"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a cold little hand into his free one, and feeling the solid grasp of his broad palm, she clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... she didn't mind, and would she come and sit by him instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. Gilman had expressly ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... of another top-mast very dangerous; and that, therefore, he must rig something lighter in its place. He also informed me, that he had lost his main-top-gallant-yard, and that he neither had another, nor a spar to make one, on board. The Resolution's sprit-sail top-sail yard which I sent him, supplied this want. The next day, he got up a jury top-mast, on which he set a mizen-top-sail, and this enabled him to keep way with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the treatment of the oil, the proportion of oil and turpentine, the qualities of the gums, the aging, etc. Some by rubbing give a very high polish, some give a dull waxy finish, some are for out-of-door use, as Spar varnish and carriage varnish, some are for floors, some for furniture, some are high ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated in an almost imperceptible ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... my own blood." And she who had been a Bolingbroke set her thin lips together with the only consciousness of superiority to her husband that she had ever known—the secret consciousness that she was better born. Out of the wreck of her entire life, this was the floating spar to which she still clung with a sense of security, and her imagination, by long concentration upon the support that it offered, had exaggerated its importance out of all proportion to the other props among which it ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... Casabianca, I heard, was his name. He was a brave man. He had his son with him, a little fellow only ten years old, as gallant, those we rescued told us, as his father. They were blown up together. We saw the two, the father holding on his son clinging to a spar. We pulled towards them, but just then a bit of the burning wreck must have struck them and carried them down, for when we got up to the spot they were nowhere to be seen. That's the worst of a battle; there ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... that I haf been puttin' in the Germania Spar Bank for such a trouble. I had more as that, but we haf had bad luck. My uncle he will maybe lend me ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... 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 name be naught, and lips ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... especially an ovoid vase, remarkable for its size and for its lateral projections. This vase, which is hand-modelled, came from the Frontal Cave; the clay is of blackish hue mixed with little bits of calcareous spar. M. Ordinaire, Vice-Consul for France at Callao, speaks of the CAYANES or MACAHUAS, which are earthenware basins of great symmetry of form, made by the Combos women, without turning wheels or mills of any kind. Though the elegant shape of the Frontal ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... 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 Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... don't cotch dis niggah!" chuckled Toby the Bad, maliciously. "Nuff more ob his kind, in all conscience! Reckon we kin spar' much as one! Hyah-yah!" ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... over the slimy logs and paused in front of the muzzle of a loaded cannon which could be almost reached with the outstretched hand. Still cool and self-possessed amid the horrible perils, Cushing stood erect, lowered the torpedo spar, shoved it under the overhang, waited a moment for it to rise until he felt it touch the bottom of the ram, when he gave a quick, strong pull on the trigger line. A muffled, thunderous explosion followed, an immense column of water rose in the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... talk, as in your latest letter, of the making of yourself. It seems so much more possible than that I could do the same. But I am a miserable groping creature, cast on a sea of doubt, rejecting one spar to grasp another, and crying all the time against the storm, for help. I do not know another man who has tortured himself so insistently with the problems that are unsolvable. You are firmer in your grasp, and when you get something you cling to it and ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... steering steadily. He carried the "Benson" past the gunboat's bow, some seventy yards away. A cheer went up from the sailors crowding forward on the gunboat's spar deck. The cheer would have sounded, no matter which submarine ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... action the monitors were seriously injured by the heavy guns of the forts, and the fleet withdrew. In August, land batteries reduced Fort Sumter almost to ruins, and in the following month Fort Wagner was abandoned. June 17th, the iron-clad Atlanta, armed with a torpedo at the end of a spar, ran down from Savannah to engage with two monitors guarding the mouth of the river. She got aground, rendering the torpedo useless. The fifteen-inch guns of the monitors pierced her armor, and in a few minutes ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... in the blue ether. Brightly fell her golden beams on the tall, old forest trees, that pointed spar-like toward the starry heaven, and down, through their interlacing branches, upon gray, mossy rocks and uprooted trunks, over which wild vines wreathed in untrained exuberance; and dim, star-eyed flowers ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wayfarer, there was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, and muttered ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... English voice. As to the fact that it is possible that the lad might catch fever, or be killed in an affray with natives, that must, of course, be faced; but as a sailor he runs the risk of shipwreck, or of being washed overboard, or killed by a falling spar. Everything considered, I think the idea of his going with you is a good one. I don't suppose that many guardians would be of the same opinion, but I have been so many years knocking about in one part of the world or another, that I don't look at things in the same light as men ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... Captain Farmer in a frigate of his own, And grander on his quarter-deck than George upon the throne. He'd two guns in his cabin, and on the spar-deck ten, And twenty on the gun-deck, and more ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... evidently weak and exhausted, and was doing nothing to help himself. Presently the boat was thrown up on the shore, and the fishermen ran down and collected in a little crowd round it. Looking down at the helpless man, still clinging to a spar and drenched with foam and sea-water, they soon saw he was not one of their people. "A Dane, a Dane!" they murmured with sullen hate. Then one who had served in St. Edmund's army suddenly gave a wild exclamation. "By Heaven," ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... charity. It massacres when it can and adds you to the line of dead things along its edge where you are only remembered by the ebb and flow of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a nonentity, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may again enter Pont du Sable with a quicker eye, a harder body, and a deeper ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... of the paths, the earth being kept in its place by borders of lead, or tiles, or wood, or even bones; but sometimes the beds and paths were on the same level, and then there were the same edgings that we now use, as Thrift, Box, Ivy, flints, &c. The paths were made of gravel, sand, spar, &c., and sometimes with coloured earths: but against this Lord Bacon made a vigorous protest: "As to the making of knots or figures with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side on which the garden ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... other, are so superficial as compared with the intensity of our fears when we are terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man welcomes a spar. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... unsuspected. Oft, when the fierce besiegers' eager host Beholds the fainting garrison retire, And rushes joyful to the naked wall, Destruction flashes from th' insidious mine, And sweeps th' exulting conqueror away. Perhaps, in vain the sultan's anger spar'd me, To find a meaner fate ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... were as smooth as glass. But it had to be done, and done quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the debris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "When you rise to be a regular professional you won't care to spar with nobody without you're well paid ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... river, he saw, over the parapet wall that extended along on the outer side of the quay, a very large, square net suspended in the air. It was hung by means of ropes at the four corners, which met in a point above, whence a larger rope went up to a pulley which was attached to the end of a spar that projected from the stern of a boat. The net was slowly descending into the water when Rollo first caught a view of it; so he ran across, and looked ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... more than a conformity to custom, for the quiet and conveniency of society, the 'agremens' of which are not to be disturbed by private dislikes and jealousies. Only women and little minds pout and spar for the entertainment of the company, that always laughs at, and never pities them. For my own part, though I would by no means give up any point to a competitor, yet I would pique myself upon showing him rather more civility than to another man. In the first place, this 'procede' infallibly makes ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... this magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you intend to manage that ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace; O, say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, Hast thou not found one shore where those tired, drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes of far childhood throb ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... were found tied to one another and tied to a spar. They seemed to have been killed by blows received from the rocks or from ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... example of the Pinola and Itasca, had their lower masts removed and moored to the shore. Of the four that kept them in three had their masts wounded in the fight, proving the advantage of this precaution. Thus prepared, and stripped of every spare spar, rope, and boat, in the lightest fighting trim, the ships stood ready for ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Jim tried to find out something about the boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something. His sudden failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; "the old man," whom Jim supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... attempt to describe the condition of our decks by this time. No one who has not seen it can appreciate the effect of such a fire in a confined space. Men were being killed and maimed every minute, those faring best whose duty kept them on the spar deck. Just before our stern-guns were disabled, there were repeated calls for powder from them; and, none appearing, I took a look on the berth-deck to learn the cause. After my eyes had become a little accustomed to the darkness, and the sharp smoke from burning oak, I saw that the line of ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... "I love this victim of nature," she replied, "and look after him with every care. He is young, rich, without family, and is going to marry me. Like you, I am just on forty; my hair is turning grey, my youth vanishing. I shall soon be cast adrift on the sea, a wreck. This boy is the providential spar to which I am going to cling that I may reach land in safety." "You mean, then," said the widow, "that you will soon be beyond the reach of want?" "Yes," answered the friend, "I needn't worry any ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Lady Kicklebury! [To T., who has come forward.] They spar so every night they meet, Touchit. ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enterprise. The five commissioned officers were crowded in the small cabin; the midshipmen and pilot on one side, and the seamen upon the other, were stowed like herrings upon "a platform laid across water-casks, whose surface they completely covered when they slept, and at so small a distance below the spar deck that their heads would reach it when seated." To these inconveniences were added the want of any room for exercise on deck, the attacks of innumerable vermin which their predecessors, the slaves, had left behind them, and (as the salted meat put on board ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... some devout anchoret. Ivy and moss in some places cover, while they seem to unite, the several materials of the variegated walls. The rivulet which runs through the wood falls down one side of the grotto with great rapidity, broken into various streams by the spar and coral, and passing through, forms a fine cascade just at the foot of the grotto, whence it flows into the river. Great care is taken to prevent the place from growing damp, so that we sat some time in it with safety, admiring the smooth surface ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... true, is 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
... Her appearance spoke so strongly in her favor, that notwithstanding the absence of credentials, they engaged her, and in a little while sailed for America. When near the place of their destination, a violent storm arose, and they were shipwrecked. The young girl was lashed to a spar, and the last thing she remembered was, being washed overboard by a mountain wave. She was picked up by a merchant vessel bound for Havana. There she arrived in a state of utter destitution, and she who was once the companion of princesses, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... I felt I'd die between them: 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 ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... he demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... up and placed on deck. It would take too long to describe the various articles which were obtained. Among them were the smith's forge, some piping and the tripod, which the doctor especially asked for. For some of them Jerry or Pat dived into the hold. Others were found on the spar-deck and the after part of the ship, where they were got up without difficulty. Tom and Gerald, when they came on deck, frequently took a glance around to see how the weather looked, and were satisfied that there was every appearance of its holding fine. They accordingly made up their minds to ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... they summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, the hugeness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... shore; the majority of the shot, flying high, struck her rigging instead of her hull. Still she was struck 240 times, and became almost a wreck,—her hull showing gaping wounds, her main-yard cut in two places, every spar more or less damaged, two shot-holes in the head of the mainmast, and her rigging hanging in shreds; the ship also having twice caught fire,—once when a shell fell in her maintop and set fire to the mainsail, and another having burst ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... connected with a pipe, which in turn after divers wanderings led through a hole in the roof, offered an exit for the smoke. Needless to say, this offer was frequently ignored. Around this fireplace was a foot-railing constructed from the main spar of a crashed Handley-Page. The rest of the furniture fortunately was not homemade. Large easy-chairs and lounges, the gift of a friendly merchant of Nancy, often made progress from one end of the room to the other,—a feat requiring considerable ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... 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
... sail on board which we could use in the way of storm canvas, and the sails of the boat were too small to be of any use. Nor was there a spar which we could use as mast, save the yard itself. It must be that or ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... hexagonal prisms and stellate forms, with properties emphasized on certain faces or ends. Thus quartz will twist a ray of light in one direction or the other, depending upon the arrangement which may be known by the external form of the crystal. Calc spar will break up a ray of light into two parts if the light be sent through it in certain directions, but not if in another. Tourmaline polarizes light sent through its sides and becomes positively electrified at one end while being heated. ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... tubs, buckets, kegs, and open casks, including the scuttle butt, were ranged along the spar-deck, below the break of the poop, to catch the welcome shower, tarpaulins being spread over the open hatchways, where exposed, to prevent the flood from going below: while the ends of the after awning were tied up in a sort of huge bag for the rain to drain off into it, so that none ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... in the stern sheets timidly cooing and offering to shake hands. At another time I should have burst laughing at her—she was so coy, so anxious to please. But I had just arrived from seeing my captain's head broken to pieces by a falling spar, and a good friend of mine stabbed by another good friend of mine, and I was ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 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
... roaring tide, From wave to wave in derision cast With scorn and jeers at poor human pride; And still the Petrel with lightning sweep Circles their way through the raging deep, Settling in awe on some shatter'd spar, And tracking its course as it ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Fraser, of course, made up the crews. The boats were loaded in the evening of Jan. 6th, as it had been necessary to give the paint a little time to dry. On the 4th, I had sent Clayton and Mulholland to the nearest cypress range for a mast and spar, and on the evening of that day some blacks had visited us; but they sat on the bank of the river, preserving a most determined silence; and, at length, left us abruptly, and apparently in great ill humour. In the disposition of the loads, I placed all ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... candles, and he knew not whence it came if it was not from the walls and roof, which were rough and arched like a grotto, and composed of a clear transparent rock incrusted with sheep's silver, and spar and various bright stones." At last he came to two lofty folding doors which stood ajar. Passing through these doors, he entered a large and spacious hall, the richness and brilliance of which was beyond description. It seemed to extend throughout the whole length and breadth of the hill. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... 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 did she count ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... pours from above, in innumerable little streams, like a perpetual shower of rain! The never-abating action of the water has worn the rock into many fantastic shapes; and, crusting round the moss and fibres of the roots of trees, has given to it almost the appearance of a spar cavern. In several places the water has worn little reservoirs for itself, which are always full. It is cool, clear, and pleasant to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... parts of a buff calcareous sandstone, calcareous tuff; and, more abundantly, of limestone of a peculiar aspect, presenting at first sight the appearance of porphyry, but consisting of a base of compact limestone, with disseminated portions of calcareous spar, principally due to fragments of crinoidea. At a lower part in the same rock, less compact, I found a beautiful chalcedonic cast, apparently of a terebra. The calcareous sandstone consisted of grains of quartz cemented by calcareous spar, and contained fragments ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... his Bed two Months, but Misson seeing him in a fair way of Recovery, took what Hands could be spar'd from the Bijoux, leaving her sufficient for Defence, and went out, having mounted ten of the Portuguese Guns, for he had hitherto carried but thirty, though he had Ports for forty. He stretched over to Madagascar, and coasted along this Island to the Northward, as far ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... old Portuguese colony, is only forty miles from Hong-Kong. The arrangements on the river steamers are rather peculiar, for only European passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to the lower decks, which are enclosed with strong steel bars. Before the ship starts the iron gates of communication are shut and padlocked, so that all ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... case; and under this conviction Arthur rolled himself in the blanket (cut from the spar of the ice-boat), and went into dreamland straight from his brushwood bed, Mr. Holt continuing to sit by the fire gazing into it as before; which sort of gazing, experienced people say, is very bad for the eyes. Perhaps it was that ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Upper and Lower Llandovery beds. a, b. Views of the shell itself, from figures in Murchison's Sil. Syst. c. Cast with portion of shell remaining, and with the hollow of the central septum filled with spar. d. Internal cast of a valve, the space once occupied by the septum being represented by a hollow in which is seen a cast of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... when we came to a dead stop, struck with awe at the grand sight that met our view. The walls and roof of the cave were lit up, as it were, with star-like gems, while some hung down like glass drops from the roof, and some rose up from the ground at its sides like blocks of spar. I broke off a piece and put ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... Antonina remained 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 ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three .. minutes or more he was seen swimming ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... bodily. As it dropped the wind took hold of the folds of it and buffeted them cruelly. This was a thing he had once been accustomed to, but as he clutched at the canvas it seemed to him incredible that he had not already been flung off headlong from the reeling spar. Still, that banging, thrashing canvas must be mastered somehow, though it was snow-soaked and almost unyielding, and he clawed at it furiously with bleeding hands while twice the bowsprit raked a sea and dipped him waist-deep in. At length the other man flung him the end of the gasket, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... in proportion to their height; and these stems rising two hundred feet, without a single offshoot or branch upon them, gave the trees the appearance of being still taller than they actually were—just as a thin clean spar, set upright, looks much taller than a hill or a ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... see that given an unchangeable crystal with cleavage planes evident, it is possible easily to reproduce the same form over and over again by splitting, whereas by simply breaking, the form of the crystal would be lost; just as a rhomb of Iceland spar might be sawn or broken across the middle and its form lost, although this would really be more apparent than real, since it would be an alteration in the mass and not in the shape of each individual crystal. And given further cleavage, ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... cold. The weather-side of every rope, spar, and stay was coated with ice, while all the rigging was a harp, singing and shouting under the fierce hand of the wind. The schooner, hove to, lurched and floundered through the sea, rolling her scuppers under and perpetually flooding the deck with icy ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... seamanship. What they called a severe gale would have been regarded by an Australian clipper or Western Ocean packet-ship in the writer's early days as a hard whole-sail breeze, perhaps with the kites taken in. It was rare that these dashing commanders ever carried away a spar, and it was not because they did not carry on, but because they knew every trick of the vessel, the wind, and the sea. It was a common saying in those days when vessels were being overpowered with canvas, "The old lady was talking to us now," i.e. the vessel was asking to have ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 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 ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... 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 ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... and could have fought us so much better than we could her. We didn't want to fight 'cause we knowed enough to jest natu'ally be skeered. She was a one decker man o' war. We was a two decker with six guns on berth deck, an' five guns on spar deck. I never saw her after that, but I heard she was contacted by the Kearsage which sunk ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... 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 ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... 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 Glasgow—lies ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... the toss. For a moment I 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 which rattled ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent, afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived. With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... 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 ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... country of the sea-people. In that land there grew neither grass nor flowers, bushes nor trees, but the ground was covered with bright-coloured shells and pebbles. There were hills of marble, and rocks of spar. Over all was a cold blue sky with no sun, but a light clear and silvery as that of the harvest moon. The fisherman could see no smoking chimneys, but there were caves in the rocks of spar, and halls in the marble ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... to the house with ye, an' hev it done to onct," said Jim, sententiously. "I hev about an hour to spar, ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Saucie! Companion! tis the Guise, but yet those termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd. Companion! He's jealous, by this light. Are you blind of that side, Duke? Ile to her againe for that. Forth, princely mistresse, 125 for the honour of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... bamboo mast and spar were fitted to each sledge. Immediately in front of the mast came the "cooker-box," containing in respective compartments the primus and a bottle of spirit for lighting it, as well as spare prickers, openers ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... with its tubercles and striae, as seen in a, Figure 52, would be seen embossed. Now if the space alluded to between the nucleus and the impression, instead of being left empty, has been filled up with calcareous spar, flint, pyrites, or other mineral, we then obtain from the mould an exact cast both of the external and internal form of the original shell. In this manner silicified casts of shells have been formed; and if the mud or sand of the nucleus happen to be incoherent, or soluble ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... her. But the hydroplane, ploughing through the cold waves, whizzed toward the yacht, as he climbed out to the small flat stern. A small boat had swung close to the yacht now. A ladder had been lowered from a spar, while a man standing in the little craft missed it. The yacht was gliding past the boat, when another rope ladder was ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I sat ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... most noble broadness; I've no complaint to make on that score. It's the length of the way that is troubling me just now—this cursed leg of mine! Might I be so bold to ask the loan of your arm so far as the fortress? An old sailorman with a sprung spar navigates but badly on these ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... bows seems to be spar varnish. This keeps out moisture. It has two disadvantages, however; it cracks after much bending, and it is too shiny. The glint or flash of a hunting bow will frighten game. I have often seen rabbits or deer stand until ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... a thick fog, Hugh. All the better; for if those scoundrels come back, as is likely enough, there is no chance of their finding us, for I can hardly see you, though I am touching you. Now we must paddle about, and try to get hold of a spar or ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... firing the musket. A flag waved from Leander's Rock; another was flying over our heads. The clear water of the bay soused in impatient little ripples against the boats we stood ready to enter, as if to say, "Well, why don't you come on?" and then, purling a few feet farther, skipped over the spar which was to be our goal. Clump had reached Youngster's Wharf. Seeing that, we entered our boats, seated ourselves carefully, balancing the oars ready to spring, and waited the signal. I alone could see Clump; the oarsmen had their backs to him. The long gun was brought up to his shoulder, and his ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... mix his gentle rays with thine; E'en I, by far the meanest of your age, Shall not repent my passion for the stage. Thus did the will almighty disallow, No human force could pluck the golden bough, Which left the tree with ease at Jove's command, And spar'd the labour of the weakest hand. Auspicious fate! that gives me leave to write To you, the muses' glory and delight; Who know to read, nor false encomiums raise, And mortify an author with your ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... 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 ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 happens ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... destiny; and a fifth group of disbelievers deny immortality because their degraded experience does not prophesy it. Many a man might say, with Autolycus, "For the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it." A mind holy and loving, communing with God and an ideal world, "lighted up as a spar grot" with pure feelings and divine truths, is mirrored full of incorporeal shapes of angels, and aware of their immaterial disentanglement and eternity. A brain surcharged with fires of hatred, drowsed with filthy drugs, and drenched with drunkenness, will ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Every spar and rope and writhing piece of cordage showed up hard and clear under the vivid light which spluttered and flickered from the highest portion of the forecastle. Beyond the doomed ship, out of the great darkness came the long, rolling lines of big waves, never ending, never tiring, ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wish you had come back to Widow Rippet's, for ye would hae spar't me a hard ride. Scarcely had ye ta'en the road when my Lord mindit that he had neglekit to gie you the sign, by the which ye were to make yoursel and message kent to his friends, and I was sent after ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the equatorial seas, A ship of gold lay on a sea of fire; Each sail and rope and spar, as in desire, Mutely besought the kisses of a breeze; Low laughter told the mariners at ease; Sweet sea-songs hymned the red sun's fun'ral pyre: Yet One, with eyes that never seemed to tire, Watched for the storm, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... 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, and lamps throwing fantastic shadows, and waltzing couples, and the crew clustering ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... their angry hands Were lifted up against some known friends face; Then coming to the body of the army He shews the sacred Senate, and forbids them To wast their force upon the Common Souldier, Whom willingly, if e're he did know pity, He would have spar'd. ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... when, being mad as brute beasts, they seized me and, lifting me, hurled me into the raging waters, I did but utter one prayer to Isis and made ready for death. But it was fated that I should not die; for, when I rose to the surface of the water, I saw a spar of wood floating near me, to which I swam and clung. And a great wave came and swept me, riding, as it were, upon the spar, as when a boy I had learned to do in the waters of the Nile, past the bulwarks of the galley where the fierce-faced sailors clustered ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Cap'n!" he bellowed, "studden sails set an' drawing, tho' obleeged to haul my wind, d'ye see, on account o' this here spar o' mine a-running foul o' the furrers." Having said the which, he advanced again with a heave to port and a lurch to starboard very like a ship in a heavy sea; this peculiarity of gait was explained as he hove into full view, for then Barnabas saw that his left leg was gone from the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... met in billow and in spar; The forest fought at Salamis, the grove at Trafalgar. Old Tubalcain had sweated amain to forge the brand and ball; But failed to frame the mighty hull ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... day, and I don't blame him; for he is trotted, shaken, spanked, and scolded by a very cross nurse, who treats him like a meal bag. I pity that little neighbour, and don't believe he will stand it long; for I see him double up his tiny fists, and spar away at nothing, as if getting ready for a good tussle with the world by and by, if ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... and writes and prints, like a Tom Brown or Swift, a most bantering and drolling Letter, under the sneering Title of a Letter of Thanks to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, for his late Letter, &c. whom, one would think, he should not only have spar'd, but have applauded for his profound Gravity, and carrying on the Cause of Religion in a very remarkable manner, with the most consummate Solemnity. But so strong was the Temptation, so naturally productive ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... Nothing signaled her destruction except the exclamation of the skipper; nothing remained in the wide sea to show it. Her timbers and the sleeping crew went to the bottom together. Morning dawned on the wild scene, revealing no floating spar, no rib of boat, no stave of tub or barrel, no sailor's hat, no remnant of sail, no shred of clothing; the jaws of the sea had closed over all. The ship, a Liverpool liner, driven out of her course by the storm, cruised round the spot for a few hours, and then ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... run up to the masthead, there comes a whizzing, booming sound—and it is caught in the bolas! The mast is struck too, and the balls, whirling around and around, lash it and the yard together, with the frumpled canvas between, as tight as a spliced spar! ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... say I have; for I lay alongside of her in Cartagena when I was taking in my cargo of hides. You haven't such a thing as a spar as will make me a pole top-gallant mast, captain, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is a heavy white sulphate of barium, frequently called "barytes" or "heavy spar." Witherite, the barium carbonate, is a much rarer mineral but is found with ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... been very common in this locality. It differs, perhaps, as I have before explained, from magnesite in containing lime besides magnesia, and from calc spar by the vice versa. Much of the magnesite in this serpentine contains more or less lime, and is consequently in places almost pure dolomite, although crystals are seldom to be found in this outcrop, it all occurring as veins about a half-inch thick and resembling ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... great change in the order of the rest, was more than the Printers importunity, and that, of my own avocations (and perhaps also considerabler solicitations) would permit. But though some few preambles of the particular Experiments might have (perchance) been spar'd, or shorten'd, if I had had all my Papers under my View at once; Yet in the most of those Introductory passages, the Reader will (I hope) find hints, or Advertisements, as well as Transitions. If I sometimes seem to insist long upon the circumstances of a Tryall, I hope ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... 10 See the noble fellow's face As the big ship, with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide seas profound! 15 See, safe through 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! 20 The peril, see, is past, All are harbored to the last, And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!"—sure as fate, Up ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... she was lying, and Eudora knew it, but said nothing except to bid the girl get up and assist Sonsie with the supper. Mandy Ann had once said of her mistress to Jake, "She hain't no sperrit to spar," and Jake had replied, "Lucky for you, Mandy Ann, that she hain't no sperrit, for ef she had she'd of done pulled every har out ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... Street, in a region of rigging and sail lofts, block and pump makers, ships' stores, spar yards, gilders, carvers and workers in metal. There was a strong smell of tar and new canvas and the flat odor that rose at low water. Sailors passed, yellow powerful Scandinavians and dark men with earrings from southern latitudes, in red or checked shirts, blue ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue, Till my friends have said ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... their eyes over the water. There was not a spar nor other piece of wreckage in sight. But Jack made out a few moments later, some distance to the east, what appeared to be a ship of some sort. He called the attention ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... came ashore. A stray spar or two, a hen-coop, two or three empty barrels, a child's light straw hat, and a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... nautical curse, she met with a series of disasters during the war, which were not attributed to ill management, but to ill luck. Thus, one time she was coming up the harbor of Boston, from a cruise, where she lost spar after spar, and topmast after topmast; and when in full sight or the town, and not much wind, over board went her fore-top-mast, and several men were drowned in their fall from the rigging. This was not attributed to lack of judgment, but to ill luck. When this ill-omened ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... saw on the wall a calendar which still remained as when I had left it at the hour I sailed away. With the dawn I descended the tower and looked for wreckage upon the rocks, but what I found was only this: a strange dead bird whose hue was as of the azure sky, and a single shattered spar, of a whiteness greater than that of the wave-tips or of the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... she shrank. But pressing her close was the realization of the imminent danger threatening the boy. This was no time for quibbling—no time for nice shadings of propriety. Even if this meant a sacrifice of something of herself, she must cling to the one spar that promised a chance for her brother's safety. As Donaldson's eyes met hers, she felt ashamed that she had hesitated even long enough for these thoughts ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... his shoulder and found Eudena already vanished into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya preferred to spar in the water below him until the others were beside him. Human tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the tactics of the pack. Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and rushed. Ugh-lomi felt the rush coming, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the breaking gulfs of sorrow, When the helpless feet stretch out And find in the deeps of darkness No footing so solid as doubt, Then better one spar of Memory, One broken plank of the Past, That our human heart may cling to, Though hopeless ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... 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 Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... 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, plunged us twice into the water up to our chins. We hardly knew whether we were on or off; when ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and should, therefore, converse freely, as equals. To shrink away to a side-table and affect to be absorbed in some album or illustrated work; or, if you find one unlucky acquaintance in the room, to fasten upon her like a drowning man clinging to a spar, are gaucheries which no ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge |
