"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crippled in his sinews; her glory had, 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 the deck, this was almost the only tolerably easy expedient ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... into my chair. My faculties had so failed me that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brain recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling as a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... terrible rocks, seen but too plainly under their Ice. How, as he said, "about four in the afternoon it seemed to blow worse than ever, and you could see the staunch boat was pressed down under her canvas, and every spar was groaning and quivering, while the ship went bodily to leeward." And next, "how she seemed to come to herself, as it were, with a long staggering roll, and to spring to windward as if relieved of a dead weight; for the gale had broken, and the foam-belt along the cliffs grew dimmer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch in length, and is formed much ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Trade-winds which cross it from 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 Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom Fainter and fainter wreck and helmsman ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... stood thus, swaying forward at the very edge of the roof, my eyes measuring again and again the hazy, uncertain distance stretching away toward that slight undulating shadow. It was practically impossible to determine where the extreme end of the spar terminated in air, yet as nearly as possible I made selection for my point of aim, and, with three noiseless circles about my head to give it impetus, shot the rope forth into the dense gloom. I heard the opening noose strike something ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... been a 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 ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... taking the cars as instructed, Paul induced his 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. Then a crowd of Pittsburgh ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... important during the war, when, in order to improve the performance of machines, all avoidable weight had to be sacrificed, and the factor of safety, as it is called, reduced to the lowest permissible limit. The breaking of a spar or a wire, the failure of a bolt or a nut, may mean a fatal accident. Further, the factory did what it could to standardize the component parts of an aeroplane, so as to facilitate repair; and this, before the war ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... no pysan, ne no plate at pented to armes, Ne no schafte, ne no schelde, to schwne ne to smyte, [B] Bot in his on honde he hade a holyn bobbe, at is grattest in grene, when greue3 ar bare, 208 [C] & an ax in his oer, a hoge & vn-mete, A spetos spare to expoun in spelle quo-so my3t; e hede of an eln3erde e large lenke hade, e grayn al of grene stele & of golde hewen, 212 [D] e bit burnyst bry3t, with a brod egge, As wel schapen to schere as scharp rasores; e stele of a stif staf e sturne hit bi-grypte, at wat3 wounden ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... about all coasts and isles—from Demerara to Panama, from Mexico to the Bahamas. So that day was to the crew a day of hard hot work—of lifting and sorting goods on the main-deck, in readiness for the arrival at St. Thomas's, and of moving forwards two huge empty boilers which had graced our spar-deck, filled with barrels of onions and potatoes, all the way from Southampton. But in the soft hot evening hours, time was found for the usual dance on the quarter-deck, with the band under the awning, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... boat had 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 Martin thought that they must now be beyond the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... saying, lad, no saying at all. All I know is that your father, the captain, was washed ashore at the same time as I was. As you have heard me say, I owed my life to him. I was pretty nigh gone when I caught sight of him, holding on to a spar. Spent as I was, I managed to give a shout loud enough to catch his ear. He looked round. I waved my hand and shouted, 'Goodbye, Captain!' Then I sank lower and lower, and felt that it was all over, when, half in a dream, I heard your father's voice shout, 'Hold on, Ben!' I gave one more struggle, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... was near the mate, and sprang forward, threw the down-haul over the windlass, and jumped between the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while we got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off of the boom. For some time we could do nothing but hold on, and the vessel diving into two huge seas, one after the other, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... camp war mare mast chart damp warp share cask lard hand warm spare mask arm land ward snare past yard sand warn game scar lake waft fray lame spar dale raft play name star gale chaff gray fame garb cape aft stay tame ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... if upon the cold, green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway, And one must perish—let it not be he Whom thou art sworn ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were as rich as—well, as Reindeer Mary, wouldn't you marry me?" Ponatah gazed at the unworthy object of her affections with a yearning that was embarrassing, and Laughing Bill was forced to spar for wind. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Henry's, if Henry be he of King's College. His passion for boxing was so great, that he actually wanted me to match him with Dogherty (whom I had backed and made the match for against Tom Belcher), and I saw them spar together at my own lodgings with the gloves on. As he was bent upon it, I would have backed Dogherty to please him, but the match went off. It was of course to have been a private fight, in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... 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 ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... dismissed the men good-humouredly to the care of cook and steward: it was only the steerage passenger who required to be put under the doctor's care. It seemed that he had been hurt by the falling of a spar, and severely scorched in trying to save a child who was in imminent danger; and, though he had at first been the most cheery and hopeful of the party, his strength had soon failed, and he had lain half or wholly unconscious ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... signal had now been flying on board the frigate several minutes, and yet no symptoms of any preparation for an answer could be discovered. At length the halyards moved, and then three fair, handsome flags rose to the end of le Feu-Follet's jigger yard, a spar that was always kept aloft in moderate weather. What the signal meant Raoul did not know, for though he was provided with signals by means of which to communicate with the vessels of war of his own nation, the Directory had not been able to supply him with those necessary ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... it is not far And I bend my head and list, For I think I see a slender spar Gleam through the golden mist; And I fancy I hear the sound Of wind in a silken sail, And an odor rare from Eastern ground, Floats ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... residents of Portsmouth. The father of Thomas B. Laighton was a spar-maker and did a considerable business when shipbuilding was thriving in those times. Thomas B. in his youth was afflicted with a fever which confined him to his room for many months and from the effects of which he never recovered. He married Miss ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... in her blue-spar eyes the same kind of softness that he noticed in people's voices this afternoon, a softness which somehow reminded him of a funeral, Fifi's ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the sorrows of the last abyss: I walked the cold black pools without a star; I lay on rock of unseen flint and spar; I heard the execrable serpent hiss; I dreamed of sun, fruit-tree, and virgin's kiss; I woke alone with midnight near and far, And everlasting hunger, keen to mar; But I arose, and my reward is this: I am no more one more amid the throng: Though ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, All are harboured to the last, And just as Herve Riel hollas 'Anchor!'—sure as fate Up the English ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the smoke clouds lie, Wind-ript and red, on an angry sky— Coal-dumps and derricks and piled-up bales, Tar and the gear of forgotten sails, Rusted chains and a broken spar (Yesterday's breath on the things that are) A lone, black cat and a snappy cur, Smell of high-tide and of newcut fir, Smell of low-tide, fish, weed!—I swear I love every blessed smell that's there— For, aeons ago when the sea began, ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... down the stream she dwelt, 'twould seem, Yet stream nor breeze could bar Her little boat, that to a nook, Dark with the pine-tree's spar, Each evening Ronald saw shoot up As constant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... staring at her as a man drowning might stare at a spar drifting his way on a chance wave; there was but the shadow of a hope in his face as he watched with parted lips the hand with the pen—and back of the shadow ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... 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 ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Under spar-enchased bowers, Bending on their twisted stems, Glow the myriad ocean-flowers, Fadeless—rich as orient gems. Hung with seaweed's tasselled fringes, Dyed with all the rainbow's tinges, Rise the Triton's palace walls. Pallid silver's wandering veins Stream, like frostwork, o'er ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... in the wind. I could not wonder. The bowsprit had been sprung when the jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of the top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the weight of the heavy spritsail yard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar overboard with the men upon it. Yet it was our best chance; the one sail most speedily released and hoisted, the one that would pay the brig's head off quickest, and the only fragment that ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... shape more resembling a rather fat cigar. The length was 144 feet, and the greatest diameter only 40 feet, while the capacity was 88,000 cubic feet. A net which covered the envelope of the balloon supported a spar, 66 feet in length, at the end of which a triangular sail was placed vertically to act as rudder. The car, slung 20 feet below the spar, carried the engine and propeller. Engine and boiler together weighed 350 lbs., and drove ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... hands and set forth on our little traversee, our landmark an odd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple. The paveurs of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all. Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouth of a sole. Going glibly, we learnt a small lesson of caution therefrom. Six paces, and we ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... it was, and presently she was bearing on us, and was ere long so close aboard that we could see her every spar and rope, and her folk all gathered to the windward, knights, sergeants, archers, and mariners, to gaze at us and mock us; and huge and devilish laughter arose from amongst them as she ploughed the water so close beside us, that one might well-nigh have cast a ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... sight of the little craft, but capable of being shifted from side to side, so that the enemy's marksmen may never know exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be enough to blow a fatal breach in ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... 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 ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... well-worn sail was torn into ribbons, and great pieces of it were blown away, like little white clouds played upon by the lightning. Worse than this, two of the men on the topsail-yard were wrenched from their hold on the spar, and hurled into the darkness beneath them, one falling into foaming waters, and the other striking senseless upon ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... will often be completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly over backwards, and all the contents spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... transfer of the rigging from the Saint-Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his daughter. The recognition ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a spirit of prophecy. Sicily (sis' i ly). The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Silenus (si le' nus). The foster-father of Bacchus. Sleipnir (slap' ner). The swift eight-legged horse of Odin. Sonmus (som' nus). The king of sleep. Sparta (spar' ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... warm in his seaman's coat, Against the stinging blast: He cut a rope from a broken spar, And ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... eagles have lived in the Valley ever since I first visited it, hunting all winter along the northern cliffs and down the river canyon. Their nest is on a ledge of the cliff over which pours the Nevada Fall. Perched on the top of a dead spar, they were always interested observers of the geese when they were being shot at. I once noticed one of the geese compelled to leave the flock on account of being sorely wounded, although it still seemed to fly pretty well. Immediately ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... was being constantly increased by new arrivals from both shores, sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were loaded with gayly dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man or boy might be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar, apparently as deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if all the town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of the day, determined to take the evening breeze into their pulses, and be cool and tranquil ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... dis niggah!" chuckled Toby the Bad, maliciously. "Nuff more ob his kind, in all conscience! Reckon we kin spar' much ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... of the ocean steaming up the river, with their powerful armament and each representing millions of dollars in its construction, along the shores of the second largest city in the world, and with flags and banners flying proudly from every mast and spar—not only the victory of our arms but the growth of the nation, from the sparse settlements in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers to a population of 80,000,000 souls, and from the thirteen little struggling provinces, at the outbreak of the Revolution, ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... nearer. "Just for to-night, shall we not quarrel or spar?" he whispered. "See, I will treat you as a sister and friend. I want to be petted ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... seamanship won the race. There was almost a dead calm. Down went the boats of the Constitution, with long lines attached to them, and strong sweeps were used with desperate energy in towing her. A long cannon was placed at the stern on her spar-deck, and two others were pointed out of ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Spar' ta—a town in the southern part of the Peloponnesus, on the Eurotas. It was the chief city of Lacedaemon and the home of Menelaos and Helen. It had no walls, but its acropolis was covered with temples. Ancient Sparta was noted ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... 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 ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... further another large one which might almost be termed a lake, being nearly 1000 links square. About these there were some lines of sandhills running about north-east and south-west; and in one of the flats between the sandhills I found several pieces of satin spar in lumps of the size of one's hand, partially buried in the ground, and all of them with the plane of cleavage nearly perpendicular with the surface ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... to thar master cam, Leytell John wold not spar; "Master, how haffe yow far yn Notynggam? How haffe yow solde ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... 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 called The Sisters, with the village ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... when the sea-fog wrapped a shroud Round spar and spire and tarn and tree, Her soul went up on that lifted cloud From this sad ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... herself go with the current of destiny into which, by strange hazard, she had drifted. She had the humility which is the fiercest form of pride. Although she clung desperately to him, as to the spar that alone could save her from drowning, although the feminine within her was drawn to his kind and simple manliness, and although her heart was touched by his grief at the loss of the dog, yet never for a moment ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... enormous crew compared to a merchant vessel, and her rigging is set up accordingly. The things that are done on a man-of-war in spar-drill make a merchant sailor's hair stand ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... enormous spar of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... probably attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were encamped, is a talcous rock, or steatite, with brown spar. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... streamers; there another with nothing standing above her lower mastheads; here a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and the crew busy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only too well were the hulls of ships which had capsized, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... should be perfectly free from the least particle of wax. When all these drawings are finished the pieces of glass must be immersed one by one in a square leaden box or receiver, where they are to be submitted to the action of Hydroflouric Acid Gas, made by acting on Powdered Flour-Spar by Concentrated Sulphuric Acid. When the glasses are sufficiently corroded, they are to be taken out, and the wax is to be removed by first dipping them in warm and then in hot water, or by washing with turpentine or benzine. Various colors may be applied to the corroded parts ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... mounds of imaginary ore. Farms that could scarcely be given away suddenly possessed enormous values in the minds of their lucky owners. Some of the mines were developed extensively, and shipments began which have continued at intervals, but only a few of them furnished the best quality. The spar is shipped to the mills in New Jersey, where it is used for glazing crockery. Rare specimens of beryl are often found by ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... 'low dat dar's mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own hinder parts on er 'count uv er ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... 10 inches diameter at the heel to 7 at the end. The jibboom is made of two pieces of yellow pine, grooved out and hooped together; it is about 70 feet long and about 8 inches in diameter; the foot of the jib is laced to this spar on hooks ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... storm arose, and after several hours of beating about, the vessel was driven on to some rocks, on which it dashed itself to bits. The Prince was fortunate enough to be able to lay hold of a floating spar, and contrived to keep himself afloat; and, after a long struggle with the winds and waves, he was cast upon a strange island. But what was his surprise, on reaching the shore, to hear sounds of the most heartrending ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... 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 identity from the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... People making booms and getting water. A.M. Got on board a spar for sprit-sail yard: carpenter ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... other, anxious to display his familiarity with the technicalities of her profession. "'E wouldn't take 'is turn to be attended to aboard of us—we was in a Destroyer, an' picked 'im up 'angin' on to a spar. Would 'ave the doctor fix up a German prisoner wot was bleedin' to death. Said 'e wasn't in no particular 'urry, speakin' for 'isself. An' 'im a-bleedin' to death, too. As fine a gentleman as ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... should have put him back in consequence of storms which he had weathered, gave him a consoling sense of British superiority. "These gentlemen," said he, "are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale: we have buffeted them for one-and-twenty months, and not carried away a spar." He, however, who had so often braved these gales, was now, though not mastered by them, vexatiously thwarted and impeded; and on February 27th he was compelled to anchor in Pula Bay in the Gulf of Cagliari. From the 21st of January the fleet ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... won't die," and Muuggins' faith came to the rescue, throwing a ray of hope into the darkness. "Miss Alice axed God to spar' him, and so did I; now He will, won't He, miss?" and she turned to Adah, who, with Sam, had just come up to Spring Bank, and hearing voices in the kitchen had entered there first. "Say, Miss Adah, won't God cure Mas'r ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... said good-night, and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somersett, British man-of-war: A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon, like a prison-bar, And a huge, black hulk, that was magnified By its own ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... irrational. So the thing evolved itself. Then at one time the story got entangled and confused. I could go no further. The characters were by this time upon the scene, but they could not speak. I then saw that I had made a mistake somewhere. The scaffolding was all taken down, spar by spar, and still the defect was not revealed. I must go, I saw, backwards; and so I felt my way, like a man groping in the dark, into what had gone before, and suddenly came out into the light. It was a mistake far back in the conception. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... worked, the Constitution poured in broadside after broadside, double-shotted with round and grape; and without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Hull, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Washington. I haven't been in the Senate long enough to amount to anything, if I ever do. We new people are only in demand when there is a vote to be taken. We are put on minor committees, and are thankful for any crumbs that fall from the great man's table. I am a very small spar in the ship of state. It takes all the conceit out of a fellow when he finds how little he amounts to in Washington. He leaves his own part of the world a giant, puffed up with pride and importance; but the shrinking process begins as soon as the train rolls out of the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... spar of the Merrimac sticking out of the water. We hugged the shore just outside of the breakers for a mile, and then turned towards the Texas, when the batteries saw us and opened fire. It was then broad daylight. The first shot ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... boat glides amid the vertical rocks—walls of crystal spar—shutting in the river, touching as it seems the blue heavens, peak, parapet, ramparts taking multiform hues under the shifting clouds, now of rich amber, now dazzlingly white, now deep purple or roseate. And every one of these lofty shafts, so majestic of form, so varied of hue, is reflected in ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... have had little space to indulge in picture-painting. I passed Bridal-Veil Fall without a reference. I was tempted to loiter on the banks of the Feld-spar and the bright Opalescent, but I passed by without even picking a pebble from the clear basins of its sparkling cascades. I passed the "tear of the clouds," four thousand feet above the tide—that fountain of the Hudson nearest to the sky, without being beguiled into poetry. I have not ventured upon ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Not a material object of any kind was to be noticed floating on the surface of the water; not one branch of a tree had been seen drifting by, nor one spar belonging to one of the numerous vessels that a month previously had been moored in the magnificent bay which stretched twelve miles across from Cape Matafuz to Point Pexade. Perhaps the depths might disclose what the surface failed to reveal, and Count Timascheff, anxious that Servadac should ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... 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
... have been bound to have seen her long before I had—I got a bit muddled there, with trying to think it out; and then, abruptly, the reality of the other ship, came back to me—every rope and sail and spar, you know. And I remembered how she had lifted to the heave of the sea, and how the sails had flapped in the light breeze. And the string of flags! She had been signalling. At that last, I found it just as impossible to believe that she had ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... 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 ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ready enough to spar with my sister; to-night I had not the spirit. To-night, moreover, she, whom as a rule I could treat with good-humoured indifference, had power to wound. The least weighty of people speaking the truth can not be wholly disregarded. I prepared to ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... stout 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 ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... boarding her, when we found she was a Baltimore pilot-boat-built schooner, of about 70 tons burden, laden with flour, and bound for Bermuda. But three days before, in a sudden squall, they had carried away both masts short by the board, and the only spar which they had been able to rig, was a spare topmast which they had jammed into one of the pumps—fortunately she was as tight as a bottle—and stayed it the best way they could. The captain offered to take the little fellow who had charge ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... head with great difficulty and beheld his faithful follower lying like himself on the ground, firmly bound to a stout spar or pole. His own inability to move was at once explained, for he soon perceived that he was ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... but, after all ... And yet, Who kens what green sod's to be broken for him? Queer, that I'll lie, like any innocent Beneath the daisies; but the gowans must wait. Sore-punished, I'm not yet knocked out: life's had My head in chancery; but I'll soon be free To spar another round or so with him, Before he sends me spinning to the ropes. And life would not be life, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... not make the stranger out more fully. Charles, himself, thought that she was heavy and evidently steering for the small bay on which the factory stood. But their curiosity was soon to be satisfied, for spar after spar gradually became more and more clearly defined, until at last the deck itself could be seen, and St. George's cross observed flying saucily in the breeze. The ship was a British sloop-of-war, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... found in thick nodular beds or "floors,'' in spheroidal masses known as "balls'' or "bowls.'' and in smaller lenticular masses termed "cakes.'' At Chellaston. where the alabaster is known as "Patrick,'' it has been worked into ornaments under the name of "Derbyshire spar''—-a term applied also to fluor-spar. The finer kinds of alabaster are largely employed as an ornamental stone, especially for ecclesiastical decoration, and for the srails of staircases and halls Its softness enables it to be readily carved into elaborate forms, but its solubility in water ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... roused in one or two of the young and ambitious, they had ventured this in the secret mountains, and perhaps had killed a trapper found there. Editors immediately reared a tall war out of it; but from five Indians in a guard-house waiting punishment not even an editor can supply spar for more than two editions, and if the recent alarm was still a matter of talk anywhere, it was not here in the sick-room. Whichever way the case should turn, it was through Molly alone (the doctor told her) that the wounded ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... to prove How much I've suffer'd for your love, Which (like your votary) to win, I have not spar'd my tatter'd skin And for those meritorious lashes, 185 To claim ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... in four or six weeks, capable of carrying the armament or battery of a first-class frigate—say four ten-inch guns and twelve eight-inch guns. These alterations would consist of a removal of the deck-houses, spar or upper deck, forward and abaft the paddle-wheel boxes, fitting the after and forward bulwarks in sections, cutting port-holes, fitting hammock cloths or nettings, putting in extra beams and knees, and stanchions, moving the windlass ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... flew aloft, Ned Davis being among the first drawing out their knives from their pockets as they did so. In a few seconds the ropes were severed, and the mast and spar fell overboard, with the still loudly flapping sail. At the same moment the crew throwing themselves out on the fore-topsail yard, that sail was quickly reefed. "You must take another reef in it, ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... would fit closely into each other if they could be brought together, sheeted, in many places, with a glittering, calcareous deposit, and gradually approaching each other overhead—imagine this, and you will have an idea of the Blue John mine, into which we descended. The fluor-spar taken from this mine is of a rich blue color, and is wrought into vases and cups, which ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... after supper was one of huge enjoyment and with intense interest I awaited Frank's first spar for an opening. It came presently, in a lull ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... were twenty-six persons, and we went to the bottom. During the voyage somebody said to me: "Let us recommend ourselves to God and to the Virgin Mary of Roc-Amadour. Let us put her name upon this spar and trust ourselves to the care of this good Lady." He who gave me this good counsel and myself fastened ourselves to the spar with a rope. The tempest carried us away, but in so fortunate a manner that the next day we found ourselves on the coast of Bayonne. Half dead, we landed by the grace ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... order that they did so. In reality, 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 ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Hovenden) as in the preceding term. The only scientific subjects on which I find notes are, a Paper on the forms of the Teeth of Wheels, communicated to the Philosophical Society on May 2nd; some notes about Musical Concords, and some examination of a strange piece of Iceland Spar. On Apr. 29th I was elected to the Northern Institution (of Inverness); the first compliment that I received from ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... silent in their little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber through the open door, as it flew back violently on its frail hinges. Antonina changed colour, and shuddered ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of which owes so much to Sir Frederick Abel, while for purposes of attack the same material, not yet in practical use for shells, is taken as the charge for torpedoes, which are either affixed to a spar or are carried in the head of a submerged cigar-shaped body. By a compressed air or by a direct steam impulse arrangement these weapons are started on their course and are directed, and then the running is taken up by their own ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... dead and buried were some sort of new indoor sport," interrupted Mollie, glad to have this old familiar enemy to spar with. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... Ere legislation's fiat came With moral might to do the same. Well's and McCrea of lumbering note, Who had on many a stream afloat Vast rafts of red pine timber, when White pine was little thought of; then Oak, elm, cedar and red pine And staves, together did combine, With now and then a mast or spar, To make up what would go at par, At Stadacona—old Quebec— Where brave Montgomery got a check In a most bootless, foolish strife, Which cost him his undaunted life— Where Arnold got a broken thigh, Ere at West Point his treachery Brought ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... is the one so celebrated 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 entering into the reaction—fixes ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... sad day dawned over the hills and sea, she knew that God was still in His Heaven, behind the clouds—while she clung as a drowning mariner—the more desperately for her weakness—to the spar of this faith in the wreck of her happiness, though the love to which her whole being had moved in rhythmic content was as a lost star, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... are fashioned like perfect vegetable structures, opening fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the fishes swimming in the deep beneath; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... they to get the fish on board? Nothing easier, since the little "Swallow" could run along so nicely under the stern of the great steamer, while a large basket was swung out at the end of a long, slender spar, with a pulley to lower and raise it. Even the boys from Long Island were astonished at the number and size of the prime, freshly caught blue-fish to which they were treating the passengers of the "Prudhomme," and the basket had to come and go ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... concern, but God's, a thing upheld by God for so many years that I shun danger no longer. It has even come to pass that I am lonely in security, withdrawn from God in houses, and safe in his arms when clinging to a spar in the dark sea. God and our Lord Jesus Christ, his beloved son, have walked on either side of me in mountain passes where robbers lie in wait. We are nearer to God in hunger and thirst than when the mouth is full. In fatigue rather than in ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... I 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 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... 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 to compass his ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... is strong in every heart, and when he found himself breathing the air again he threw out his arms wildly and grasped a spar. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... been breathed. A low deck gave a ship-shape appearance when floating, but below she was shaped like a very fat cigar. Under the deck and outside of the hull proper were placed her gasoline tanks, safe from any possible danger of ignition from the interior. From her nose protruded a spar that looked like a bowsprit but which was in reality a derrick; below the derrick-boom were several glazed openings that resembled eyes and a mouth: these were the lookout windows for the under-water observer and the ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... corner, with his hand modestly placed over his nose. Ramshaw and Cottle were engaged in deadly strife on the floor, each under the fond delusion that the other was a Classic; while the twin brothers, armed with the better pair of boxing-gloves, were having a friendly spar in the middle. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... only the ship. "Oh, great Lord!" he loathingly drawled, "is it Damned Fools' Day again?" Her web of cordage began to grow dim in a rising smoke, and presently a gold beading of fire ran up and along every rope and spar and clung quivering. Soon the masts commenced, it seemed, to steal nearer to each other, and the vessel swung out from her berth and started down the wide, swift river, a mass ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... she, Noah?" asked Captain Zeb of the lightkeeper. "That her off back of the spar buoy? Let me have a squint through that glass; my eyes ain't what they used to be, when I could see a whale spout two miles t'other side of the sky line and tell how many barrels of ile he'd try out, fust look. Takes practice to keep your eyesight so's you can ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... their 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 brought them down, gasping and choking ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... seen Brannan; and Brannan had not forgotten. Seventeen years Brannan had remembered, and not a ship had been lost on a lee-shore because her longitude was wrong,—not a baby had wailed its last as it was ground between wrecked spar and cruel rock,—not a swollen corpse unknown had been flung up upon the sand and been buried with a nameless epitaph,— but Brannan had recollected the Brick Moon, and had, in the memory-chamber which rejected nothing, stored away the story of the horror. And now George ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... a shot aimed high by the lugger struck the cutter's topmast. The spar held on for a minute, but a stronger puff of wind filling the sail, with a loud crash it gave way, and down came the gaff-topsail and square-topsail. The mainsail and squaresail still, however, stood. The lugger now came ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... croaking?" 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 carving ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... "Time!" the principals would rise from their seconds' knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the ring, and spar away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow that sent the other to the ground, where he would lie until his second picked him up, carried him back, washed his face off, and gave him a drink. He then rested until the next call ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Friday, but I have gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened either—nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as cheerily as you please—no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in the hold. I believe it generally ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... risen over Monte Diablo, and sends her soft mellow beams across the waters of the bay, imparting to their placid surface a sheen as of silver. The forms of the ships at anchor are reflected as from a mirror; their hulls, with every spar, stay, and brace, even to the most delicate rope of their rigging, having a duplicated representative in the fictitious counterfeit beneath. On none is there any canvas spread; and the unfurled flags do not display their fields, but ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... stubble. A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters. The Harris ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... "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
... to guess how far she listened to or comprehended the conversation so unfit for her ear. When he rose to go, and stooped to kiss her, she looked wistfully in his face, and held up a small sparkling bit of spar, the most precious of all her hoards, gleaned from ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enough. Barton bears you no grudge. He's a good-hearted fellow, though cross-grained with strangers. He looked upon you as a stranger this morning, but he says he knows you now. He is quite ready to spar with you for practice, and he will come any hour you ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the world's end. I believed he would, too, for he had threatened to be the last man in Maida's world; the Countess was now the last woman in his, and he would hold on to her and her money as a drowning man grasps at a substantial spar. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in the air in the early summer morning, only the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts were moving away yonder, majestical, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... we drive steadily on, till house lights glinting behind the blinds and hurrying figures of a 'night-shift' show that we are near the river and the docks. A turn along the waterside, the dim outlines of the ships and tracery of mast and spar looming large and fantastic in the darkness, and the driver, questioning, brings up at a dim-lit shed, bare of goods and cargo—the berth of a full-laden outward-bounder. My barque—the Florence, of ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... exhausted swimmers sent bright streaks of watershine wavering up the green hull over Madden's head. Utter silence pervaded the vessel. There was no creaking of spar or block. Hot tar stood in her seams in ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling |
