"Phosphorescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unequal massive towers of St. Mary's Church soared aloft into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides, glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others. In the distance the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the street with the square shoulders of the old city wall. In the narrow, brilliantly pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all over head was black with the flying scud. The English second mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his h's misplaced, storming at the men: ''An'somely the weather mainbrace—'an'somely, I tell you!—'Alf a dozen of you clap on to the main sheet here—down with 'im!—D'y'see ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... dreary duet was kept up for half an hour. Whenever one bird ceased his solemn boo-boo-boo-boo-boo, I found myself with stilled breath straining my sense to catch the answering notes, fearing to stir lest I should lose them. A phosphorescent gleam swept by close to my face, making me start at its sudden appearance, then passed away, trailing a line of faint light over the dusky weeds. The passing firefly served to remind me that I was not smoking, and the thought then occurred to me that a cigar might possibly have the effect ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... juice of E. cattimandoo furnishes caoutchouc of a very good quality, which, however, becomes brittle, although soaking in hot water renders it again pliable. E. phosphorea derives the name from the fact of its sap emitting a phosphorescent light, on warm nights, in ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... furnishing food to the whale, and, no doubt, to many other of the inhabitants of the deep, those medusae are the cause of the phosphorescent light that sometimes glows on the ocean with resplendent brilliancy. We see this light oftentimes on our own coasts. It is usually of a pale bluish-white colour, more or less intense, apparently, according to the condition of the creatures by which it is emitted. ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Occasionally we had lovely phosphorescent effects, and as we neared Scotland, millions of pink and brown jelly-fish filled the water. At Thurso we hailed a boat to send telegrams ashore—such a collection!—to let our various friends know we had returned in safety from Ultima Thule. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... that we were angry, and after a short consultation passed on. We again entered the snowy woods, which were dimly lighted up by an aurora behind us—a strange, mysterious, ghastly illumination, like the phosphorescent glow of a putrefying world. We were desperately cold, our very blood freezing in our veins, and our limbs numb and torpid. To keep entirely awake was impossible. We talked incessantly, making random answers, as continual fleeting dreams crossed the current of our consciousness. A heavy thump on ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... them picked up by a large ship—seemingly one of the New York line packets. Endeavored to make out her name, but could not be sure of it. Mr. Osborne's telescope made it out something like "Atalanta." It is now 12, at night, and we are still going nearly west, at a rapid pace. The sea is peculiarly phosphorescent. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... reversed outlines, and presenting the mirage of fearful precipices, over which we hung:—- the stars also were reversed in their order, making, in the depths of the imaginary abyss, a sprinkling of tiny phosphorescent lights. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... oleaginous sea, tinged to ochreous yellow, waiting for evening and the confederate junk. The tropic twilight comes on swift red-golden wings that fan the vivid stars to brightness, and the rising tide breaks the surface into wrinkles of phosphorescent fire. High over head is the wide, unbroken canopy of the Pacific sky, and the gush of a larger moon than ours fills all the sphere with splendor as the huge ship stirs lazily in its Narcissus poise over its own reflection. There is a reddish glow in the western horizon over Hong-Kong, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... upon coral reefs, of a dark night, while we listened to the dismal tune of the seas breaking over them with an eternal roar, how intensely lonesome they were! no sign of any living thing in sight, except, perhaps, the phosphorescent streaks of a hungry shark, which told of bad company in our wake, and made the gloom of ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... the supply was exhausted, new specimens were easily to be obtained by a row in a dory a mile or two from shore, either in the hot, still noon, when the jelly-fish rise toward the surface, or at night, over a brilliantly phosphorescent sea, when they are sure to be abundant, since they themselves furnish much of the phosphorescence. In these little excursions, many new and interesting things came to his nets beside those he was seeking. The ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... phosphorescent waters of a summer sea, reckless of cruising sharks, a sailor's clasp knife in his teeth, glided noiselessly a strong swimmer; he reached the side of a schooner yacht from which rose the wild cries of beauty ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... ascended. He passed a great leafless tree on which there were white flowers. On the ground also, in the darkness under the tree, there were these flowers; they were dropping noiselessly, and since they were visible in the shadows, it seemed to him that they must be phosphorescent. And they emitted a sweetish scent that lay heavily athwart the path. Presently he passed another such tree. Then he became aware of a tumult ahead of him, a smashing of leaves, a snorting and slobbering, grunting and sucking, a whole series of bestial sounds. He halted ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... long stretch of southern travel is perhaps the most wearisome part of the long journey, yet there were sometimes scenes and sights of the dark hours that almost compensated. One night, there was a phosphorescent and electrical display that could never be forgotten. The sultry air was surcharged with the magic fluid, which made itself evident in most unexpected ways and places. Points of dull iron about the steamer would suddenly break into ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in his pocket, then held this object in his hand. There was a scratch, a streak of greenish phosphorescent light, and then all the world beyond became black, ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... lens with the rock crystal, that the lantern, with its reflector and a blue spark in the focus, made an admirable instrument for throwing the invisible rays on the beast, and that he was all ready, except that his plates, which he had resensitized—with some phosphorescent substance that I forget the name of, now—must have time to dry. And then, he needed some light to work by when the time ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... forward in the water and with a strong overhand stroke took a diagonal course to intercept the canoe. He could see the man bending to his paddle. Every stroke of the blade sent the phosphorescent water flying about the frail bark. The next few moments were of vital importance to both ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... lightning cast a faint, phosphorescent glow into the dimly lighted room, quivering for a second or two on the face of the woman at the window, then dying away with what seemed to be a ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... holiday—that sail down to Cuba—a strange, huge pleasure-trip of steamships, sailing in a lordly column of three; at night, sailing always, it seemed, in a harbour of brilliant lights under multitudinous stars and over thickly sown beds of tiny phosphorescent stars that were blown about like flowers in a wind-storm by the frothing wake of the ships; by day, through a brilliant sunlit sea, a cool breeze—so cool that only at noon was the heat tropical—and over smooth water, blue as sapphire. Music night and morning, on each ship, and music coming ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... distant in space and in time. Sometimes at twilight the grey vapours of the horizon have parted to grant me glimpses of the ways beyond; and sometimes at night the deep waters of the sea have grown clear and phosphorescent, to grant me glimpses of the ways beneath. And these glimpses have been as often of the ways that were and the ways that might be, as of the ways that are; for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the shingle lies the fisher's boat to-night; From his roof-beam dankly drooping, raying phosphorescent light, Spectral in its pale-blue splendour, hangs his heap of scaly nets, And the fisher, lapt in slumber, surge and seine ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... on Jerry's ear-drums, he was still sliding down the steep deck of his new and unstable world. But he did not bring up against the rail where his fragile ribs might well have been broken. Instead, the warm ocean water, pouring inboard across the buried rail in a flood of pale phosphorescent fire, cushioned his fall. A raffle of trailing ropes entangled him as he struck ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... in musings sad, And overwhelmed with this absorbing love. I know no cure for such corroding thoughts But thoughts less sad, for such absorbing love But stronger love." "But how awake such thoughts?" The king replied. "How kindle such a love? His loves seem but as phosphorescent flames That skim the surface, leaving him heart-whole— All but this deep and all-embracing love That folds within its ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... cannon. Gilbert laughed all danger to scorn. Soon afterwards the waves began to break short and high—a dangerous sea for a small, overweighted ship. It had been arranged that both ships should swing lanterns fore and aft to keep each other in sight at night. On the night of September 9 a phosphorescent light was seen to gleam above the mainmast of the Squirrel,—certain sign to the superstitious sailors of dire disaster; but when the Hinde slackened speed, and the great waves threw the vessels almost together, there was Sir Humphrey ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... when the moon hangs low And the stars beam forth with a mystic glow; When the mermaids float on the rolling tide And Neptune entangles his beaming bride,— It is there in that phosphorescent wave I would gladly sink in an ocean grave— To rise and fall with the songs of the sea And live in the chant ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... allow of our being seen, the seventh would be sure to come booming right down upon us, and our only difficulty would be to avoid being run down by her. But later on, when the darkness had once more closed down upon us, shutting out everything but the towering, swooping, phosphorescent crests of the threatening seas, I caught her softly, silently, and secretly crying; and the sight of her distress aroused a sudden furious anger in me that caused me to again and still more savagely execrate the ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... had none. For five minutes the appearance, was most magnificent. Streaks of blue and crimson red light appeared in several parts. At ten minutes to eight, long lines began to form on the east, then west, and varying to north-west, very bright, silvery and phosphorescent. Before nine, the rays shot up from the horizon north-east, and finally north—the southern hemisphere, at the same time, losing its brilliance. This light continued in full activity of effulgence to ten, and, after my retiring ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... can—the peculiar aspect of everything that I saw under this microscope. I seemed to be inside an immense cave. One side, near at hand, I could now make out quite clearly. The walls were extraordinarily rough and indented, with a peculiar phosphorescent light on the projections and blackness in the hollows. I say phosphorescent light, for that is the nearest word I can find to describe it—a curious radiation, quite different from the reflected light to ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... corners of the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms. The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... every body in every place; and when he had told his last ghost story, and fairly flourished himself out of doors at the close of a long winter's evening, you might see the hard face of the good man of the house still phosphorescent with his departing radiance, and hear him exclaim, in a paroxysm of admiration, that "Jemeses talk re'ely did beat all; that he was sartainly most ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was wallowing majestically through long, dead black swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosphorescent swords broke smoothly with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... found any improvement in the malady that affects your child?" asked the Jew, pouring a part of the contents of one vial into another, and holding it up against the light, exhibiting a phosphorescent action ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... the gloom of the woods again and a little later came out into another clearing and Nathaniel knew that it was St. James that lay at his feet. The lights of a few fishing boats were twinkling in the harbor, but for the most part the town was dark. Here and there a window shone like a spot of phosphorescent yellow in the dismal gloom and the great beacon still burned steadily over the ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... a pale, lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable talk, we call the "Fairy's ring," but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescent light. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that which circled round ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... bacteria in fresh meat. Some pork cutlets, he found, illuminated his kitchen so that he could read the time on his watch. The butcher who sent the meat told him the phosphorescence was first observed in a cellar, where he kept scraps for making sausages. By degrees all his meat became phosphorescent, and fresh meat from distant towns got into the same state. On scratching the surface or wiping it vigorously, the phosphorescence disappears for a time; and the butcher wiped carefully the meat he sent out. All parts of the animal, except the blood, acquired the phenomenon over their whole ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... don't forget. Meet me at the Bleecker Street station of the subway at eleven thirty. I'm off to the university. I have some very important experiments with phosphorescent salts that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... the present writer, by that time off the hill and in the plain below, saw the heavens gloriously alive with the pageantry of conflict. The vault was pitted with woolly tufts of shrapnel and beautiful dead-whitesmoke-wreaths from the phosphorescent bombs. These spread their sinuous toils high and low and seemed to fill the skies. On both sides the aerial combatants were going home to roost, exchanging challenges by the way. And all the time, hidden in a hundred woods and brakes, the Archies sang in ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the captain give a wild cry from the poop and felt the engines stop and reverse beneath him. He cast one glance over the rail and like every man on board was struck motionless and silent. In the phosphorescent gleams of the waves churned up by the incredible muscular power of the killers, the old whale—sixty feet in length at least, and weighing hundreds of tons—was rushing at a maddened spurt of fifteen or even twenty miles an hour ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... trained clairvoyant vision sees the human aura as a nebulous hazy substance, like a luminous cloud, surrounding the person for two or three feet on each side of his body, becoming more dense near the body, and gradually becoming less dense as it extends away from the body. It has a phosphorescent appearance, with a peculiar tremulous motion manifesting through its substance. The clairvoyant sees the human aura as composed of all the colors of the spectrum, the combination shifting with the changing mental and emotional states ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... a snake, except if it bothers about his dwelling; or it may become a rock — there is one such a-ni'-to rock on the mountain horizon north of Bontoc; but the most common form for a dead a-ni'-to to take is li'-fa, the phosphorescent glow in the dead wood of the mountains. Why or how these various changes occur the Igorot does ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... boatman complied and the Richard began to lift her hull from the sea, the dark waters ahead were brightened by a phosphorescent flash. Directly across their course lay the Fuor d'Italia. Twisting the steering wheel with only the slightest pressure of his fingers to avoid turning the Richard over, Bronson opened the cut-out and stepped hard on the throttle. The speed-craft dipped, then raised and bumped the Fuor d'Italia ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... going to rise again. The night was dark, shreds of cloud raced across a steel-grey sky, while a greenish patch showed the position of the moon. At the horizon glistened an uncertain light, but the sea was a black abyss, out of which the phosphorescent waves appeared suddenly, rolled swiftly nearer and broke over the ship as ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... by mountains, sleeps tranquilly in the stillness of the elements, as if it had not joined the chorus of the tempest on the night before. As first rays of dawn appear in the eastern sky and awaken the phosphorescent myriads in the water, long, grey shadows appear in the dim distance, almost on the border of the horizon. They are shadows of fishermen's boats at work drawing in ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... musquitoes vex not, and lesser tormentors of the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon to have such an interval, during some part of which you may sleep in peace. As for the night, you may use it for eating ices, or strolling on the Marina, or pulling out on the phosphorescent waters of the bay; but unless you be very fresh, you will hardly think of using that as the time for turning in. And thus are rendered grateful those slumbers which are induced by the prevailing spirit of noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great probability that much ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... ship rose, distinctly visible against the starry sky, masts, spars, and cordage. A faint gleam came through the glass below the compass-box. The wheel and the heaps of coiled rope beyond rose and fell with the motion of the vessel, now against the stars, now black against the phosphorescent foam that trailed along the sea like shining lace. But the human figures, he next saw, were now doing nothing, not even pacing the deck; they were no longer of unusual size either. Quietly leaning over the rail, father and son side by ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... Notwithstanding the early hour, all the inhabitants of the island were on hand to witness the start. To his surprise he found the effect of the water of the bay in the dark, the same as had been observed in the Blue Grotto. Even the fish darting about, would leave a phosphorescent trail. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... but every day seemed full of interest. All the wonders of the great deep were about them—strange fish, sea porpoise, and whales, by day, and ever-new phosphorescent gleams and starry heavens by night. Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... closing at any desired depth through the medium of a "messenger." Small crustaceans were plentiful on the surface, but they were if anything more numerous at depths of fifty to one hundred fathoms. Amongst the latter were some strongly phosphorescent forms. The flying birds were "logged" daily by the biologists. Emperor and Adelie penguins were occasionally seen, among the floes as well as ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... out laughing at least twenty times. If Porou did not laugh, his solemn silence was quite as amusing as the most uproarious hilarity. It was already seven o'clock in the evening when I wrote the final line of this delightful story. During the last hour the room had only been lighted by Porou's phosphorescent eyes. And yet I had written with as much ease in the darkness as by the light of a good lamp. My story finished, I proceeded to dress. I put on my evening clothes and my white tie, and, taking leave of Porou, I hurried ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... days when the sea was smooth as glass. Our white sails hung idly beneath the scorching skies. Sea weed floated on the oily surface, as, day by day, we lay seemingly motionless on the bosom of the deep. The moon rose out of a phosphorescent sea and cast its long golden gleams on the azure blue, while the stars shone like isles of light in the sky. There was a dread in the infinite spaces about. Again, there was scurrying, fleecy clouds and our ship was scudding ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... of the Beagle this evening we remarked large luminous spots in the water. They appeared to be about 12 inches in circumference, were very numerous, and perfectly stationary. The light they emitted was phosphorescent, but far brighter than I had ever before witnessed; it was so vivid as to be distinctly visible for nearly a ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... lounged in cane chairs on the terrace, served by white-clad, silent-footed servants with coffee, cigarettes, and the maraschino for which this coast is famous. Those were never-to-be-forgotten evenings, for the gently heaving breast of the Adriatic glowed with a phosphorescent luminousness, the air was heavy with the fragrance of orange, almond, and oleander, the sky was like purple velvet, and the stars ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Once we saw a whale spout; several times sharks followed us, attracted by the morning's output of garbage; and at intervals flying fish sallied out in sprays of silver. Once or twice we passed through schools of skate, which, when they came under our lee, had a curiously dazzling and phosphorescent appearance. One of the civil engineers aboard called them phosphorescent skate, but I had my doubts, for I noticed that bits of paper cast overboard would assume the same opalescent tints when three or four feet ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... red moon rising from them. The tide was low. So close were the banks of wet, black earth, that they heard the crabs scuttling down them, and Porringer made a jab with his pole at a great sheepshead lying perdu alongside. The water broke before them into spangles, glittering phosphorescent ripples. A school of small fish, disturbed by the oars, rushed past them, leaping from the water with silver flashes. A turtle plunged sullenly. From the grass above came the sleepy cry of marsh hens, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... take them with a net, to wash them well in warm water, to put them in alcohol with the precautions that we shall point out, and to prepare a note which indicates the latitude of the place where they are taken, if they live solitary or in society, if they are phosphorescent, if they inhabit a certain depth or the surface of the sea. The colors of gelatinous animals not keeping well in liquor, it is very important to ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... Some denizens of the outside world even came to Northbury in August; the few lodging-houses were crammed to overflowing; people put up with any accommodation for the sake of the crisp air, and the lovely deep blue water of the bay. For in August this same water was often at night alight with phosphorescent substances, which gave it the appearance in the moonlight of liquid golden fire. It was then the girls sang their best, and the young men said soft nothings, and hearts beat a little more quickly than ordinary, and in short the mischievous, ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... breaking suddenly out along the crests of the waves formed by the port and starboard bows. Its strength was not uniform. Having flashed brilliantly for a time, it would in part subside, and afterwards regain its vigour. Several large phosphorescent masses of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... sea, where the sun is powerless to send a single ray of light and warmth, there live many strange beings, fish and worms, which, by means of phosphorescent spots and patches, may light their own way. Of these strange sea folk we know nothing except from the fragments which are brought to the surface by the dredge; but over our fields and hedges, throughout the summer nights, we may see and study most interesting examples of creatures which ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the year 1669, discovered phosphorus that a substance luminous in the dark, without having been previously exposed to light, had been observed. I should like, in passing, to show you how beautifully these phosphorescent powders shine after having been exposed to a powerful light. See how magnificently brilliant they are! These, or something like them, were known before the ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... than a deep sense of humour, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch and grey, mouldering trunk. In one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the phosphorescent glow of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a gale. The barometer announced a speedy change, the mercury rising and falling capriciously; the sea also, in the south-east, raised long surges which indicated a tempest. The sun had set the evening before in a red mist, in the midst of the phosphorescent ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... Challenger expedition. He wrote: "A giant Pyrosoma was caught by us in the deep-sea trawl. It was like a great sac, with its walls of jelly about an inch in thickness. It was four feet long and ten inches in diameter. When a Pyrosoma is stimulated by having its surface touched, the phosphorescent light breaks out just at the spot stimulated, and then spreads over the surface of the colony to the surrounding animals. I wrote my name with my finger on the surface of the giant Pyrosoma as it lay ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... with their meal, Dr Hopley came on deck and found her leaning over the stern, looking down at the waves which shone with sparkling phosphorescent light. An almost imperceptible breeze had sprung up, and the way made by the vessel as she passed through the water was indicated by a stream of ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... light. In my opinion the idea is a less abstract one, and shows that, as among many other nations, so with the Egyptians the soul was supposed to appear as a kind of pale flame, or as emitting a glow analogous to the phosphorescent halo which is seen by night about a piece of rotten wood, or putrefying fish. This primitive conception may have subsequently faded, and khu the glorious one, one of the manes, may have become one of those ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... calm; the sea was undulating slightly, and not a breath of wind stirring. I sat up and looked around. Nothing visible but misty atmosphere and leaden-colored water; the phosphorescent sparkle had quite gone out of it. I listened, and with the low dull roar of the surf on Rye Beach on one side came the break of the waves on the Shoals, but so faint that it was doubtful whether it were really ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... toward Morgianna, and he could not see her, save when he twisted his head "quite off," which he did frequently; but he could hear her silvery voice humming snatches of a song, or her dimpled hand playing in the phosphorescent water which sparkled like flashes of fire in their wake. The old men kept up a continual talk, for which Fernando was exceedingly grateful. Finally the promontory was gained, and in a quiet little cove Fernando beached his boat and, springing out, took the small, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... enough, one huge member was unshod and stockingless; the elastic-slit congress gaiter, lost in the shuffle, lay out of the radius of Ambrose's long leg. Miss Aphrodite picked it up and, stooping, slipped it over his mighty toes, noticing as she did so the thick coating of phosphorescent paint that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... are not owing to the mechanical impulse of light impressed on the retina; nor to its chemical combination with that organ; nor to the absorption and emission of light, as is supposed, perhaps erroneously, to take place in calcined shells and other phosphorescent bodies, after having been exposed to the light: for in all these cases the spectra in the eye should either remain of the same colour, or gradually decay, when the object is withdrawn; and neither their evanescence during the presence of their object, as in the second experiment, nor their ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... swam down. Grief, face downward, watched his phosphorescent track glimmer, and dim, and vanish. A long minute afterward Mauriri broke surface noiselessly at ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... comely features—was so emaciated, that you might have counted the ribs merely by the eye; and all those parts where the bones are naturally near the surface exhibited a sharpness which suggested the fancy, that as you may see a phosphorescent skeleton through the glow, you beheld in the candle-light the figure of death under the thin covering of the bones. She realized, in short, the description which doctors give of the appearance of those unfortunate beings who die of what is technically called atrophia familicorum—that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... doing so. There is no doubt that Concord would have hung with several added pounds of weight upon our imaginations if it had not been for him. Over his tender-heartedness, as I saw him in the old days, played delicious eccentricities, phosphorescent, fitful, touch-me-not antics of feeling. I was glad to meet the long glance of his gray, dazzling eyes, lowered gracefully at last. The gaze seemed to pass through me to the wall, and beyond even ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... ballads sung by blind men at the street corners. She remembered also her thin, wretched mother, wandering like a hungry cat about the house, which she filled with the tones of her sharp voice, and the glitter of her phosphorescent eyes. They said in the neighbourhood that she was a witch, and changed into an owl at night, and flew to see her lovers. It was a lie. Thais knew well, having often watched her, that her mother practised no magic arts, but that she ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... of radiant shapes fluttered and darted through the air. They were Martians—exquisite, aerial, and divinely beautiful figures glowing with luminous tints. Airy gondolas, which seemed to be fashioned from phosphorescent flowers, passed above my head, and one of them floated down to the tree under which I was lying. In it were Iclea and Georges, but etherealised beyond ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... which fell down over the collar of his coat, a thin and cadaverous figure—altogether a personality so gaunt and delicate as to be more like a shadow than a man. The eyes sparkled with a strange phosphorescent gleam, and the long bony fingers were so flexible as to be likened only to "a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick." Petis describes the impression he created at his first concert as amounting to a "positive and universal frenzy." Being questioned ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... o'clock, I turned from the turnpike into a lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools, and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs, darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll, and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... a trifle! Gamma rays were bombarding it! It glowed, gleamed phosphorescent, and the audible recorder began sounding ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... voice—"at four points around this table, stood four smaller lamps and upon the floor were rows of characters apparently traced in luminous paint. They flickered up and then grew dim, then flickered up again, in a sort of phosphorescent way. They extended from lamp to lamp, so as entirely to surround the table ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... length approached the shore. The roar on the beach as the surf broke on it was not encouraging; still, orders were to be obeyed. Just then a snorting noise was heard, and a magnificent horse came swimming by, as he splashed the water with his forefeet, surrounding himself with a blaze of phosphorescent light. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... almond tree, the Guelder rose and other trees and shrubs. It seems fairly indifferent to the nature of the support. A more remarkable feature distinguishes it from all the other European mushrooms: it is phosphorescent. On the lower surface and there only, it sheds a soft, white gleam, similar to that of the glowworm. It lights up to celebrate its nuptials and the emission of its spores. There is no question of chemist's phosphorus here. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... now lighted by small, phosphorescent creatures scattered about the sea gardens and which Merla informed them were hyalaea, or sea glowworms. But their light was dim when compared to that of the electric jellyfish, which they found placed in clusters upon the ceilings of all the rooms of the palaces, ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... inquiringly ahead now, he observed a huge American cougar, larger than that of the night before, issuing from among the branches. With his phosphorescent eyes fixed upon the terrified lad, he was stealing slowly along the log, giving utterance to a deep guttural growl, separating his lips as he did so, so as to show his long, white, needle-like teeth, intended for ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... now perfectly dark and very squally, while nothing was visible to mark the course the vessel should pursue but the phosphorescent light of the breakers stretching across the bar from shore to shore; while to all appearance there seemed to be reef only beyond reef, destruction on which it was scarcely possible the schooner could escape. Though the Lark was pressed to the utmost, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... emanation radiating from every individual. An ethereal radiation. The egg-shaped human nebula. Psychic atmosphere sensed by everyone, but seen by but few. The clairvoyant vision. The phosphorescent flame, and luminous cloud. The colors in the aura and what they mean. Effect of mental states, emotion and passion, upon its aura. The human aura is a very important and interesting phase of every personality. The ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi
... prodigality of light daring is in these French gentlemen, skilfully tickled by the Marechal; who uses this Playwright, among other implements, for keeping them at the proper pitch. Was there ever seen such radiancy of valor? Very radiant indeed;—yet, it seems to me, gone somewhat into the phosphorescent kind; shining in the dark, as fish will do when rotten! War has actually its serious character; nor is Death a farcical transaction, however high your genius may go. But what then? it is the Marechal's trade to keep these poor people at the cutting pitch, on any terms that will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... in the waist. Therefore gleaming shoulders, glittering diamonds, the soft radiance of pearls, the sheen of gold, and lustrous eyes aglow with excitement, and later in the evening, with wine, gave a general phosphorescent effect to the parlors that Mrs. Allen recognized, from long experience, as the sparkling crown of success. So much elegance on the part of the ladies present would make the party the gem of the season, and the gentlemen in dark dress made a good ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... off suddenly and he crouched forward watching intently. His eyes were staring wide-open and startled at the Wondership. Its bulk lay blackly against the faint, phosphorescent glow of ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... in various chemical experiments, and for making matches; for various kinds of fire-works, &c. It will combine with all metals except gold and zinc; and also with some earths. Some animals, as the glow-worm, possess very peculiar phosphorescent qualities. ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... members of this marine flotsam frequently rise and fall periodically: some of them sinking by day to escape the light, others rising only by day; others, again, appearing on the surface in spring, keeping deep down in winter. Perhaps the majority of them are phosphorescent, sometimes shining by their own light, sometimes borrowing a glory from innumerable phosphorescent bacteria with which they are infested. Nearly every class of the animal kingdom contributes members to this strange population. The young forms ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... bade me good-night, and went below, while a comrade took his place at the helm; but feeling no desire to enter into conversation with him, I walked aft, and leaning over the stern, looked down into the phosphorescent waves that gurgled around the rudder, and streamed out like a flame of blue light in the vessel's wake. My thoughts were very sad, and I could scarce refrain from tears as I contrasted my present wretched position with the happy, peaceful time I had spent on the Coral Island with ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... roared and its wave crests gleamed with phosphorescent light, as the furious wind ripped off their tops and sent them scurrying ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... night, and went below, while a comrade took his place at the helm; but, feeling no desire to enter into conversation with him, I walked aft, and, leaning over the stern, looked down into the phosphorescent waves that gargled around the ladder, and streamed out like a flame of blue light in the vessel's wake. My thoughts were very sad, and I could scarce refrain from tears as I contrasted my present wretched position with the happy, peaceful ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the car hung motionless, then it drifted slowly to the surface of the meteor, landing a few feet away from Parkinson. Hastily he drew back from the greenly phosphorescent thing—but not before he had experienced an unpleasant prickling ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... of the sky, and behind them was no moon from which any smallest glimmer might come soaking through. But, on the opposite side of the court, the heap of snow familiar to his eyes was shining with an unknown, a faint, phosphorescent radiance. The whole heap was illuminated, and was plainly visible: but the strangest thing was, that the core of the light had a vague SHADOWY resemblance—if one may use the word of a shape of LIGHT—to the form of a man. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... once in the Arafura Sea, where for days she sailed in water milky white and green and purple. It was my good fortune to enter the sea on the last quarter of the moon, the advantage being that in the dark nights I witnessed the phosphorescent light effect at night in its greatest splendor. The sea, where the sloop disturbed it, seemed all ablaze, so that by its light I could see the smallest articles on deck, and her wake was a ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... earthly power could have saved it. I had taken all manner of precautions to prevent the end doing any damage when the smash came, for come I knew it must. We now return to the six-wire cable. As I sat watching the cable to-night, large phosphorescent globes kept rolling from it and fading in the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... darkness was setting in and the two lads had walked forward to lean over the side and gaze down at the unruffled transparent sea and wonder which were reflections of the golden glory of the stars and which were the untold myriads of phosphorescent creatures that, as far down as eye could penetrate, spangled the limpid sea, the lad suddenly gave his companion a nudge with ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... could have fancied that he was gazing into a huge black mirror which reflected the vast dome of stars, but he knew by experience that these moving greenish golden specks were no orbs of light but the tiny phosphorescent medusas gliding in all directions through the transparent water, and every now and then combining to emit a pale green bluish flash of light, as some fish made the current swirl by giving a ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... have formed his principles upon the effects of lamplight it is impossible to decide, seeing that, though his shadows have great breadth, yet his lights have more of a phosphorescent character, tinged, as it were, with the coolness of moonlight; but Titian has all the glow of this property, or, as Reynolds remarks, "as if he painted with the sun shining into the room." The Italian pictures of ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... earth were dissipated and destroyed, beneath the clear, pure light of heaven that he invoked and made apparent! Why passed the syllables now coldly and ineffectually across the heart they could not penetrate? Why glittered they before the eye with phosphorescent lustre, void of all heat and might? I could not tell. The charm was gone. It was misery to know it. The minister having concluded, "Brother Buster was requested to engage in prayer." That worthy rose instanter. First, he coughed, then he made a face—an awful face—then ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... boat stopped with a jerk, and uncovering my face, I saw a sight that made me scream with fright. Right in front of me was a large sperm-whale's head, with its jaws wide open, and its long row of white, glistening teeth shining from the phosphorescent brightness of the water. With a snap its mouth closed, and it sank out of sight, while I, falling on my knees, asked God to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... light, his head was whirling: he was in that state of exaltation when all creatures and things were transfigured. To that was added the magic of the soft warm light of evening. Bays of purple and gold hovered in the trees. From the meadows seemed to come a phosphorescent glimmer. In a field near by a girl was making hay. In her blouse and short skirt, with her arms and neck bare, she was raking the hay and heaping it up. She had a short nose, wide cheeks, a round face, a handkerchief thrown over ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... She saw Seraphitus standing erect, lightly swathed in an opal-tinted mist that disappeared at a little distance from the body, which seemed almost phosphorescent. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... his torch unlighted, and moved along; there was a little illumination from the phosphorescent markers at some of the corners, and from the stars. He could just make his way without marking himself ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... o'clock the night grew rougher. The sea was so phosphorescent that it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bows and wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves in flashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat came and hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird light from the water was reflected ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who was white and serious as usual, the count was sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with red, while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the Marquis de Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden sparkles. The house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy on their perspiring heads. For three hours back the breath of the multitude had filled and heated the atmosphere with a scent of crowded humanity. Under the swaying ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... sea most brilliantly phosphorescent. Great way on the ship, and double look-out kept. Vigilant captain on the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the port side, vigilant second officer standing by the quarter-master at the compass, vigilant third officer posted ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... sense if not the words of the command, strode forward—a tall, lithe figure of a man, well-knit and hard of face. Under the torchlight the dilated pupils of his pinkish eyes seemed to shine as phosphorescent as ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... settled within. The river was like a stream of golden fire, each ripple with a kind of phosphorescent gleam as the foam slipped away. For the oars were beating it up in every direction. The air was tensely clear. There was Lake St. Clair spread out in the distance, touching a sky of golden blue, if such colors fuse. And the opposite shore with its ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... attack was made, though the garrison had to be very wary to avoid the arrows which flew at intervals into the enclosure. One evening, soon after sunset, one of the men on watch noticed a small light approaching the barricade, and thought at first it was one of the phosphorescent insects which abounded in the woods, and which the garrison had seen every night like little lamps among the trees. But as it came nearer he perceived that it grew larger and brighter, and moved from side to side with more regularity than was probable with an insect, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... their journey. It was a clear, cold morning, and as the twilight slowly brightened into sunshine, the whole landscape glistened radiantly with a heavy hoar-frost that for the moment gleamed and shimmered as if the face of the country had been rubbed with some phosphorescent substance, or as if the riders were ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... I forced to grapple with this new-born monster of folly. It drove me up across the Park to where the house, black and lightless, rose a dark incongruous mass above the trees, down to the sea, where the wind came booming across the bare country northwards, and the spray leaped white and phosphorescent into the night like flakes of wind-hurled snow. I stood as close to the sea as I dared, and I prayed. Once I saw morning lighten the mass of clouds eastwards, and the grey dawn break over the empty waters. I heard the winds die away, and I watched the sea grow calm. Far across on the ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... crawled away and down the bank. By the water's edge he swiftly stripped himself to his moccasins and taking out the wax vestas, damped each precious one and carefully rubbed lines over his face and body, endeavouring to get the most distinctive phosphorescent effect around the eyes. Leaving his clothes he ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... eternal night reigned. To-day, thanks to expeditions undertaken for the purpose of exploring the abysses of the ocean, we know that life manifests itself abundantly over the bottom, and that at a depth of five and six thousand meters light is distributed by innumerable phosphorescent animals. Different nations have endeavored to rival each other in the effort to effect these important discoveries, and several scientific missions have been sent to different points of the globe by the English and American governments. The French likewise have entered with enthusiasm upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... until midnight, and Barry remained on deck with him. A red sun had dipped below the sea line two hours before, and a faint breeze sprang up at his setting. Now the Barang leaned slightly to full canvas and snored easily through the phosphorescent seas with a pleasant tinkling of running wavelets along her sides. Overhead the heavens were luminous with sparks of ultra brilliance; the decks and sails of the ancient brigantine were bathed in soft radiance, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... tobacco and made his own cigars. These were famous even in Havana, and Gray and I enjoyed them that evening. A number of grass-woven hammocks were swung under a roof in front of the house. It was delightful lying there watching the phosphorescent waves rippling or breaking on the beach under the light of a full moon and listening to the chatter or the songs of the black fellows who swarmed around while smoking cigars worth the smoking. The negro children, shrill-voiced and loud, were very ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... An hour before midnight a pounding shower fell, lashing the sea into phosphorescent whiteness. It ceased, and with the growl of a leaping animal a squall furiously beset the ship. Soon the great steel body was plunging and heaving in the billows. It was a gloomy company about the wardroom table. Upon each and all hung an oppression ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the seamen scattered about in every easy attitude; the piled arms of the marines; the men themselves so different to the sailors; the bayonets of the sentries in the distance; the yellow sand-hills; the sea, calm and solemn, flashing every now and then with phosphorescent light; and then overhead the dark mysterious vault of heaven, studded with stars innumerable, all speaking of the might, the majesty, the power unbounded of the Creator. One by one my messmates dropped off to sleep. I lay on my back for some time contemplating ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... retired to her room, but not to sleep. She seated herself before a table, drew out her portfolio, and began to write. Now and then she paused and looked up, when the sinister light that shone in her eyes streamed through the room like the phosphorescent glow of the lichen ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... untold ages are absolutely colorless. Pigmented or colored fishes, nevertheless, having well-developed organs of vision, have been taken from such depths (over a mile) as to preclude the possibility of a single ray of daylight.[7] These fishes, however, are phosphorescent, and thus furnish their own light. Moreover, I am inclined to believe that the vast depths of the ocean, in certain localities, lie bathed in a continuous phosphorescent glow, so that creatures living there neither lose their color nor their eyes, sufficient light being present to ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... chromatic is king. The ending of this Polonaise is triumphant, recalling in key and climaxing the A flat Ballade. Chopin is still the captain of his soul—and Poland will be free! Are Celt and Slav doomed to follow ever the phosphorescent lights of patriotism? Liszt acknowledges the beauty and grandeur of this last Polonaise, which unites the characteristics of superb and original manipulation of the form, the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... plunging away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, square, with squat, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... hands were around his throat choking the life out of him. With that clarity of vision that comes to a man perhaps once in a lifetime, he saw, even in the all-pervading darkness, the shadowy face that was pressed close to his own. The eyes that looked into his were dim pools of evil light, faintly phosphorescent like those of a cat, and the face that framed them was contorted into a malignant leer of triumph. That much he saw before the darkness crushed him out of existence and all things ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... quay. It was deserted; for the whales had not yet come in, and there was no chance of seeing a night scene which is described as horribly beautiful—the sharks around a whale while flensing is going on, each monster bathed in phosphorescent light, which makes his whole outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered out of the way by his ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... gleaming twilight. Never shall I forget those twilights. The sun was not out of sight more than three hours and a half, and the whole northern semicircle glowed continuously. It shone on the sails; it shone on the sea. The great glassy faces of the swells cast it back in phosphorescent flashes. The patches of ice showed white as chalk. The ocean took a pale French gray tint. Overhead the clouds drifted in ghostly troops, and far up in the sky an unnatural sort of glare eclipsed the sparkle of stars. Properly speaking, there was no night. One could read easily at one o'clock. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... 15th-a night so dark that from the ship's deck one could not see the water—schools of porpoises surrounded the ship, setting the water alive with phosphorescent splendors: "Like glorified serpents thirty to fifty feet long. Every curve of the tapering long body perfect. The whole snake dazzlingly illumined. It was a weird sight to see this sparkling ghost come suddenly flashing along out of the solid gloom and stream ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the Venetian shutters, and the whole was like some luminous transparency on which the slender shafts of the columns, the elegant curves of the girders, and the geometrical tracery of the roofs were minutely outlined. Florent feasted his eyes on this mighty diagram washed in with Indian ink on phosphorescent vellum, and his mind reverted to his old fancy of a colossal machine with wheels and levers and beams espied in the crimson glow of the fires blazing beneath its boilers. At each consecutive hour of the day the changing ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola |
