, her father, and Geronimo entered the boat; the six oars dipped simultaneously into the water, and, pushed by the strong arms of the Portuguese sailors, ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... on a plank between two pairs of wheels being produced and the box made comfortable with a quilt and a pillow belonging to Mammy June, Mun Bun was laid, still fast asleep, in this vehicle, and Russ started to drag his ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... each row of benches is a narrow passage that turned out to be "the gangway," of which you read and hear so much. I had always associated "the gangway" with a plank along which you walked to somewhere—perhaps on to the Treasury Bench. But it is only a small passage like a narrow aisle in a church. There is a good deal of significance about this gangway, for anybody ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... and box-elders, and there's two of the dandiest lakes you ever saw, right near town! And we've got seven miles of cement walks already, and building more every day! Course a lot of these towns still put up with plank walks, but not for ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Clym reached the hatches, the framework of which was shaken to its foundations by the velocity of the current. Nothing but the froth of the waves could be discerned in the pool below. He got upon the plank bridge over the race, and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off, crossed to the other side of the river. There he leant over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... can barely speak English, and never did or will see England, equally talk of 'news from home'). It also seems, by the papers of the 24th of December, which came by a steamer the other day, that war is imminent. I shall have to wait for convoy, I suppose, as I object to walking the plank from a Yankee privateer. I shall wait here for the next mail, and then go back to Capetown, stopping by the way, so as to get there early in March, and arrange for my voyage. The weather had a relapse into cold, and an attempt ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... stories of encounter On plank and mast and spar; But never the brave barque I launched And ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... which stood up naked and blackened high in the air. It is not the purpose of this paper to describe St. John, nor to dwell upon its picturesque situation. As one approaches it from the harbor it gives a promise which its rather shabby streets, decaying houses, and steep plank sidewalks do not keep. A city set on a hill, with flags flying from a roof here and there, and a few shining spires and walls glistening in the sun, always looks well at a distance. St. John is extravagant in the matter of flagstaffs; almost every well-to-do citizen seems to have one on his premises, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... scarcely bowled away, when a little buggy and a sorrel pony came up the road, and somebody alighted with a brisk spring, slipped the rein with a loose knot through the fence-rail at the corner, and came up one side of the two-plank foot-walk that ran around the Horseshoe; somebody who had come home unexpectedly, to take his little wife to ride. Kenneth Kincaid had business over at the ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the saddle room briskly his heel slipped on the plank floor, bringing him down. "I'd take me oath that was a banana peel, if it was on the sidewalk," he exclaimed, after a gymnastic twist that nearly dislocated his neck. "Some of ye fellows is pretty careless wit' hoof grease, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... braces and square the yards. Look sharp, now, lads. If that blackguard gets hold of us ye'll have to walk the plank, every man ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... assured me with a smile that the boat was perfectly safe and would return in a few hours, I went aboard with the rest of the fools, children, and old folks. This I accomplished after barely escaping a plunge into the river from what struck me as being an exceedingly narrow gang-plank. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... the women this seemed a plank of safety; each hopefully interrogated the countenance of her lord; even Elvira, an artist herself! - but indeed there must be something permanently mercantile in the female nature. The two men exchanged a glance; it was tragic; not otherwise might two philosophers ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with one hand while the other's in my pocket; and good and evil attend each other, lead to each other, are such Siamese twins that if separated they would both die. We make phrases about peace, pity, and brotherhood, while every nation stands prepared for shipwreck and for the sinking plank to which two are clinging and the stronger pushes the weaker into the flood and thus floats safe. Why, the old apple of wisdom, which Adam and Eve swallowed and thus lost their innocence, was a gentle nursery drug compared with the new ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... precious little that ever bothers him. The fellow is a Puritan preacher—of the same breed as the Huguenots—and possesses a head as hard as an oaken plank." ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... 'em as well as he could in his fearful hurry, and his arms bein' full, he threw the dressin' gown round his shoulders and madly raced over the gang plank, still emitting that agonizing cry: "Samantha, wait for me! stop the ship!" which he kep' up after I had advanced onward and he held both ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the open portion protected from the sea by coamings all round about a foot high. And down in this open portion of the vessel were the galley-slaves, naked as the day they were born, and each chained to the bench upon which he sat. A gang-plank ran fore and aft of this space along the centre line of the ship, for the accommodation of the boatswains, usually two in number, whose duty it was to continually walk fore and aft, while the ship was under way, keeping a watchful eye ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... knapsack down to the river and put it into the Otter's smallest boat, which he called the perissoire, although it was not really a canoe. He was the chief builder of it, and as a contrivance for bringing home to man the solemn truth that life hangs to a thread or floats upon a plank—perhaps the worst state of the two—it certainly did him infinite credit. It was a flatbottomed outrigged deal boat, very long, and so narrow that to look over one's shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme delicacy, especially where the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... way to drive the hours before you four-in-hand, is to select a soft plank on the gun-deck, and go to sleep. A fine specific, which seldom fails, unless, to be sure, you have been sleeping all the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... and that I had reason to feel sure that such a plan could be accomplished. This cable reached St. Louis on the morning the convention assembled. I do not know how much influence it had, or whether it had any, in causing the insertion of that plank in the platform. Such a plank was inserted. In my opinion it saved the Presidential election, and, in my opinion, in saving the Presidential election, it saved the country from the incalculable evil of the free coinage ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... 18th.—Eight P.M.—At about 6 P.M. I was crossing on a plank over a gully, on my return from an expedition to Golden Island, when three rounds of cheers from the 'Furious,' about a mile off, struck my ear. Three rounds of cheers, followed by as many from the other ships. She was off the rock! ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the G. O. P. Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, and all sorts of people and things. Let's hurry over, as here comes the Elephant now, with Mr. Taft riding it, and the plank might give way." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... displayed a considerable way above the tops of his gaiters; his hands thrust deep into his breeches pockets; his spectacles high on his bald forehead, and his eyes looking through the open letter that lay before him; through the desk underneath it; through the plank floor, cellars and foundations of the edifice; and through the entire world into the distant ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... half the population of South Africa in the water in front of the biggest bathing-house I have ever seen. The handling of the surf-plank requires some care, for it is a short, heavy board, and in the back-wash is apt to fly back on the unwary, hitting them on their food-receptacle, and effectually (to use a schoolboy term) "bagging their wind." You walk out in the shoal water up to your shoulders, and as a big sea comes ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Frances was twelve years of age her sister wrote in her journal, "Frank said we might as well have a ship if we did live on shore; so we took a hen coop pointed at the top, put a big plank across it, and stood up, one at each end, with an old rake handle apiece to steer with. Up and down we went, slow when it was a calm sea and fast when there was a storm, until the old hen clucked and the chickens ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... whose head was sinking under the surface, although his hands still grasped the gangplank with a feeble hold. With a dozen stalwart strokes, Rand reached the almost unconscious man, threw the loop from his own shoulder over his head and drew it under his arms and placed both his hands firmly upon the plank. Then grasping the bolt staple of ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... when large were filled with split pieces of wood; when small they were plugged with moss. A door was made of hewn planks, and hinged very simply on two pins; one made by letting the plank project as a point, the other by nailing on a pin after the door was placed; both pins fitting, of course, into inch ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that on a Wednesday morning about three weeks later, I was sitting at one end of a plank picnic table with five boys and girls lined up along the sides. This was to be our headquarters and factory for the summer—a roomy unused barn belonging to the parents of one of the group members, ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... with quick energetic steps, an alert and suggestive figure amidst a scene of placidity. Up the uneven plank walk he went, noting with a swift, sidelong glance the neat white house of Dibbott, the Indian agent, a house that thrust its snowy, wooden walls and luxuriant little garden close up to the street. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... sailor men! Are you going to drown like rats on a plank?" A voice that Wilbur did not know went ringing through that horrid shouting of wind and sea like the call of a bugle. He turned to see Moran, the girl of the "Lady Letty," standing erect upon the quarterdeck, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... running, and supplying the men with bows and arrows. In a few minutes, they let fly a shower of arrows amongst the thick of us. Luckily we had not a man wounded; but an arrow fell between the Captain and Third Lieutenant, and went through the boats thwart, and stuck in it. It was an oak-plank inch thick. We immediately discharged a volley of muskets at them, which put them to flight. There were, however, none of them killed. We now abandoned all hopes of refreshment here. This island lies contiguous to ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... seemed to be satisfactory, for the man answered "Good!" and after a brief delay a wicket in the gate was opened, the portcullis creaked upward, and a plank was thrust across the ditch. The horseman waited until the preparations were complete; then he slid to the ground, threw his rein to the servant, and boldly walked across. In an instant he left behind him the dark ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... these minutes in prayer—no; that will never do," he added, grasping the shoulder of Agnes Altman, who, at that moment, attempted to rise; "keep down—all that is between you and death is that plank." ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... uncurtained windows the moonlight was streaming, making white splashes upon the floors. Across the plank pathways they wandered locating the halls, the great living-room, the spacious dining-room, the airy, comfortable bedrooms exposed to the south, the library, the kitchen, and the ballroom on the third floor. It was to be a grand house—this house of Van Dorn. And in their fancy the man and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Garter, and tells you, between mouthfuls, about all the ships that sail the seas. "No, sir! Pardon me! The table on this ship cannot compare with that of the old Gorgic. The Potterdam's the only ship for table outside the Ritz-Carlton boats, though Captain Van der Plank's a personal friend of mine. He knows what eating is, sir! Still, I like the small boats—no elevators, gymnasiums, and swimming-pools for me. I like to know I'm at sea, sir." And all the time he's casting round for a victim who ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... in irreproachable pongee, and a wholly reproachable brown topi, scrambled up the lifting gang-plank of the big Pacific liner, setting sail from Yokohama, he was welcomed with acclaim. The Captain stopped swearing long enough to megaphone a greeting from the bridge, the First Officer slapped him on the back, while the half dozen ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... they do with the ropes?" asked Sunny Boy, as they went down the inclined plank and stepped on the ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... third time it wasn't a loose leaf torn out and stuck on a plank, or just an old weather-stained book; it was a copy that had been specially bound—a rare piece of work. I don't care particularly for fine bindings, but that had been done with taste,—a dark green,—the color you get looking across the top of a pine wood; and it seemed appropriate. Emerson ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... remember something Captain Ross related in the account of his voyage: he said he shot through an inch plank with a bullet of frozen mercury; if I had any oil it would amount to nearly the same thing, for he speaks of a ball of sweet almond, which was fired against a post and fell back to the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... schoolmaster. And hence the necessity for maintaining a local breadth of representation sufficient to do justice to the principle of the scheme, and to prevent it, if we may so speak, from sinking in the less solid parts of the kingdom. A parochial breadth of base would serve as if to plank over the unsounder portions of the general surface, and give footing to a system of schools and teachers worthy, as a whole, of the character and the necessities of a country wise and enlightened in the main, but that totters on the brink of ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... falls, and crushes it to fragments. Some of the seamen, stunned by the stroke, sink, and rise no more; others cling to fragments of the wreck. Ceyx, with the hand that used to grasp the sceptre, holds fast to a plank, calling for help,—alas, in vain,—upon his father and his father-in-law. But oftenest on his lips was the name of Halcyone. To her his thoughts cling. He prays that the waves may bear his body to her sight, and that ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... crank theft whit shut trick shock sling whet shed shelf trunk trust whig shop swift plank sting whip shad frock swing fresh whiff chub strap smith twist when shun prick string track whist trash brick smack crash whim chest crust stump stock which script scrub splash scrap whisk spend shred struck block ship cramp grunt scamp frank chill smash ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... (not to dwell upon these shocking incidents) Ballantrae and I and two others were taken for recruits, while the skipper and all the rest were cast into the sea by the method of walking the plank. It was the first time I had seen this done; my heart died within me at the spectacle; and Master Teach or one of his acolytes (for my head was too much lost to be precise) remarked upon my pale face in a very alarming manner. I had the strength to cut a step or two of a jig, and cry out some ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The Speranza herself having been in danger while the gale lasted, the captain and crew concluded that they were on the traces of a wreck, and a boat was lowered for the purpose of examining the objects in the water. A hen-coop, some broken spars, and fragments of shattered plank were the first evidences discovered of the terrible disaster that had happened. Some of the lighter articles of cabin furniture, wrenched and shattered, were found next. And, lastly, a memento of melancholy interest turned up, in the shape of a lifebuoy, with a corked bottle attached ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... of punts have been made out of rattans, covered with tarred canvas, and the canoe had plank sides put to it, in lieu of the gunwales, which were burnt. There were some thunder and lightning in the evening, and heavy rain, which caused the tents to leak, they having ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... gang-plank above him the passengers were leaving the ship. Some delay had arisen, and for a moment the procession halted. Suddenly Sandy caught his breath. There, just above him, stood "the damsel passing fair." Instead of the tam-o'-shanter she wore a big drooping hat of brown, ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... meen bizness i can put U on to whar your dorter is but its goin to kost U sum muney if U evr want to see her agin theres a big gang got her hid where U woodnt find hur in a 100 yerze but if U will plank down 10000 dolers sheze yourze if U dont you'll nevr see hur no moar if sheze wurth thet much to U U can git her by not blabin to nobudy that yer got this leter an plankin down the rino taint no use fer U to try an git the police on our trax fer one uv the gang is alwayz with the kid an we have sworn ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... near to her. If he but brushed her white skirt with his knee, there was an instant communication between them, such as there had never been before. They did not talk at all, but when they went over the gang-plank she took his arm and kept her shoulder close to his. He felt as if they were enveloped in a highly charged atmosphere, an invisible network of subtle, almost painful sensibility. They had somehow ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... to the front, debouching so as to avoid the few scattered groups still outside. He did not offer his arm, but kept close at her side, ready to aid instantly should she make a misstep amid the unfamiliar surroundings. Once he steadied her as she slipped from the single plank that made the walk around the cottage, but instantly withdrew his sustaining hand. Not until they were walking along the street, with its electric lights at each intersection, did either speak. Then ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... and try them," cried Captain Smith, in a hoarse voice, "we may have started a plank ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the "admiral's table," said to be made from a plank of the ship of the last Admiral of Luebeck, who flourished in 1570; and even more interesting than the Rathskeller is the Schiffergesellschaft, with its strange motto and its even ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... a bridge whereby to cross the intervening space. This bridge, which I cannot see, I can at least destroy. I cleave the air with a ruler in front of the Spider making for the window. That is quite enough: the tiny animal at once ceases to go forward and falls. The invisible foot-plank is broken. My son, young Paul, who is helping me, is astounded at this wave of the magic wand, for not even he, with his fresh, young eyes, is able to see a support ahead for the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Providence she was allowed to win the weather berth, imagine her trying, while she rolled down to her middle deck, to damage one of these belted brutes, who meantime would be leisurely picking out the particular plank by which she intended to introduce into her enemy's vitals a weight of explosive metal sufficient in all truth to blow ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... the crew were all in the sea, and, to my amazement, bearing up the boat with their shoulder and one hand, while swimming and guiding us ashore with the other! There on the land we were hauled up, and four weary days were spent fetching and carrying from the Mission Station every plank, tool, and nail, necessary for her repair. Every boat for these seas ought to be built of cedar wood and copper-fastened, which is by far the most economical in the end. And all houses should be built of wood which is as full as possible of gum or resin, since ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... by every steamer," Hodges asserted in a positive tone—not to anybody in particular, but with a sweep of the table to attract enough listeners to make it worthwhile for him to proceed. "My man is aboard before the gang-plank is secure—gets my package from the chief steward and is at my house with the truffles within an hour. Then I at once take proper care of them. That is why my truffles have that peculiar flavor you spoke of, Mr. Portman, when you last dined at my ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Over the narrow plank, just above the dam, the man no doubt had escaped to the other side, where the old ruins of a mill, with a big water wheel, made a safe hiding place for ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... the following sketch will support the table top and seats. The seat may be a plank about twelve inches wide and one and one-eighth ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... first school at Shingle Creek when I was a girl of seventeen. My school house was a claim shanty reached by a plank from the other side of the creek. My boarding place was a quarter of a mile from the creek. The window of the school house was three little panes of glass which shoved sideways to let in ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... was served on an unplaned plank, the ends resting on kegs in front of the boilers. The unwashed gang simply helped themselves, and then retired to any convenient spot where they chose to eat. I discovered a fairly comfortable seat on a cracker ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... knees in mud, and, throwing out the ivory, we found that a whole plank was rent out, and that it was impossible to repair our boat; and we were hidden by the canes from those who could have assisted us, had they known that we required their assistance, and we had no ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... dis won't do: it's no good joke, I promise you. Ma chere amie, mon coeur," cried mademoiselle to Lady Augusta—"viens— come, let us go—Don't touch that," pursued she, roughly, to black Tom, who was going to draw away the plank that led to the shore. "I will go home dis minute, and speak to Miladi S——. Viens! viens, ma chere amie!"—and she darted out of the boat, whilst Dashwood followed, in vain attempting to stop her. She prudently, however, took the longest way through the park, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... at best some brackish water, which had collected in the cavities of the rocks on the beach after the rain, but it was largely mixed with seawater. On the 7th do. we remained here, in order to repair our pinnace with a plank, for we found that without this it would have been impossible to ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... the stone, but on a short board at the side, which ran at right angles with the general planks, and seemed intended as part of a kind of framework to the stone. This board creaked under my weight; and when I looked more closely at it, I discovered a couple of sunk hinges let deep into the plank adjoining, and covered over with dust and rust. With my sailor's knife I cleared away at the edges, and after several trials, one of which broke my blade, I managed to raise it and swing ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... rows of swathe as he mowed. I wonder whether the man ever thought, as he reposed at noontide on a couch of grass under the hedge? Did he think that those immense muscles, that broad, rough-hewn plank of a chest of his, those vast bones encased in sinewy limbs—being flesh in its fulness—ought to have more of this earth than mere common men, and still more than thin-faced people—mere people, not men—in ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... of our company had gone up again in order to go and see the Rapids. Abbey besought me to return; poor Jarrett besought me. But I felt dizzy, and I could not and would not cross again. Angelo then sprang across the crevice, and remaining there, called for a plank ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... habeas corpus out'n our own heads," said Timothy. "I 'ain't never looked ter the law fur pertection. Hyar's the pertecter." He touched the trigger of his rifle and glanced reassuringly at his sister as he sat beside her on the plank laid as a seat from side to ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... very narrow space a slight sonority, and he presently perceived that he was rapping on wood. He then rubbed the spot vigorously with his handkerchief, and beneath the thick layer of dust and dirt which he thus removed he found a piece of oak plank carefully inserted in the wall. On one side of this plank was a small round hole; it was that of the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... he said, with us gone, and nobody but a lot of muddle-headed scientists to deal with, it would be easy to take the ship; seize all the treasure in her; make everybody who would not join the mutiny walk the plank, except the women, and steer for some place where they could land ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... crowd maintained an absolute silence; and with this an exterior air of calm that was the more impressive because the eager, almost awe-struck expression upon every face showed how strong was the emotion that thus strongly was restrained. But when El Sabio, after much coaxing, crossed the gang-plank between the boat and the pier, and so came to where he could be seen of all plainly, there was a curious low sound in the air as though all at once every man in the crowd had heaved a sigh; and the sound swelled into a loud murmur as Pablo, in obedience to a quick order that I gave him in ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... reached Hooven's again, they found that the Leaguers had already taken their position in the ditch. The plank bridge across it had been torn up. Magnus, two long revolvers lying on the embankment in front of him, was in the middle, Harran at his side. On either side, some five feet intervening between each man, stood the other Leaguers, their revolvers ready. Dabney, the silent old man, had ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... from mud. I mean that in walking down the middle of any street in Cairo, a moderately-framed man would soon stick fast, and not be able to move. The houses are generally built at considerable intervals, and rarely face each other; and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid, on which the mud had accumulated only up to one's ankles. I walked all over Cairo with big boots, and with my trowsers tucked up to my knees; but at the crossings I found considerable danger, and occasionally had my doubts as to the possibility ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... sheltered nooks, adjacent to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... enterprising brothers who maintained on Barataria Bay in the Gulf, some forty miles south of New Orleans, a most lucrative resort for pirates and slave traders. There they defied the law and the devil, trafficking in spoils filched from honest merchantmen whose crews had walked the plank. Pierre Lafitte was a very proper figure of a pirate himself, true to the best traditions of his calling. But withal he displayed certain gallantry to atone for his villainies, for he spurned British gold and persuasions and offered his sword and his men to defend New Orleans as one faithful ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... benefits that result from the exercise, are attractive, and may be rendered highly instructive. For this purpose, the plank or board used should be well hung and properly balanced. The distance from the fulcrum or point of support should be accurately graduated, and marked in feet and inches. Then, knowing the weight of one scholar, the weights of all the others may ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... old times of religious gloom and intolerance lived Richard Digby, the gloomiest and most intolerant of a stern brotherhood. His plan of salvation was so narrow, that, like a plank in a tempestuous sea, it could avail no sinner but himself, who bestrode it triumphantly, and hurled anathemas against the wretches whom he saw struggling with the billows of eternal death. In his view ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... timberjacks had come only recently; so much was obvious. They had come to stay; that was as plainly to be seen. Rough slabs of green timber, still drying and twisting and splitting as it did so, had been knocked together rudely to make a long, low building where cook and cookstove and a two-plank table indicated both kitchen ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... towns and villages, clearing the forests, and turning the prairies into farms and gardens. Some went in wagons, some on horseback; great numbers even went on foot, pushing their children and household goods in handcarts, in wheelbarrows, in little box carts on four small wheels made of plank. [9] ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... with the desire to feel the soft crush of the earth under his feet again, and not waiting for the long plank that Bateese was already swinging from the scow to the shore, he made a leap that put him on the sandy beach, St. Pierre's wife had given him this permission, and he looked to see what effect his act had on the half-breed. The face of Concombre ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... beggars," continued the B. M. O., watching the mountain plank through his glasses; "every variety of adventurer in their ranks—cattlemen, ranchmen, Hudson Bay trappers, North West police, lumbermen, mail carriers, bear hunters, Indians, renegade frontiersmen, soldiers of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... Captain William Mitchell, who has had charge of the vessel for some years. He was busily engaged in packing his clothes into chests preparatory to going ashore. He remembers well the Beaver in her early days. Every room, every plank possesses historic interest to him. He pointed out the Captain's room. 'Just the same,' said he, 'as when I first saw it in '36. There's the chest of drawers, there's the bunk, and there's the hook where ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... matter of course, there is still lacking to Mrs. Henry de Jan and her rather shadowy William anything, for instance, in the nature of a road on which to walk, or indeed any approach to their own verandah except, floating on the clay, a narrow plank gangway that has to serve as a hustling high-road for a mixed and dusky populace. Under the circumstances she has done nobly well to arm herself with the twin defences of cheerfulness and humour; and if the cheerfulness comes at times near ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... over, still the bomb would have been several seconds in falling—it might be right on top of us now! Should we run backward or forward: Here was a place, in between some grain-bags. But the grain-bags were open toward the wharf, and the wharf was what he was aiming at, and a plank blown through you—No, the trench was the thing, but—Quick, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... coffee in the galley for the stevedores, who had just finished loading the ship. The captain took the boy by the hand and leading him up the plank to the galley told the cook to give him a cup ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard |
