"Porthole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inspection of the strange-looking craft. It is unlike anything you ever saw at Boston or New York. It is like a great box on a raft. The sides are inclined, made of stout oak timbers and plated with iron. You enter through a porthole, where you may lay your hand upon the iron lips of a great gun, which throws a ball nine inches in diameter. There are fourteen guns, with stout oaken carriages. The men are moving about, exercising the guns,—going through the motions of loading ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Whither was it that this strange man was leading me? Did he live in a cave like a wild beast, or was this some trap into which he was luring me? The moon shone out at the instant, and in its silver light this black, silent porthole ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... open the door of his cabin and felt for the switch of the electric light. But he did not press it when he found it. Something made him change his mind. The faint light of stars upon rippling water came to him through the open porthole, and he shut himself in and stepped forward to the couch ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... I know. (She turns away from them and walks slowly to the bench on left. She lifts up one of the curtains and looks through a porthole; then utters an exclamation of joy.) Ah, water! Clear water! As far as I can see! How good it looks after all these months of ice! (She turns round to them, her face transfigured with joy.) Ah, now I must go upon deck and ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... 13.—Woke just at daybreak. When I looked through the porthole I found that this harbour of Mourillyan where we were lying was one of the most picturesque I had ever seen. It is entirely land-locked, except for the narrow passage through which we entered last night. Both vegetation and landscape looked thoroughly tropical, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... of the siege the difficulty of maintaining signalling communication with the Malakand was extreme. But for the heroism of the signallers, it would have been insuperable. One man in particular, Sepoy Prem Singh, used every day at the risk of his life to come out through a porthole of the tower, establish his heliograph, and, under a terrible fire from short range, flash urgent messages to the main force. The extreme danger, the delicacy of the operation of obtaining connection with a helio, the time consumed, the composure required, these things combined to make ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... would not be worth while to undress unless the storm should abate. He scrambled up, and thankfully flung himself, just as he was, on to his bunk. In the wild confusion of squeaking, straining planks, the thump of waves against the porthole, the demon-shrieks of infuriated wind, and the shouts and running to and fro of sailors overhead, it seemed impossible that any human being could sleep. Yet the creature overhead was mercifully quiet; and suddenly slumber fell upon Max, shutting out thought and sound. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... opposite the door kept a look out; and two Australian jokers sat in the top end berth with their legs hanging over and swinging contentedly, and the porthole open ready for a swift and easy disposal of circumstantial evidence on the first alarm. They were eating a pineapple which they had sliced and extracted in sections from a crate up on deck. They looked so ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... all right, a long, long way inside a rusty freighter without a single porthole, to a planet out on the rim of the Galaxy that was as barren and dreary as a cosmic slag heap. Five years on the rock pile, five years of knocking yourself out trying to explain history and Shakespeare ...
— The Passenger • Kenneth Harmon
... awful daub which he called "The Guardship Attacked," in which was depicted a vessel, broadside on to the spectator, wedged very tightly into the sea and sky of an impossible blue, with little pills of white smoke clinging to a porthole here and there. This work he told me was his "chef de hover," and he volunteered to furnish me with a copy of it on cardboard for half a crown, and to deliver it at my lodgings for his 'bus fare and a drink. I closed with that proposal and in a week's time he brought the work ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... deal of ingenuity. Running along two thirds of the length of the hull nearly the whole interior of the vessel is filled with a series of seats and foot rests rising in sets of three. Each man has a bench and a kind of stool beneath him, and sits close to a porthole. The feet of the lowest rower are near the level of the water line; swinging two feet above him and only a little behind him is his comrade of the second tier; higher and behind in turn is he of the third.[*] Running down the center of the ship on either side of these complicated benches is a broad, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the third bell rang. I heard the engine whistle, the funnel belch out its smoke, the hawsers being thrown off, the gangways being taken in, and then, looking through the porthole, I saw the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... heard the restless tossing and stepped silently into the little stateroom, his young-old eyes fastened upon the wistful lines that marked the competent young face. While he stood brooding over his young master the dawn streaked through the open porthole, and a soft splash sounded from up forward as the ship dropped her roped anchor. They were ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... From the porthole he could see the incredible mass of the ship. He crossed the room and pressed the curtains aside. His impression had been right. The ship was black. Black, nameless, and blind. No insignia or portholes were visible anywhere on the hull within his ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... carried the listening-tank to a porthole, opened it and emptied the tank into the sea. "Good-bye!" he murmured as a faint splash reached ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... there's a great commotion without; hurried feet fly about the decks; loud orders are shouted under our window, and with a mighty trembling and throbbing, the ship's engine seems to stop suddenly. Mrs. Steele is scrambling into her robe de chambre, and has her head out of the porthole, while I, hardly awake even yet, lean in a bewildered way over the side ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... hadn't then for one thing, Weaver would not have been where he was now, staring out an octagonal porthole at an endless sea of diamond-pierced blackness, with the empty ship humming to itself all ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... the land of promise, for his faults and defects. That happened so, for not long after, he fell sick, before sighting the islands called Ladrones. His sickness increasing, when he was told that the islands were in sight, he arose from his bed, and looking at them, through a porthole of his cabin, immediately lay down again, saying, "Nunc moriar laetus." [33] His weakness was already very great, and, as he had already received the holy sacraments, and was in great resignation and joy of soul, and all ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... bent forward in prayer. Clark's breath came a little quickly at the strangeness of it all and, moving on tip toe, he turned the handle softly. In his own cabin, he lay for an hour staring out of the porthole at the dim world beyond. He tried to think of the works, but they receded mysteriously beyond the interlocking branches of the neighboring pines. They seemed, somehow, less imposing than formerly, and Wimperley and Stoughton and the rest of them were a long way off. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... with Miss Moorsom's face! Well! What other face could he have dreamed of? And her complexion was fairer than Parian marble, than the heads of angels. The wind at the end was the morning breeze entering through the open porthole and touching his face before the schooner could swing to the ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... was also a woman of middle age who could not be persuaded to keep her cabin porthole closed at night. Again and again a ray of light was projected through it upon the surface of the water and the quarter- master, whose duty it was to see that no lights were shown, was at his wit's end. His difficulty was ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... thing happened. Rover, the old dog-leader, who had been riding in the bow standing well forward, as if taking the place of a painted figurehead, suddenly began to bark furiously. At the same time, Marian caught sight of a bearded face framed in a porthole. ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... older inside than from without. A long, low, gloomy upstairs chamber with a huge penthouse fire-place jutting into the room, was evidently as old as the days of Titian's grandfather, to whom the house originally belonged; while a very small and very dark adjoining closet, with a porthole of window sunk in a slope of massive wall, was pointed out as the room in which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... lay in the berth where it had been found, an upper berth with a porthole, had been washed and attended to by the stewardess. The lower berth had been used by the traveler for some of his clothes—they were still there, neatly folded. The dead man's trunk was on a sofa ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... gates swung to and the dropped bar secured them. Only then did the watchmen discover that one woman had been shut out. She was a young woman nearing her twenties and, if legend has reported her truly, "Bonnie Kate Sherrill" was a beauty. Through a porthole Sevier saw her running towards the shut gates, dodging and darting, her brown hair blowing from the wind of her race for life—and offering far too rich a prize to the yelling fiends who dashed after her. Sevier coolly shot ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... his wife, could not find her; but in her stead was her hair, arranged carefully in flowing waves on the pillow, where through the voyage her head had lain. That she had cut it off and laid it there was plain; but she could not be found, nor was she ever found. The large porthole was open; this was the only clue. But we need not go further into that. Hall Vincent came home to England. He told his brother the story as it has been told to you, and then left for South America, a broken-spirited ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... machines themselves, two in number in order to provide continuous projection by alternating the reels and so threading one machine while running the other, were in a fireproof booth or separate room, connected with the tiny auditorium only by slits in the wall and a sort of porthole through which the operator could talk or ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... fastening it, I felt something in an inner pocket press against my side. There are few impulses more natural than to investigate anything that has a curious feel in one's pocket, so thrusting in my hand I brought forth a small round frame of brass, made in the imitation of a porthole, encircling her photograph. This would not have happened had I remembered being in her father's clothes, but it was done, and I stood looking first at the picture ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... minnit I get me eyes closed this stove goes out an' I'm freezin'," O'Malley growled. "I don't think we'll be goin' any place. Them brass hats meet at Operation Headquarters an' the generals call in Weather. Weather squints out through a porthole an' says, '6/10 cloud over target.' Then the generals up an' go ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... of the eighth day—it was Palm Sunday—the mountainous cliffs of Tristan could dimly be discerned. My husband had gone up on deck two or three times while it was yet dusk to see if land was visible; while I kept looking out of the porthole, although it was not a very large outlook. At about four o'clock he dressed and wrote several letters. At six o'clock, accompanied by Rob, I went on to the lower deck and could see Tristan enshrouded in mist. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... blue veins were so delicately traced; and the long, jetty lashes reposed on the cheeks which the heat of the atmosphere tinged with a rich carnation glow. And when the moon arose that night, its silver rays streamed through the window set in the porthole of that small cabin, upon the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... from him in horror and despair. I stumbled to my stateroom, dropped my wet clothing in the middle of the floor, and knew no more until the trumpet called for breakfast. The rush of green waters was pounding at my porthole; the experience of the night came back to me with horror; the reek of my wet clothes sickened my heart, and I rang for ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... general court martial. That's one of the nice parts about truly classified work. They can't make you out an idiot in public. Living on a boat in the Mediterranean is far nicer than looking up at the earth through a porthole in a smashed up ship on the ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... green reflection of the water and the red light of the sky shot alternately through the porthole and lit up the berth like firelight flashing in a ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... door and boxed in with a projecting cribbing to keep out the snakes and skunks. Through it when his protectors were away he could escape the rush of pursuing coyotes, or sally forth with equal ferocity when sheep dogs were about. He peered out of his porthole for a moment, warily, then his stump tail began to twitch, he worked his hind claws into the wood, and leapt. A yelp of terror from the ramada heralded his success and Creede ran like ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... over this route to the Nelson. There, on what is now known as Seal or Gillam Island, stood a crude new fort; and anchored by the island lay a stout ship—the Bachelor's Delight—cannons pointing from every porthole. Was it the pirate ship seen off Labrador? It took very little parleying to ascertain that the ship was a poacher, commanded by young Ben Gillam of Boston, son of the Company's captain, come here on illicit ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... me. But when my father came home he was so angry because you had been to see me that he beat me and said I must marry Bill to-morrow, before you could come back to help me. Oh, he is horrible! I won't marry him! I'll die first! I crawled through a porthole in the boat when I heard what they said. I dropped into the water and swam and swam until I could land on the beach out of sight of my father's boat. Then I ran until I found you. But they will try to find me. They may be looking for me ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... of the German parapet. As their parapets are thin we invariably find we have scored a hit. Sometimes duels are indulged in between the German snipers and our sharpshooters. One day a duel of this kind took place between Company Sergeant-Major De Hart and the German who manned the porthole opposite. They fired shot for shot. Our sergeant fired at the German's plate, and he answered back on ours. Shot after shot was exchanged. Alongside of the porthole we had a man watching with a telescope ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... lived at the Squamish River, some thirty-five miles north of Vancouver City, but when I asked if they had any children, she did not reply, but almost instantly called my attention to a passing vessel seen through the porthole. I took the hint, and said no more of family matters, but talked of the fishing and the prospects of a good sockeye ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... diverted from his study by a sudden disturbance aboard the closest ship. The sound of an angry feminine voice came clearly through an open porthole, and mingled with it was a pleading, deeper tone. An instant later a door was flung open and out of it came hurtling one of the men of Teris. He hit the ground, rolled over, and came to his knees facing the open door and the giant woman who ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... himself sitting up in his bunk. The queer dream had given place to reality, in which the staccato explosions continued. As he put his face to an open porthole a narrow, searching ray of uncommon brilliance flashed over his yawl and picked up the shore beyond. Back of the searchlight lifted the red, green, and white triangle of running lights laid dead ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was shut fast. The colonel was annoyed. He opened the door, and four tall figures, with strongly Semitic features and bearded like the pard, stood up and saluted. The colonel made a mental note of the closed door; he looked at the porthole—it was also closed. The Pathan loves a good "fug," especially in a European winter, and the colonel had had trouble with his patients about ventilation. A kind of guerilla warfare, conducted with much plausibility and perfect ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the water. It dripped mud and a sailor was quite ridiculously playing a hose on it. It ascended and swayed and its shank went smoothly into the hawse-hole. There were guns swinging skyward. Some were still covered by canvas hoods. The hoods vanished before the cruiser swung out of the porthole's line ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to help run in and out of the porthole that amazing mass of metal, especially as the thing must be clone in a trice. Then, at the summons of a horrid, rasping rattle, swayed by the Captain in person, we were made to rush from our guns, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Fenton reeled backward from the porthole, his great hairy paws clapped over his eyes. No one had warned him, and he did not know that total blindness might result from gazing too earnestly into the sun's unscreened flaming orb, especially with that body not more than twenty million ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... undertaken men crowded to enlist, just as freely from the Mississippi Valley as from the seaboard, and for the first time since the Spanish War the ships put to sea overmanned—and by as stalwart a set of men-of-war's men as ever looked through a porthole, game for a fight or a frolic, but withal so self-respecting and with such a sense of responsibility that in all the ports in which they landed their conduct was exemplary. The fleet practiced incessantly during the voyage, both with the guns and in battle tactics, and came home a ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... An instinct warned him that to surrender to passion would be only to trap himself more deeply. The man blocking the door filled its breadth with his strong shoulders. Louis turned his head and his eyes caught through the open porthole a glimpse of the receding shore-line of the Riviera. Blanco followed the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... thrilled as she looked at the old adobe wall fully ten feet high with small porthole openings at intervals. "And there are the tiny windows they used to shoot through at the Indians. I'd love ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... out of a porthole and called out, "Look here, you may not care, but the cruel rocks are goring the sides of this boat like the horns of an ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... gangs, each of about ten men and twenty women! The latter were sturdy creatures, modestly attired in rough jackets and skirts. There were not far from thirty bamboo baskets to the gang. One man stood at the porthole, and each second emptied a coal basket, using both hands, and throwing it back into the barge with one hand, the same swing of the arm used to catch the next basket hurled to him with a quick, quiet fling. There were three men ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... grimly. "The last thing which could betray me is overboard. I'm safe now! No fool to be caught, even by a tell-tale ring!" He had hurled poor Clayton's college pin and seal ring far out into the sapphire blue, and then resolutely screwed up the porthole. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... Mart's porthole was open that night, as usual. He woke up suddenly to find the setting moon streaming in across his face, and got up to hang a towel across the open port, in order not to exclude the fresh air. As he did so, he heard the ship's ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... splinters flew from the casing of a porthole as his bullet struck, but no further ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... had been succeeded by sand-fields and then, almost at once, they saw more rocks, which marked the eastern extremity of Etretat, the Porte d'Amont. Fish fled at their approach. One of them, bolder than the rest, fastened on to a porthole and looked at the occupants of the saloon with its ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc |
