"Semaphore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Semaphore established from Kedgeree to Calcutta, is of very great advantage to the shipping interest of the place. Any vessel getting on shore, or coming from sea in distress, can send intelligence of her situation to town in ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... of the Californian immigration, on the extremest point of the sandy peninsula, where the bay of San Francisco debouches into the Pacific, there stood a semaphore telegraph. Tossing its black arms against the sky,—with its back to the Golden Gate and that vast expanse of sea whose nearest shore was Japan,—it signified to another semaphore further inland the "rigs" of incoming ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of plenipotentiaries assembled at Vienna were not more thunderstruck when, on that very 19th of March, the semaphore brought them news of the legitimate King of France once more fled, and of his country once more abandoned to the hated usurper, than was Captain Jack as he watched the distant flagstaff in the sunrise, and saw, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... journeys back and forth I had been particularly struck by the bold, rocky hill that shut off the view toward the north. Atop this hill had been rigged a two-armed semaphore, which, one of the clerks told me, was used to signal the sight of ships coming in the Golden Gate. The arms were variously arranged according to the rig or kind of vessel. Every man, every urchin, every Chinaman, even, knew the meaning of these various signals. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... morning, April 1, at about daybreak, Mosby was wakened by one of his men who had been sleeping in the barn. This man, having gone outside, had observed a small party of Union troops on the Maryland side of the river who were making semaphore signals to somebody on the Virginia side. Mosby ordered everybody to turn out as quickly as possible and went out to watch the signalmen with his field glasses. While he was watching, Dick Moran, a Mosby man who had billeted with friends down the road, arrived ...
— Rebel Raider • H. Beam Piper
... lamp-post. An interminable stream of 'buses—yellow, purple, and brown—with vans, hansoms, and growlers, blocked the way in front of them. A single policeman, with his back turned to them, and his two arms going like an animated semaphore, was the only human being in their immediate vicinity. Amid all the roar and rattle of the huge city they were as thoroughly left to themselves as though they were in the centre ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the station building he walked down the track to the foot of the semaphore, and flung the rusty lever over. His action expressed something of the contempt in which he held all "local freights." Then he sauntered back to his work with his ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... wigwag signals, and by the use of the heliograph. As it is of the utmost importance that the enemy should not read the message, the signal books on board a vessel are protected with the greatest care, and are destroyed along with the cipher code whenever it is seen that capture is inevitable. The semaphore system in use in the British navy was tried for a time aboard some of our vessels, but it never became popular, ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... platform, it seemed as if Barnstaple had never seen such a man; they were mad with joy, and all wanted to shake hands with me at once. I dodged a good many, and by dint of waving his arms like a semaphore the chairman succeeded, not in restoring peace, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... was sending incomprehensible semaphore signals of farewell as the Wiggle slipped round the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... by our troops hidden in a church tower. His presence was only discovered through the erratic movements of the hands of the church clock, which he was using to signal his friends by an improvised semaphore code. Had this man not been seized it is probable he would have signalled the time of arrival and the exact position of the headquarters staff of the force and a high explosive shell would then have ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... in my cable. Every last one of them, semaphore, lamp code, Marconi—a copy, mind you, not the original. That was too dangerous. But it's the real goods, and you can lay to that." He slapped the German upon the shoulder with a rough familiarity ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the dignity of misfortune, vanished the last semblance of the graceless and treacherous thraldom of the Spanish Bourbons in the capital of Sicily. The flag of Italy was run up on the tower of the Semaphore. Everywhere the revolution triumphed except at Messina, Milazzo and Syracuse. Even Catania, where a rising had been put down after a sanguinary struggle, was now ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... among the rocks, I would suddenly descry her on the banks of the Falaise standing like a semaphore signal. She gazed passionately at the vast sea, glittering in the sunlight, and the boundless sky empurpled with fire. Sometimes I would distinguish her at the bottom of a valley, walking quickly, with her elastic English step; and I would go toward her, attracted by I know not what, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... long they will, after a long fatiguing march, keep up these festivities, singing the same song over and over again, and dancing and stamping, with their legs and arms flying about like the wings of a semaphore, as they move slowly round and round in the same circle and on the same ground; their heads and bodies lolling to and fro in harmony with the rest of the dance, which is always kept at more even measure when, as on this occasion, there were ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was no wickedness abroad; it was coming fairly heavy in big flakes, but lying quiet as apple-blossoms. Toward four o'clock I left the office for the roundhouse, and got just about half-way across the yard when the wind veered like a scared semaphore. I had left the depot in a snow-storm; I reached the roundhouse ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... of the ever menacing sea, dune succeeds dune, forming a landscape of most unique character. Passing the small hamlet of Zuitcote, marked by the sunken tower of its small church, which now serves as a sort of semaphore for the fishing boats off the coast, one reached the canal which crosses the plain picturesquely. This led one along the path to the quaint old town of Furnes, showing against the heavy dark green of the old trees, its dull red and pink roofs with the bulk of ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... contain a secret message which can be easily read by those who know the semaphore signalling code. This signalling consists of swinging two arms in different positions, either singly or together. The dots indicate where the letters join. For example: The semaphore sign for N consists of both arms pointing downwards at an angle of 90 degrees ^. The letter I is shown ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... tied there; but bound and muffled as she was, the strength of her desire, the supremacy of will, had created its new and mysterious wire of communication. Some passion of want, some sheer intensity of feeling, had found and used its warning semaphore. She had spoken to him, without sound or movement. ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... who came to live cheaply and to drink the waters of a neighbouring mineral spring. That same year two French brothers of the name of Blanc arrived at Frankfort. They were men of a speculative turn, and a recent and somewhat daring speculation in France, connected with the old semaphore telegraph, had rendered it necessary for them to withdraw for a time from their native land. Their stock-in-trade consisted in a Roulette wheel, a few thousand francs, and an old and skilful croupier of Frascati, who knew a great deal about the properties ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... that ye know a thing thoroughly," the captain reminded them. "Fer instance, there is yer signallin'. Ye should be able to make each letter without thinkin' how it is to be made. And I want yez to practise up the Morse system, as well as the Semaphore. It'll come in mighty handy at night, when ye can't use the flags. Yez ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... approach of trains, so as to give them time to stop all crossing of the tracks. On railway lines provided with electro-semaphores there may be used for this purpose those small apparatus that have been styled semaphore repeaters. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... ready to begin all over again. Later on I found out for myself that, in this particular hotel, when you ring for the waiter or the maid the bell sounds in the service room, where those functionaries are supposed to be stationed; but when you ring for the manservant a small arm-shaped device like a semaphore drops down over your outer door. But what has the manservant done that he should be thus discriminated against? Why should he not have a bell of his own? So far as I might judge, the poor fellow has few enough ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... their course to bring the catboat nearer to the naval boat, which was slowing down. Torry leaped upon the low-decked cabin and began signaling by the semaphore code. In his blue uniform his body stood out clearly against the catboat's sail, and he was at once observed by the crew of the S. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... working among the rocks, I would suddenly descry her on the banks of the Falaise like a semaphore signal. She passionately gazed at the vast sea, glittering in the sunlight, and the boundless sky empurpled with fire. Sometimes I would distinguish her at the bottom of a valley, walking quickly, with an ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... still apparently unsupported. The range was about five miles. At 11.20 the Russians opened fire on them. Semenoff says that it was the result of a mistake. "The 'Orel' fired an accidental shot (which she immediately reported by semaphore). Unable, with smokeless powder, to tell by which of the leading ships it had been fired, the fleet took it as a signal from the 'Suvaroff' and opened fire. Of the whole fleet the fire of the 3rd Squadron was ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... months of Saturday nights, each one of them a semaphore dropping out across the gray road of the week, Gertie Slayback and Jimmie Batch dined for one hour and sixty cents at the White Kitchen. Then arm and arm up the million-candle-power flare of Broadway, content, these two who had never seen ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... invention of the electric telegraph before the date of this poem, see Sir Francis Ronalds, F. R. S., and his Works in connection with Electric Telegraphy in 1816, by J. Sime, 1893. But the "Telegraph" to which Byron refers was, probably, the semaphore (from London to Portsmouth), which, according to [Sir] John Barrow, the Secretary of the Admiralty, rendered "telegraphs of any kind now wholly unnecessary" (vide ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... o'clock in the morning. Thorpe passed the boarding-house, the store, and the office, to take himself as far as the little open shed that served the primitive town as a railway station. There he set the semaphore to flag the east-bound train from Duluth. At six thirty-two, the train happening on time, he climbed aboard. He dropped heavily into a seat and stared straight in front of him until the conductor had spoken to ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... loaded questions and stopped when Jimmy stated that Napoleon Bonaparte was responsible for the invention of canned food, the adoption of the metric system, and the development of the semaphore telegraph. This stopped all proceedings until Jimmy himself found the references in the Britannica. That little feat of research-reference impressed the visiting superintendent. Jimmy Holden ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... The semaphore signal dropped and the electric locomotive started as quietly as a baby going to sleep! There was not a jar as the train moved off the siding and over the switches to the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... cover. From it Stair would be able to follow the spy with his rifle all the way to the posts of the Preventive men which had been established on the rising ground above the edge of the Wild. A portable semaphore stiffly flapped its arms as they looked, no doubt signalling their coming to other ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... Crew, the stern arm of the semaphore never made the train pause even for an instant. There was always a clear track. It was great to see, far in the distance, a goods train whooping smokily for the north of England on one of the four tracks. The overtaking of such a train was a thing of magnificent nothing for the long-strided ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Semaphore System, Use and Care of Apparatus, Heliograph, Telescope, Flags, Message Forms, Station Routine, Training and Classification, completely illustrated. Compiled by a Signalling Officer. Stiff ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... her clutch and let out a cough of steam. They jerked and leaped forward. From the rear of the car an orange and black pennant—Votes for Women—stiffened out like a semaphore against ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... the bay is divided into two passages by the small Island of Corregidor, on which was a lighthouse showing a revolving bright light, visible 20 miles off. Here was also a signal-station, communicating by a semaphore with a telegraph station on the opposite Luzon coast, and thence by wire with Manila. North of Corregidor Island is situated the once important harbour of ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... wealthy country gentleman's house in England, and has one or two fine reception-rooms; between it and the water a monument is being raised to Washington. I fear it will be a sad failure; the main shaft or column suggests the idea of a semaphore station, round the base whereof the goodly things of sculpture are to be clustered. As far as I could glean from conversation with Americans, they seem themselves ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... going by the old handbook, and in the new one it is much more difficult; the signalling alone will probably require two months' study. I am going to ask Mr. Remington, the Boy Scoutmaster, to give the final test in the semaphore and Morse code, and every other requirement must be passed with the same thoroughness. If my dream comes true, the first class Scouts of Pansy troop will be able to go anywhere—even to National Headquarters—and pass the stiffest examination the Director ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... miles. The factors which helped to redress the adverse balance of these odds were Brock himself, his disciplined regulars, the intense loyalty of the militia, and the 'telegraph.' This 'telegraph' was a system of visual signalling by semaphore, much the same as that which Wellington had used along the lines ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... St. Clair, "I draw the awful circle of our solemn church! Set but one foot within that holy ground and on thy head—" Like a semaphore the left arm dropped, and the right arm, with the forefinger pointed, shot out at President Ham. "Yea, though it wore a CROWN—I launch the ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... of wheels approached him from behind. A thrill of hope shot through him at the sound. There was the prospect of a lift. He stopped, and waited for the dog-cart—it sounded like a dog-cart—to arrive. Then he uttered a shout of rapture, and began to wave his arms like a semaphore. The man in ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... everyday life slept, or rather lost the power of thought from extreme exhaustion, the heavy snow storm which was making the night doubly dark had so blocked the machinery of the semaphore that it refused to respond to the desperate efforts of the weary signal man, who heard a freight train approaching, and knew that unless it was flagged at once it would dash into the rear end of a passenger train, which was standing in sight of the signal box, with its locomotive ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... is the isolated Beacon Hill, once a semaphore station between Portsmouth and London; but instead of taking at once to the heights, the pedestrian should first visit Elsted up on its own little hill, and Treyford a mile farther; both churches are ruined and deserted. A new ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... was otherwise with Mrs. Pagnell. She flung wild arms of a semaphore signalling national events. She sprang before Aminta to stop her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be driven. She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her plaint. He appeared emphatic. There was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mount and ride. The police will put us on her track during the day. She must have a carriage; angels of that sort have no wings. We shall find her whether she is on the road or hidden in Paris. There is the semaphore. We can stop her. You shall be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty. They judge others by themselves, and do not know the point when human nature gives way if you strain the cords ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... had been waving his hands in another spacious gesture, and he remained frozen with out-stretched arms, like a semaphore. This evening had been a series of shocks for him, but this was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the tree, with its one broken branch which depended at an angle like the arm of a semaphore; nor did it relieve his mind to reflect that his mishap was partly due to his own foolish abstraction. He was returning to camp from a neighboring mining town, and while indulging in the usual day-dreams of a youthful prospector, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... by the sound of a body being dragged or dragging itself with slow, swishing sound under the barn. The sound was too loud for safety. They rushed to the hole and began to semaphore until a shaggy head appeared with ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... ..." Again he grinned and twitched. "Time for noon Com-staff," he announced staccato. "Pardon the hush box." He whipped a pancake phone from under his coat, clapped it over his face and spoke fiercely but inaudibly into it, continuing to semaphore. Suddenly he thrust the phone away. "Twenty-nine ... thirty ... Thar ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... are done immediately, and there is no chance of the instruction being half-completed or of another being interspersed. Used esp. to convey that an operation cannot be screwed up by interrupts. "This routine locks the file and increments the file's semaphore atomically." 2. [primarily techspeak] Guaranteed to complete successfully or not at all, usu. refers to database transactions. If an error prevents a partially-performed transaction from proceeding to completion, it must be "backed out," as the database must not be left ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... go by telegraph?" said Frank, pointing up to the dumb old semaphore in whose tower he had established himself. "Or has not the chief got a wishing carpet? Or can't you ride to Gallipoli? Here are some excellent white-tailed mules, good enough for Pindar, whom Colvocoressis has just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... touch, nudge; dactylology[obs3], dactylonomy[obs3]; freemasonry, telegraphy, chirology[Med], byplay, dumb show; cue; hint &c. 527; clue, clew, key, scent. signal, signal post; rocket, blue light; watch fire, watch tower; telegraph, semaphore, flagstaff; cresset[obs3], fiery cross; calumet; heliograph; guidon; headlight. [sign (evidence) on physobj of contact with another physobj] mark, scratch, line, stroke, dash, score, stripe, streak, tick, dot, point, notch, nick. print; imprint, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... journeyed slowly towards Avignon, delayed by the condition of the roads covered by an unusual fall of snow which was now melting under the breath of a warm breeze from the south. On the way they pass "between the two hills a telegraph making signals." This was, of course, a semaphore by means of which ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... meaning of "telegraph" is used here, as any system of communication over distance, such as signal fires, semaphore, etc. — A. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the open door of his car and gaze at what scenery the darkness disclosed. Now that he was beginning to comprehend their use, he was deeply interested in the bright red, green, and white lights of the semaphore signals that guarded every switch and siding. He knew that at night a white light displayed from the top of a post, or swung across the track in the form of a lantern, meant safety, a red light meant danger, and a green ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe |
