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More "Raft" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of our rafts, watching the installation of a new ray machine. A storm was raging, but the great raft, a thousand feet long, and five hundred wide, was as steady as a rock. We were 700 miles out; the great push of '92, that drove us back to within 150 miles of our coast and almost ended the war, was still eleven ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... appointed signal by lighting three fires, which, however, were not seen nor taken notice of by those under the command of Cornelis, because they were busy in butchering their companions, of whom they had murdered between thirty and forty; but some few, however, got off upon a raft of planks tied together, and went to the island where Mr. Weybhays was, in order to acquaint him with the dreadful accident that had happened. Mr. Weybhays having with him forty- five men, they all resolved to stand upon their guard, and to defend themselves ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... Ebenezer Creek about midnight they were chagrined to find the bridge destroyed, but after reconnoitring for a time, were satisfied that the coast was clear on the opposite side. Finding some broken planks they constructed a raft and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... again it was met, that funeral of the sea: the prone, tearing steamers, the reluctant bulk. Sometimes a captain's glass might make out a few men lost on the roof like men on a raft, smoking, seated, leaning ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... have some dinner," Hiram said; "and while Pete is cooking it we will get ashore with the saw and cut the heads off some of these small trees, and fasten them to this trunk, so as to make a sort of raft that we can put all these tubs on. The ropes would never hold her with her cargo on board. I reckon some of the sugar is spoilt; but the boss always has good casks, and may be there ain't much damage done. The rum is right enough, and I reckon there won't be ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... in crossing the banks of the Ba-Woolima, a narrow, rapid, and deep river, which was then much swollen by the rains, They first endeavoured to throw across trunks of trees, but these were carried away by the stream. They next attempted a raft; but after the logs had been cut, the sick people were not able to drag them to the water side. But the negroes who were with them constructed a bridge in the most ingenious manner. It was formed of two ranges of a number of upright forked sticks, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... with such good aim that all the rafts except the one I was upon were swamped, and their luckless crews drowned, without our being able to do anything to help them. Indeed I and my two companions had all we could do to keep our own raft beyond the reach of the giants, but by dint of hard rowing we at last gained the open sea. Here we were at the mercy of the winds and waves, which tossed us to and fro all that day and night, but the next morning we found ourselves near an island, ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... nature, even in unhappiness, called aloud for solitude. He must struggle alone through his deep waters: waters of the soul, wherein float neither life-preserver nor raft, rope or even light; neither coral reef nor oozy grave, for such as he. Darkness and struggle alike lasted till the end of his strength; but, with exhaustion and the coming of dawn, came at last one mighty breaker, by which Ivan ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... see a succession of side faces, and it was strange what a hungry, appealing look these pale cheeks and staring eyes had. Hungry! Yes, that's what they all were. She thought, fantastically, for a moment, of poor Mr. Magnus's Treasure Hunters, and she seemed to see the whole of this company in a raft drifting in mid-ocean, not a sail in sight and the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... that I had somehow drifted further and further away from the coast. There was accordingly nothing to do but wait the chance of being sighted and picked up, and I set to work, as well as I could on my tiny raft, to chafe my limbs and get some warmth into my body. And never in my life did I bless the sun as I did that morning, for when he sprang out of bed in the northeast skies, it was with his full and hearty vigour of high springtide, and his heat warmed my chilled blood and sent a new ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... moment around the body of their slain comrade, and then, with hideous yells, resumed the pursuit. The stream was fringed with a dense growth of cotton-wood trees. Colter rushed through them, thus concealed from observation, and seeing near by a large raft of drift timber, he plunged into the water, dived under the raft and fortunately succeeded in getting his head above the water between the logs, where smaller wood covered him to the depth of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... He took the raft in tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters Free State post of the Upper River. He was feeling almost complacent at the time. He had shown Commandant Balliot what he was pleased to term a ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... getting over," writes Washington in his journal, "but on a raft, which we set about, with but one poor hatchet, and finished just after sun-setting. This was a whole day's work; we next got it launched, then went on board of it, and set off; but before we were half-way ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... had visited the rude wharf where Jeff Lynn, the grizzled old frontiersman, busied himself with preparations for the raft-journey down the Ohio. Lynn had been employed to guide the missionary's party to Fort Henry, and, as the brothers had acquainted him with their intention of accompanying the travelers, he had constructed a raft ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the boats were taken away from the other side of the river, but these men were so frightened that they ran down the bank till they came opposite the Isle of Orleans. Then making a kind of raft with a few logs they got over to the Island. There they found boats which took them to the city. And they immediately spread the news ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... He was learned in the geography of the valley and told us how once the Cohocton River, now merely a decorative stream among willows, was once a serviceable waterway, how it was once busy with mills, and how men used to raft down it ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... morning the Handsome King of the Apes rose very early, built him a raft of old pine trees and took a bamboo staff for a pole. Then he climbed on the raft, quite alone, and poled his way through the Great Sea. Wind and waves were favorable and he reached Asia. There he went ashore. On the strand he met a fisherman. He at once stepped ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... the chickens to produce eggs for her. He gathered barks and sluiced roots on the raft in the lake, for her. He grubbed the spice thicket before the door and moved it into the woods to make space for a lawn, for her. His eyes were wide open for every woven case and dangling cocoon of the big night moths that propagated around him, for her. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... a moment. Try to think of those ten patients as ten shipwrecked men on a raft—a raft that is barely large enough to save them—that will not support one more. Another head bobs up through the waves at the side. Another man begs to be taken aboard. He implores the captain of the raft to save him. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... I can't never ketch up with the rest of you fellers." His voice broke a little, "an' it aint much fun havin' to go in with a whole raft o' little ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... across the Rhine was open in the middle to let a wood-raft go by down stream. This raft from some distant forest was so long they had to wait nearly twenty minutes; and the prow of it had all but lost itself in the western purple and gold and dun of sky and river while it ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... therefore exerted themselves to the utmost to avoid them; whereas I could see no other way of escape, especially for the lady sitting beside me, than by boarding one of these very rafts. In order to effect this (against the wish of our two oarsmen) I seized with one hand a projecting peg on a raft we were passing and held our little vessel fast, and, while the two rowers screamed that the Ellida would be lost, quickly hoisted the lady out of the skiff on to the raft, across which we walked to the ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... of Ogygia, enters Calypso's wonderful cave, and delivers his message. Although reluctant to let Ulysses depart, Calypso—not daring oppose the will of Jupiter—goes in quest of her guest. Finding him gazing tearfully in the direction of home, she promises to supply him with the means to build a raft which, thanks to the gods, will enable ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... lips addressed to no one in particular. When these lucid moments brought coherent thought, it was the jungle, the endless, all-embracing, fearful jungle, that overwhelmed my mind. No shipwrecked mariner driven to madness by long tossing on a raft at sea ever conceived such hatred and horror of his surroundings as that which now came upon me for the fresh, perpetual, monotonous green of ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... case I have left a bit of a will addressed to you, and recommending to your kindness my mother, and the boy and the girl—in short, the whole raft." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... help of a seabreeze I ran into 7 fathom and anchored; then carried a small anchor ashore and warped in till I came into 3 fathom and a half. Where having fastened her I made a raft to carry the men's chests and bedding ashore; and before 8 at night most of them were ashore. In the morning I ordered the sails to be unbent, to make tents; and then myself and officers went ashore. I had sent ashore a puncheon and a 36 gallon cask of water with one bag of rice for our ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... real life we commonly find that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... in the forests and sailing on the mill pond. One day, when there were no boys at hand and several girls were impatiently waiting for a sail on a raft, my sister and I volunteered to man the expedition. We always acted on the assumption that what we had seen done, we could do. Accordingly we all jumped on the raft, loosened it from its moorings, and away we went with the current. Navigation on that mill pond was performed ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... years old, and I live on the east bank of the Mississippi. My papa owns a raft steamer, which is busy towing rafts from the foot of Lake Pepin to Hannibal and St. Louis. Every summer my mamma and I take a trip with papa up or down the river. We are gone a week or more. Oh, I just have jolly times! The men on ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... feet in diameter, nine feet high, and eight inches thick, on the inside of which were two eleven-inch guns trained side by side and revolving with the turret. This unique naval structure was promptly nicknamed "a cheese-box on a raft," and the designation was not at all inapt. Naval experts at once recognized that her sea-going qualities were bad; but compensation was thought to exist in the belief that her iron turret would resist shot and shell, and that the thin edge of her flat deck would offer only a minimum mark ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... island would soon be submerged; and logs, driftwood, green trees, etc., were sweeping down the river at a tremendous speed. To rescue the wounded, sick, and attendants at the hospital seemed impossible. Various suggestions were made; a raft was proposed, but this was decided impracticable as, if made and launched, it would in ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... geese have all gone up the stream; the people who live in the boats have breakfasted, and the fishermen have come out to their work. This is Lin's work. He works with his uncle Chow, and already his blue trousers are stripped above his knees, and he stands on the wet fishing-raft watching some brown birds. Suddenly one of them plunges into the water and brings up a fish in its yellow bill. Lin takes it out and sends the bird for another; and such industrious fishermen are the brown cormorants that they keep ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... "there was news this morning of a lodgment of logs at the top of the foss [Note 2]; and they were all going, except Peder, to slide them down the gully to the fiord. The gully is frozen so slippery, that the work will not take long. They will make a raft of the logs in the fiord, and either Rolf or Hund will carry them out to the islands when ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... up to the Falls, an' was a-takin' a raft down the river fur Gibson. Sandy Beale was along o' me, an' I dunno ez ever I enjoyed raftin' more 'n on the first o' thet trip. Doubtless yez all knows what purty raftin' it is in them parts. By gum, it kinder makes a chap lick his lips when he rickolecks it, a-slidin' ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... them. At the beer garden a student seated himself near me. He said to me, "We are going to war with you. We shall take Alsace and Lorraine." That night I could see from my window, looking out on the Neckar, the students clad in their club costumes floating down the river on an illuminated raft singing the famous song in honor of Bluecher, who "taught the Welches the way of the Germans." And at the university itself the lectures of Treitschke, attended by excited crowds, were heated harangues against the French, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... nymph, though loath to part with her lover, sought out the melancholy Ulysses, where he sat weeping beside the deep, and giving him tools, led him to the forest and showed him where to fell trees with which to construct a raft. His labor finished, she provided the hero with perfumed garments, a full store of provisions, and saw him set forth joyfully upon the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... thing else but the yellow fever; one might as well bin on a raft as such an infernal unlucky old tub as she is. It's the steward, sir—he's got a touch of a fever; but he'll soon be over it. He only wants rest, poor fellow! He's bin a bully at work ever since the first gale. He'll mend before he gets ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... few miles of wading the little party issued out upon the Platte River. By this time the wounded men were so exhausted that a halt was called to improvise a raft. On this the sufferers were placed, and three or four men detailed to shove it before them. In consideration of his youth, Will was urged to get upon the raft, but he declined, saying that he was not wounded, and that if the stream got too deep for him to wade, he could ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... bush-covered sands of Anastasia Island, followed the strand between the thickets and the sea, reached the inlet at midnight, and again, like a savage, ambushed himself on the bank. Day broke, and he could plainly see the French on the farther side. They had made a raft, which lay in the water ready for crossing. Menendez and his men showed themselves, when, forthwith, the French displayed their banners, sounded drums and trumpets, and set their sick and starving ranks ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... she might not yet speak out her heart to John Berber his mistress was sure. She was reminded of what Strang had so often said, referring to their lonely quest—that actual existence was like a forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what radiant coasts or awful headlands might lie beyond the enveloping mists. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... take them off their posts, and carry them away to some place which was safe from attack. The roofs are very large, but they are so constructed that they can be taken down in three or four pieces, and each of these may be placed upon a raft made of canoes, and carried ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... how they tampered with the chains on that lumber raft so that the raft went to pieces in that storm on the lake!" added May. "Oh, I think they must ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... now that he was being guided by fate. He then became confused in mind—dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... country to travel in, as well as to supply us with provisions, though still without inhabitants, we made more despatch, travelling sometimes, as we calculated it, twenty or twenty-five miles a day; nor did we halt anywhere in eleven days' march, one day excepted, which was to make a raft to carry us over a small river, which, having swelled with the rains, was not ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... water seemed equally impracticable. But Drake, whose penetration immediately discovered all the circumstances and inconveniencies of every scheme, soon determined upon the only means of success which their condition afforded them; and ordering his men to make a raft out of the trees that were then floating on the river, offered himself to put off to sea upon it, and cheerfully asked who would accompany him. John Owen, John Smith, and two Frenchmen, who were willing to share his fortune, embarked with him on the raft, which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... there aren't," answered Tom. "We were afraid to tell anyone what we were going to do until we got across the river, and so we had to build a raft." ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... the problem, a couple of Indians appeared on the opposite bank with a small raft, and we struck a bargain with them to ferry our outfit. They set us across in short order, but our horses were forced to swim. They were very much alarmed and shivered with excitement (this being the first stream that called for swimming), but they crossed in fine style, Ladrone ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the captain, "step aboard. You sing like a bird; it's only right you should fly like one." It was obvious that the worthy seaman was making clumsy efforts to be cheerful. "I'll see you in two days, or three at most; we've got a raft ready, you know, in case the fire beats us. But, bless you, I shouldn't be surprised if we have a fire-engine coming through the sky next; there's no knowing what these clever young sparks won't be inventing. ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... from hearing a boy talking when I was down in the market yesterday morning. You know who he is, Johnny Spreen, the fellow who always ships out a raft of dried ginseng roots every year, and in the Spring sends a bunch of ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... feeble and childish, when, with his wife and a large number of soldiers, November 29, 1812, he started on a raft to cross the Beresina. When the boat struck the other bank the shock threw the count into the river. His head was severed from his body by a cake of ice, and went down the river like ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... few. Within sight of Brammo Bay is the scene of an official "dispersal" of those alleged to have been responsible for the murder of some of the crew of a wrecked vessel, who had drifted ashore on a raft. One boy bears to this day the mark of a bullet on his cheek, received when his mother fled for her life, and vainly, with him an infant perched on ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the wild animal is much more uniform than in the great raft of "domestic" mongrel specimens which make night hideous with their discordant yowls, although we sometimes see a high bred individual which, if his tail was cut off at half its length, might easily pass as an example ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... nightmare dreamed by man, no wild invention of the romancer, can ever equal the living horror of that place, and the weird crying of those voices of the night, as we clung like shipwrecked mariners to a raft, and tossed on the black, unfathomed wilderness of air. Fortunately the temperature was not a low one; indeed, the wind was warm, or we should have perished. So we clung and listened, and while we were stretched out upon ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... West Indies, commanded by Captain Hood. A braver man never stepped. I remember an incident which will show his character. We were lying at Saint Anne's Harbour, Jamaica, a heavy gale of wind blowing, when the look-out from the masthead discovered far out at sea a raft; tossing about on the foaming waves, which threatened every moment to wash off three men who were seen clinging to it. The captain at once ordered a boat to put off to their assistance, but the sea was so heavy that the boat's crew held back, thinking that they ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... are made of logs of wood, held together by pairs of cross-bars, one of each pair lying above the raft and the other below; then, the whole may be made quite firm by a little judicious notching wherethe logs cross, and a few pegs and lashings. Briers, woodbines, etc., will do for these. If the logs are large, they should be separately launched into the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... that? I can, and I'll take care of you; but there is plenty of wood and we can make a raft. That reminds me that there was a raft here last week, when Sam Harper and I had a swim: I wonder where it can be. Help me to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... ran to the sledge; he brought one of the uprights, stood it up on the floe for a mast, making it fast with ropes; the tent was torn up for a sail. The wind was fair; the poor castaways put out to sea on this frail raft. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... these same two good-looking eyes of mine, but the spars is still aboard. They've been striking out cargo wholesale, and, to my mind, in a most lubberly, un-seamanlike fashion. If it had been me, now, I should ha' built a raft with all the spars, and rafted the things ashore, but they've done everything with their boats; maybe, hows'ever it's valyable stuff, and they didn't care to trust it to a raft. It was a'most all boxes and bales, of all sorts ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... land-loving men lost their heads, and it was only through Argueello's presence of mind that the boat finally reached its destination. For the return trip, the services of an Indian chief were secured, a native who had been seen so often on the bay in his raft of rushes, that the Spaniards called him 'El Marino,' the Sailor, and this name, corrupted into Marin, still clings to the land where he lived. Many trips were made in this ferry, but the comandante's subordinates were less successful than he, for one, being swept out ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... a point, and Billy, he climb on a rock and reach out, but he fall in deep water and was carried far, so he had to swim for his life. I jump on rocks anoder mile to anoder point; I got ahead of de bag, den I get two logs, and hold dem between my legs for raft, and push out; but dat dam river he take dem logs very slow, and dat bag very fast, so it pass by. But Billy he swim ashore, and run some more, and he make a raft; but de raft he stick on rock, and de bag he never stick, but ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue of ten per cent., convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new they were, made by some Frenchman ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... a good quarter of a mile away. It was January; the water was cold and full of floating ice, and very swift. Fording was out of the question. For two days and nights we wandered up and down the bank, vainly seeking a boat or raft with which to make the crossing. We finally discovered a large bridge, which was submerged except for its flood-time arches. There was no sign of life and it looked safe, so we proceeded to cross. We discovered, however, that we had not reached ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... for long. The inclination of the boat was not so great but that, with caution, we might move about. There were on board rope and an axe. With the latter I cut away the thwarts and the decking in the bow, and Diccon and I made a small raft. When it was finished, I lifted my wife in my arms and laid her upon it and lashed her to it with the rope. She smiled like a child, then closed her eyes. "I have gathered primroses until I am tired," she said. "I will sleep here a little in the sunshine, and when I awake I will ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... no very clear recollection; but by instinct he struck out through the welter of gasping, bobbing heads till he was clear of the clutching menace of the drowning. The Commander, clad simply in his wrist-watch and uniform cap, was standing on the balsa raft, with scores of men hanging to its support. "Get away from the ship!" he was bawling at the full strength of his lungs. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and Mississippi she went—on a raft—with a little band of those who were seeking the French settlements, where the language, religion, and simplicity of life recalled Acadia. They found it on the banks of the Teche, and they reached the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... popular in his fleet, and has realized the expectations of the country. His personal bravery was demonstrated during the hazardous passage of the forts—while his ship was enveloped in flames, kindled from an opposing fire raft—by his dashing attack on the Chalmette forts near New Orleans, and his speedy reduction of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... vivid," Mr. DeVere said. "I don't usually believe in omens, but this one impressed me. I dreamed we were all at sea, on a vessel in a storm, and, somehow, we became separated. I saw you girls going down with the ship, while I was taken up on a life raft." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... special category,' replied the other. 'All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes, the pretty ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Moreover, the waters thereabouts are full of sharks, and the evening was so squally that our stranded boat was raised and banged with every wave. We could scarcely move, and the other boat was nowhere in sight. And now it grew dark. At this stage I began to build a raft of spars and old pieces of wood, that might at ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... network of weeds and fallen timber which prevents the fish from escaping. The bottom is thick with long grasses, and food must be abundant in this curious little preserve. The shores slope, so that it is necessary to use a raft to get at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... to try to knock together one or more rafts. Captain Wellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that the able-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves, taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they had any right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with his head tied up, was for leaving the blackguards to drown in the forecastle but the shipmaster was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... their main chance of safety. A few more strokes and she would reach the boat, rest a moment, then, clinging to it, push it leisurely to shore. Feeling that the danger was over, she hurried on and was just putting up her hands to seize the frail raft and get her breath when Milly, thinking she was to be taken in her arms, leaned forward. In rushed the water, down went the boat, and out splashed the screaming child to cling to Ruth with the desperate clutch ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Bill," he said. "See that they are well parked, too. Get out your guards. I'll go up and see what we can do. We'll all cross here. Have your men get all the trail ropes out and lay in a lot of dry cottonwood logs. We'll have to raft some of the stuff over. See if there's any wild grapevines along the bottoms. They'll help hold the logs. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... various motives he was to employ; the motive of aspiration, or the woman motive, was repeated constantly on the horns during the building of the raft. St. Clare sang the motive. It was with this motive that he began the prelude. Then came two variations on the motive, and then the motive of jealousy. St. Clare was eager to explain the combinations of instruments he intended to employ, and the effect of his trumpets ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... foot, leaving the others to follow as best they might. A French Indian fired at them from ambush, but missed his mark, and to escape pursuit by his tribesmen, they walked steadily forward for a day and a night, until they reached the Allegheny. They tried to make the crossing on a raft, but were caught in the drifting ice and nearly drowned before they gained an island in the middle of the river. Here they remained all night, foodless and well-nigh frozen, and in the morning, finding the ice set, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... When the ship was sunk he cheered his freezing men tossing on an icy sea in an open boat far from land, until he at length perished, his last words those of encouragement. There is Lieutenant S.F. Kalk, who swam from raft to raft encouraging and directing the survivors of the destroyer Jacob Jones after a torpedo had sent that vessel to the bottom. There are those two gunners on the transport Antilles who stood serving their gun until ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... and oar lashed together. But a roller ground the wreck farther on to the reef, and the sudden snap broke the rope, as I suppose, and the boat went to sea. I never knew the misfortune till I saw her adrift. I could have got over that by making a raft; but the gale from the north brought such a sea on us. I saw she must break up, so I got ashore how I could. Ah, I little thought to see your face again, still less that I should owe my ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Island of Trn, as has been shown, is a grisly scrap of desert: it has no sweet water; and its three birds would not long have satisfied thirty hungry men. It is far from the mainland; the storm, which lasted through two days, was too violent for raft or boat to live, and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... they were standing broke loose from the shore, and was driven by a strong south-west wind out to sea. Conrad having a sledge with him, fastened some seal-skins and bladders to it to keep him buoyant, and turning it upside down used it as a raft; in this he paddled a full English mile back to the firm ice, being commissioned by his companions to procure a boat, and send it to their assistance. The sea, by God's mercy, being calm, he reached the shore in safety, but before ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... was soon to render the country a service which will never be forgotten. In 1861, he appeared before the navy department with a plan for an iron-clad consisting of a revolving turret mounted upon an armored raft. He secured an order for one such vessel, to be paid for only in the event that it proved successful. The majority of the board which gave the order doubtless laughed in their sleeves as the inventor withdrew, for what chance of success had ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... us at work building our raft, and l'Encuerado went off with Lucien in quest of some flexible creepers, to be used for binding together the various portions of it. When our companions joined us, Sumichrast was squaring out the last trunks. Lucien, laden with ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... the shore. A multitude of hands went up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher. There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her crew, while the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... sing and to write, as he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg, or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... value of this new adhesion to the Allied cause. The standing army is well over six hundred strong, and there is a small but modern fleet, consisting of two revenue cutters, one super skiff, eight canoes (mounted with two pairs of six-inch oars) and one raft (Benamuckee class). The President, in a moving address to the Panaguan Senate, declared, "The world is watching Panagua; it does not watch in vain." Senora Hysterica, the first woman senator, cast the only vote against ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... moonlight..." I was going on to defend my suggestion by pleading that such an impulse would, so far as I could judge, be quite in character, but no further argument was needed. I had created a sensation. My feeble straw had suddenly taken the form of a practicable seaworthy raft, big enough to accommodate all the family—with the one exception of Frank, who, as it were, grasped the edge of this life-saving apparatus of mine, and tested it suspiciously. His preliminary and perfectly futile opening to the effect that the moon had already set, was, however, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... and tugging at your ankles; and growling: "Aw, you think you're some, don't you? Yes. Well, for half a cent wouldn't take you out and drown you." And I don't like the looks of that boat patrolling up and down between the ropes and the raft. It is too suggestive, too like the skeleton at the banquet, too blunt a reminder that maybe what the undertow growls is not ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... the transport the Terrans had cobbled together no earlier than this afternoon, a raft Thorvald had professed to believe would support them to the sea which lay some fifty Terran miles to the west. But now he had ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... alligators nor voracious fish in the rivers of those latitudes, and so Hector proposed that they should build a raft of rushes and dried branches on which to place their clothes, their packs, and the gun, and tow ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... had been foolin' around on a raft there, an' first thing you know Dick fell in, right into deep water, over by the dam. Couldn't swim a stroke, neither. And the Perfessor, who jest happened to be comin' along in that 'bus of his, heard the boys yell. Didn't he hop out o' the wagon as spry as a chimpanzee, skin ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... and as Athene in Homer says to Diomede, to take away the darkness from our eyes." And in still another place he adds: "We must lay hold of the best human opinion in order that, borne by it as on a raft, we may sail over the dangerous sea of life, unless we can find a stronger boat, or some word of God which will more surely and ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... from the truth. The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish rang their own knell as they ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he agreed. "But we are not in a desperate case. We have food, I have my rifle, and it will be possible to make a raft and float down the river until ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... me, and put it in my mind to go to the bank of the river which ran into the great cave; where, considering the river with great attention, I said to myself, 'This river, which runs thus under ground, must come out somewhere or other. If I make a raft, and leave myself to the current, it will bring me to some inhabited country, or drown me. If I be drowned I lose nothing, but only change one kind of death for another; and if I get out of this fatal place, I shall not only avoid the sad fate of my comrades, but ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... all the way to Trenton or to Philadelphia. In some places the speed is very great, almost equaling that of an express train. The passage of such places as Cochecton Falls and "Foul Rift" is attended with no little danger. The raft is guided by two immense oars, one before and one behind. I frequently saw these huge implements in the driftwood alongshore, suggesting some colossal race of men. The raftsmen have names of their own. From the upper Delaware, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a glimpse of a man on the roof of the deck-house, just as he dodged from sight behind the life-raft. He thought he had also seen a gun in the man's hand. The next instant he sprang over the ship's rail into the sea, and as he did so a shot rang out behind him. It was not repeated when he came to the surface, for ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... possible. Constable, with all his independence, dared not throw over all received canons of art. And Gericault, while daring to paint a modern theme, daring still more to embody it in forms plausibly like average humanity, and refusing to place on a raft in mid-ocean a carefully chosen assortment of antique statues, still did not think, apparently, that the heavily marked shadows prevalent throughout his picture were never seen under the far-reaching ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... general opinion, however, was that some few escaped the desolating element by one of those means most familiar to the narrator, by ascending some mountain, on a raft or canoe, in a cave, or even by climbing a tree. No doubt some of these legends have been modified by Christian teachings; but many of them are so connected with local peculiarities and ancient religious ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... spot which he had at first deemed totally uninhabited, and filled with the hope that the stranger might be able to give him some information relative to the geographical position of the isle, and even perhaps aid him in forming a raft by which they might together escape from the oasis of the Mediterranean, Wagner proceeded toward the mountains. By degrees the wondrous beauty of the scene became wilder, more imposing, but less bewitching, and when he reached the acclivities ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... weight, tying every one with a rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done I went down the ship's side, and pulling them to me I tied four of them together at both ends, as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them, crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light. So I went to ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... attached to the Zinkstuk, and this combined flotilla is so disposed along shore that the current carries it to the place where the Zinkstuk is to be sunk. When the current begins to make itself felt, the raft is loaded by the simple process of heaping the contents of the barges upon the middle of it. The men form in line from the four corners to the centre, and the loads of stone and earth are passed on to the centre of the raft, on which they are flung; ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located in that place. In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it to the wharf until they could buy a lot. But as the owner of the wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream. That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... men were at work on the new lode, and doing placer digging for the free gold in the soil. Wooden rails were laid to the edge of the stream, and over it the small, rude car was pushed with the new ore down to a raft on which a test load had been drifted to the immense crusher at the works on Lake Kootenai. And the test had resulted so favorably that the new strike at Twin Springs was considered by far the richest one ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... said Lucien; "I have settled it all. Not three weeks ago I chanced upon the most charming raft that can ferry a man sick and tired of this life into ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... to tell you something. I stood right here, and looked at a raft coming down the river, the evening that Blair told me that ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... raft and crossed the river, but the enemy's matchlock men peppered us so severely that we lost thirty English and fifty Sepoys in getting over. The enemy's entrenchment was not finished, but in front of it was a deep rivulet, which had ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... couple of them; there were thousands of them swimming about; but a bent pin with the bait washed off is not a good lure. In winter, the lake had five feet of ice on it, which lasted far into the spring, and once or twice we got aboard this great raft and tracked across it, with as much awe and enthusiasm as ever Kane had felt in his arctic explorations. In all, we became intimate friends with the lake idea, new to us then, but never to grow stale; and our good fortune favored us during ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... that ye'll paint me name on th' side iv it in red letters, three feet high; third, that ye'll inthra-jooce me to th' Prince iv Wales; foorth, that I'll sail it mesilf. Nawthin',' he says, 'wud give me gr-reater pleasure thin to have me handsome an' expinsive raft in th' hands iv men who I wud considher it an honor to know,' he says. 'An' so,' he says, 'I'll on'y ask ye to sign a bond an' lave a small security, say about five hundherd thousan' dollars, in me hands in case anny paint shud be knocked off me boat," ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... happen to him he wanted to leave them a living, and, for this reason, he had his life insured today while in town for $5,000. Heavy rains were falling up the Cumberland and John Ramon was working hard, he and his hired hands, to get the log raft ready to go down the river and carry his logs to Nashville when the river ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... with a grim sort of humor; "I must do the best I can. It's the same as if I were on a desert island. I must tie together some sort of a raft in order to cross the gulf that separates us, for I never can stand it to stay here alone. Since I have not time to spare I may as well commence with that encyclopaedia, and learn a little about as many things as possible; then if he introduces a subject ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... since abandoned, it was necessary to build a raft of pine-logs wherewith to transport the baggage over the stream. They crossed in safety, and we can imagine that it was with no feelings of regret that they finally lost sight of the stream that had so persistently baffled them in all their attempts ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... seventeen of the twenty gunboats had come up, and, after silencing the Royal Savage, pulled up to within point-blank range of the American flotilla. "The cannonade was tremendous," wrote Baron Riedesel. Lieutenant Edward Longcroft, of the radeau Thunderer, not being able to get his raft into action, went with a boat's crew on board the Royal Savage, and for a time turned her guns upon her former friends; but the fire of the latter forced him again to abandon her, and it seemed so likely that she might be re-taken that she was set on fire by Lieutenant Starke of the Maria, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... setting one day when Ten-teh reluctantly took up his propelling staff and began to urge his raft towards the shore. It was a season of parched crops and destitution in the villages, when disease could fondle the bones of even the most rotund and leprosy was the insidious condiment in every dish; yet never had the Imperial dues been higher, and each succeeding official had larger ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... begin to gather together the pieces of drift-wood that the peaceful waves throw up on to the shore. They are evidently planning to make a raft; but as one of them casts his lazy eyes in the direction in which ours were at first thrown, he exclaims with evident joy, in his native French "Voila les vaisseaux!" or words to that effect, for he has descried two ships entering the bay from the Gulf. The ships slowly ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... In the country, back a little from the coast, we have found a shelter from the shipwreck. That we live at all is owing to the bravery of a seaman who superintended the making of a raft after the ship struck, and almost forced us to save our lives by risking them upon it. The other passengers refused to go, and for a long time we hesitated, but Ben Benson was so determined, that at last we trusted every thing to his frail craft, which, alas! was all of our ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Wolf would have been well away and out of danger before we could have got ashore. But they did not entertain any such idea. Some of us requested that the lifeboats of the sailing ship might be sent over to our ship, as we had only two lifeboats, a couple of small dinghies, and an improvised raft made of barrels and planks lashed together and surrounded by iron uprights and ropes—not sufficient for sixty-five people; but the Germans would not send us these lifeboats, as they said ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... with his story. I listened, spell-bound. The unhappy man explained to Jack how he had been wrecked on the voyage, and escaped on a raft with one other passenger: how they had drifted far south, before waves and current, till they were cast at last on this wretched island: how they remained there for a month or two, picking up a precarious living on roots and berries and eggs of ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... foreman found he was beginning to feel faint, so he told the labourer they would go up to the top for fresh air. But he had not the strength to carry out his purpose. The raft was pulled to the ladder by which they were to get out; but he was unable to ascend, and fell down in ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... a raft, their horses swimming after them; and were met on landing by a crowd of warriors, who, after smoking with them, escorted them to the neighboring town, where they were greeted by a fusillade of welcome. "We entered with English colors before us, and were kindly received by their ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... like it." Now, in all Egypt, and I suppose in all the world there is nothing just like Philae. There are temples, yes; but where else is there a bouquet of gracious buildings such as these gathered in such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And where else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility? Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from the wastes of Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt. It roars no longer. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... fifteen Indians came on a raft and were taken on board, where they were entertained and given something to eat. They learned how to ask for ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... and watchfulness in the neighbourhood of the lake. Unfortunately, we nearly succeeded in drowning some young friends of ours, whom we persuaded to accompany us in an attack on the pirates' stronghold. We embarked on a raft used for cutting weeds, but no sooner had we shoved off than the raft at once, most inconsiderately, sank to the bottom of the lake with us. Being Christmas time, the water was not over-warm, and we had some difficulty in extricating our young friends. Their parents made ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... overtake Them in the Val-Tenebre. They drive them on Toward Sarraguce, while close behind them fall The upraised swords, and strew the ground with dead. No issue, no escape, by road or pass! In front deep Ebro rolls its mighty waves: No boat, no barge, no raft. They call for help On Tervagant, then plunge into the flood. Vain was their trust: some, weighted with their arms, Sink in a moment; others are swept down, And those most favored swallow monstrous draughts. All drown most cruelly. The French cry out: "For your own ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... story of life on and along the great river, just before the middle of the nineteenth century. Huckleberry Finn, the son of a drunkard, and the friend of Tom Sawyer, is the hero of the book. The reader becomes deeply interested in the fortunes of Jim, a runaway slave, who accompanies Huck on a raft down the river, and who is almost hourly in danger of being caught and returned or again enslaved ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the English part of the game. The French galley was seized with grappling irons and hooked on to the English broadside. The men on board the galley were as exposed as if they had been upon a raft or a bridge. The frigate's guns, which were charged with grapeshot, were discharged full upon them, and a frightful carnage ensued. The English also threw hand grenades, which went down amongst the rowers and killed ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Grand Canyon afoot, climbed to the rim, and, making a detour, encountered the river again higher up. In 1867 James White was picked up below the Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said that his hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, attacked by Indians, had escaped upon a raft. This presently broke up in the rapids and his companions were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and was ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... get to him—that's the trouble. I saw a big door go shut in that stone floor. They're cunnin', clever beasts; I'll say that for 'em. And there was a raft of 'em; and plenty more down in hell where they live, ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... takes a Musket in her hand, Raft from a dying Souldiour newlie slaine, And ayming where th' vnconquered Knight did stand, Dischargd it through his bodie, and in twaine Deuids the euer holie nuptiall band, Which twixt his soule, and worlds part shold remaine, Had not his hart, stronger then Fortunes ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... night the wind blew high and chill, the sea increased in fury, and the ship groaned and shuddered at each fresh onslaught. Fowler, however, was hard at work constructing a raft, ready for launching at dawn, and his men, exhausted as they were, bore themselves as do most British seamen in the hour of death ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... moment on the site of the ship-yard from which, in March, 1862, twenty-one years ago, went forth the unmasted and raft-like "Monitor," with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its guarded mechanism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving turret, to that near battle with the "Merrimac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... was so incessant and sweeping that it was impossible for the crew to reach the life-raft which they had in tow; so Hobson and his men lay flat on deck and waited for the ship to sink. It was a terrible waiting while every great gun and Mauser rifle was pouring its deadly fire upon the ship. At last the end came. The ship sank beneath the waves, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... Montreal. This rendered it necessary for the French to establish guards on the line of precipices between Quebec and Cap-Rouge. On July 28 the French repeated the experiment of fire-ships on a still more gigantic scale. A vast fire-raft was constructed, composed of some seventy schooners, boats, and rafts, chained together, and loaded with combustibles and explosives. The fire-raft is described as being 100 fathoms in length, and its appearance, as it came drifting on the current, a mass of roaring fire, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... Bartholemy carefully knocked all the nails out of the board, and then finding a large flat stone, he rubbed down one of them until he had formed it into the shape of a rude knife blade, which he made as sharp as he could. Then with these tools he undertook the construction of a raft, working away like a beaver, and using the sharpened nails instead of his teeth. He cut down a number of small trees, and when he had enough of these slender trunks he bound them together with reeds and osiers, ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... by some still more clever savage tied two logs together and made the first raft. This soon taught him the second advantage of sea-power, which is, that, as a rule, you can carry goods very much better by water than land. Even now, if you want to move many big and heavy things a thousand miles you can nearly always do it ten times ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... old he floated down the Ohio with his father on a raft, which bore the family and all their possessions to the shore of Indiana; and, child as he was, he gave help as they toiled through dense forests to the interior of Spencer county. There, in the land of free labor, he grew up in a log-cabin, with the solemn ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... suspect the danger that awaits him. Dick Sand would not think of returning to the coast by the way we have followed together. He would be lost among these immense forests. He will seek, then, I am sure, to reach one of the rivers that flow toward the coast, so as to descend it on a raft. He has no other plan to take, and I ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... book-keeper of the Cave. This fellow near us," (gesturing towards a scraggy-looking little man), "has got himself appointed a judge and once securely off the raft, poses as a little tyrant to young advocates, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... slavery, and went for them, and brought them a few miles on the Indiana side, above Rising Sun. They secreted themselves during the day in the woods, and with the aid of his friend and Solomon Stevens's slave, previously alluded to, who was also attempting to escape with the family, he made a raft upon which they were about to cross a creek to reach the team on the opposite side. Suddenly six armed men pounced upon them, and captured the family, with Solomon. To save John from the hazardous attempt to defend his family, his friend held him back in the thicket, knowing ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... do to venture to sea in her," said Mr Henley, and Johnny Spratt agreed with him. "She would answer, however, to form the centre of a raft, on which, if strongly put together, we might venture to sail for some port in India ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... The raft Vick Lan Vohr is dragged to the shore, and Stroke steps on board, a proud solitary figure. "Farewell!" he cries hoarsely, as ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... importance, nevertheless, because a great deal of merchandise finds its way to the interior from there. The white and green flag of Mexico floats from a red steam-tug (the navy of Mexico, by the way, consists of two tugs, a disabled raft, and a basswood life-preserver), and the Captain of the Port comes off to us in his small boat, climbs up the side of the St. Louis, and folds the healthy form of Captain Hudson to his breast. There is no wharf here, and we have ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... "We can make a raft," she said, "a small one, large enough to hold a tray. By stopping the launch some yards above the island we can float his luncheon ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a good feed, seeing we could not remove them at present, we descended safely to our boat and gained the shore without any accident. Then having housed our treasures, we were for putting together a raft of the various planks and barrels that were knocking against the rocks, but as I knew this would take a good deal of time, I thought I would inspect the ship's boats, which, bottom upwards, were drifting about within ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... it should be: yet so it is. We have been letting, we are letting still, year by year, thousands sink and drown in the slough of heathendom and brutality, while we are debating learnedly whether a raft, or a boat, or a rope, or a life-buoy, is the legitimate instrument for saving them; and future historians will record with sorrow and wonder a fact which will be patent to them, though the dust of controversy hides it from our eyes—even the fact that the hinderers of education ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... plan to lower the divers from the steamer or from a raft. Instead they will step directly out on the sea floor from a door in the submarine which opens out of an air chamber. In this the diver can be closed and the air pressure increased until it is high enough to keep out the water. All ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... old raft, lying at one edge of the pond, under the willow tree. "I'll play on the ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... rustling pattering of locusts, as they strike the grain and grass with the showers of their terrible clouds; I hear the Coptic refrain, toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother, the Nile; I hear the bugles of raft-tenders on the streams of Canada; I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule; I hear the Arab muezzin, calling from the top of the mosque; I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches—I hear the responsive bass and soprano; I hear ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... miles, and a year or two before a hurricane had cut down the trees as a reaper mows the wheat. The surface of the water was covered with fallen trunks and boughs, and for a half mile at least they had become matted together like a great raft, out of which grass and weeds already were growing. But Paul did not know it, and ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it." Now, in all Egypt, and I suppose in all the world there is nothing just like Philae. There are temples, yes; but where else is there a bouquet of gracious buildings such as these gathered in such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And where else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility? Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... if he helped to save the brig, the captain and I, with a few men, quietly let down into the water the aft hatch, one of those big doors they cover the hatchways with, and when that was resting on the water it made a very good raft for one man. And I got down on it, with my water-glass and ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... boy, that this inlet has been used before for some such purpose as that for which we are using it, namely, for careening vessels for repairs and refit. These poles have been employed for lifting guns or other heavy material taken out of a ship or from off a raft. Now I wonder who it may be that has used these things? The Spaniards would not need to use this inlet for any such purpose, for they have their own ports on the island, where this kind of work could be done far better than here. Nor can they have been ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... proprietors. Twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Farther in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila, whither they escaped upon a raft. And the Samoans regard these dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in Tutuila was shot down (as I was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a village; and tales of cannibalism run round the country, and the natives shudder ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and climbing over the Blue Mountains, entered the fertile valleys about the present city of Walla Walla. From this place the emigrants followed the Columbia River to The Dalles, whence they proceeded either by boat or raft until Fort Vancouver and the mouth of the Willamette were finally gained. Wagons were taken through on this route, and it was not dangerous, although accidents sometimes happened at the Cascades, where locks were built at ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... beautiful, simple-minded creature—it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of directions; then he had a minister stand up behind a long box with a tablecloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him scratch out every bit of brag about him, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or "Water Witch," builds one of the most remarkable nests of any American bird. It is a floating raft, the buoyant part of which is the green {38} stems of water plants, not bent over, but severed from their roots and piled across one another. On this platform is collected decaying vegetation gathered from beneath the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Calhouns and the Boones. Abraham Lincoln was born in a hilly, barren portion of Kentucky in 1809. In 1816, when Lincoln was a boy of seven, his father, a poor carpenter, took his family across the Ohio on a raft, with a capital consisting of his kit of tools and several hundred gallons of whiskey. In Indiana he hewed a path into the forest to a new home in the southern part of the state, where for a year the family lived in a "half-faced camp," ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Medusa is already known to the public, as one of the most awful and appalling that ever befel any class of human beings. The Shipwreck, and the dreadful scenes on the Raft, have been recorded in the Narrative of Messrs Savigny and Correard. But the adventures of the party who were cast ashore, and forced to find their way through the African Desert, could be reported only imperfectly by ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... in a cell of the Chalicodoma of the Pebbles! She eats not a half, hardly a third of it. The rest remains as it was, untouched. We see here, in the destruction of the Mason's egg, a flagrant waste which aggravates the crime. Hunger excuses many things; for lack of food, the survivors on the raft of the Medusa indulged in a little cannibalism; but here there is enough food and to spare. When there is more than she needs, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival in the germ stage? Why cannot she allow the larva, her mess-mate, to ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Cabrera, preoccupied by the rites of the Hebrews, imperfectly interpreted the words of the natives, or, as seems more probable, has he added something to the analogies of the woman-serpent, the conflict of two brothers, the cataclysm of water, the raft of Coxcox, the exploring bird, and many other things that teach us incontestably that there existed a community of antique traditions between the nations of the two worlds? Views of the Cordilleras ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... synthesis in silence and in vain. They had refused to hear Stallo. They had betrayed little interest in Crookes. At last their universe had been wrecked by rays, and Karl Pearson undertook to cut the wreck loose with an axe, leaving science adrift on a sensual raft in the midst of a supersensual chaos. The confusion seemed, to a mere passenger, worse than that of 1600 when the astronomers upset the world; it resembled rather the convulsion of 310 when the Civitas Dei cut itself loose from the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... for fame alone, approach their spiritual masters with reverence. So also all royal sages and Brahmanas possessed of ascetic wealth have achieved, for fame only, the most difficult of ascetic feat. Therefore, O blameless one, rescue this Madri as by a raft (by granting her the means of obtaining offspring), and achieve thou imperishable fame by making her a mother ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... when on a Sunday at the end of July a Negro boy at a bathing beach near Twenty-sixth Street swam across an imaginary segregation line. White boys threw rocks at him, knocked him off a raft, and he was drowned. Colored people rushed to a policeman and asked him to arrest the boys who threw the stones. He refused to do so, and as the dead body of the Negro boy was being handled, more rocks were thrown on both sides. The trouble thus engendered spread through the Negro district ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... peoples of Central Italy—very much indeed against the will of their instructors—towards navigation and the founding of towns. It must have been in this quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks. Here too we first encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... John McVey loitered in the streets and on the river bank and only awakened out of his habitual stupor when, driven by hunger or the craving for drink, he went for a day's work in some farmer's field at harvest time or joined a number of other idlers for an adventurous trip down river on a lumber raft. The baby was left shut up in the shack by the river or carried about wrapped in a soiled blanket. Soon after he was old enough to walk he was compelled to find work in order that he might eat. The boy of ten went listlessly about town at the heels ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... I have left a bit of a will addressed to you, and recommending to your kindness my mother, and the boy and the girl—in short, the whole raft." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the women and children were lowered with ropes, over the side of the vessel, into boats, and taken to a raft near by, hastily constructed on the rocks at the surface of the water, from loose spars, stateroom-doors, and such other available material as could be secured from the vessel. All night long we lay there, watching the dim outline of the ship, which still had the men on board, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... his raft now signed to Chebron to take up one of the spears; but the lad shook his head and motioned to him to undertake the attack, for he felt that, ignorant as he was of the habits of the animal, it would be folly for him to engage in such an ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... met with a serious check. There was no drift, and the stream was still swollen from the summer rains. Drawn up on the opposite bank was a raft, by means of this the prospectors had crossed. We ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... to an amazing height, and every moving thing upon its surface was borne away with the rapidity of lightning. Standing upon its margin was Frank Somers, his eyes fixed with intense interest upon a frail raft that was plunging and heaving among the boiling waves. Upon it stood a man about the middle of life, with an athletic form and a determined expression of countenance, his eyes fixed fiercely upon a brace of logs that had been left reposing on the quiet bosom of the waters, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... had gunboats stationed. The creek that ran through the stockade flowed to the east, and we reasoned that if we followed its course we would be led to the Flint, down which we could float on a log or raft to the Appalachicola. This was the favorite scheme of the party with which I sided. Another party believed the most feasible plan was to go northward, and endeavor to gain the mountains, and thence get ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... passed several islands much larger, and was about attempting to land upon one, when I caught sight of a glimmering light at a distance in the centre of the stream. I directed my course towards this in preference; and I perceived as I approached that it proceeded from a raft, moored off one of the islands, upon which the crew were probably cooking their evening meal. I knew that if I approached this raft in front, I should inevitably be sucked under, and never see the light again; at the same time, if I gave it too wide a berth, I should as surely be carried ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... its darkest I will start with a little raft, only four or five planks fastened together. I do not want a canoe. I want something that blends with the surface of the water. I'll swim, pushing it before me until I am tired, and then I'll rest upon ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a Chinese story—delightfully vague—about a man who once made a visit, unawares, to the Heavenly Land. He had observed that every year, during the eighth month, a raft of precious wood came floating to the shore on which he lived; and he wanted to know where that wood grew. So he loaded a boat with provisions for a two years' voyage, and sailed away in the direction from ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... afforded it great opportunities and facilities for commerce. The inhabitants are represented by some authors as having been the inventors of a particular kind of ship, which retained in some degree the form of a raft or float. Their government, which at first was aristocratical, was afterwards changed to a democracy; and it is to this popular form of government that their prosperity and wealth are ascribed. The number of people ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... current. For the accommodation of emigrants, three men were there, operating a ferry. Whence they came I do not remember, if they told us. We saw no signs of a habitation in which they might have lived. The ferrying was done with what was really a raft of logs, rather than a boat. It was sustained against the current by means of a tackle attached to a block, rove on a large rope that was drawn taut, from bank to bank, and was propelled by a windlass on each bank. When a wagon had been taken aboard this cable ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... down childless to their graves, or, disgusted with gossip at second hand, have sought more immediate contact with the world. A German tailor, may be, has hung out his sign over the door of some mouldering mansion, where, in other days, a doughty judge of the county court, with a great raft of children, kept his honors and his family warm. A slatternly "carryall," with a driver who reeks of bad spirit, keeps up uneasy communication with the outside world, traversing twice or three times ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... a thought by no means improbable, gives an easy chance to shallow punsters; but ridicule is no weapon against reason. Why should not the case be so? Why should not Earth's own satellite, void, as yet, be on the resurrection of all flesh, the raft whereon to float away Earth's evil? Read of it astronomically; think of it as connected with idols; regard it as the ruler of earth's night; consider that the place of a Gehenna must be somewhere; and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... likely to be recognized by every one. They belong to the arrowhead, Sagittaria, found in shallow ponds or slow streams. They are flattened, and on one edge, or both, and at the apex is a spongy ridge. Very likely, by this time, the reader has surmised that this serves the purpose of a raft to float the small seed within, which would sink at once if separated from the boat that grew on its margins. In this connection may be studied achenes of water plantain, Alisma, bur reed, cat-tail flag, arrow grass, burgrass, ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... drivers at fabulous wages. "Oh, the lake is your highway," replied the would-be seller, airily; "you have nothing to do but lash your felled trees together, as they do in the mahogany-growing countries, and set them afloat on the lake, they will thus form a natural raft, and cost you little or nothing to get down to a good market. You know the Dunstan diggings are just at the foot of the lake, and they haven't a stick there; timber is very badly wanted in those parts, not only for fuel and building, but also for slabbing ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Drake, "at these four lads. Their courage is unshaken, and they look cheerful and hopeful on all occasions. Take example from them, and keep up your hopes. I propose to make a raft upon which I myself will embark, and by making out from this bay into the open sea, may succeed in catching sight of the pinnace, and bringing ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... make a raft," she said, "a small one, large enough to hold a tray. By stopping the launch some yards above the island we can float his luncheon ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the galleon from Filipinas in this Nueva Espana has been unladen a raft [flota] of news, which other pens, less awkward than mine, will relate; I can only tell what I have known. In the year 1687 the examiner [pesquisidor]—as the Chinese say, the fisherman [pescador]—Don Francisco Campos y Valdivia arrived at Manila; according to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... everywhere. The work of getting the trunks into the water was, thanks to the natural rollers, not so hard as might have been anticipated. Ben and Frank managed the placing of the rollers, which were carried in front of the logs as fast as its hinder end cleared some of them. In this manner their "raft," if such it could be called, ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Artie. General Thomas couldn't have planned it better," answered Deck. "I'll go to the bridge, and you can go down to the logs. Levi, is there a raft handy?" ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... requested to leave the diligence for a little. The day had not yet broke, but I could see that we were on the brink of a deep and broad river, which we were preparing to cross, but how, I could not discover, for I could see no bridge, but only something like a raft moored by the margin of the stream. On this frail craft we embarked, horses, diligence, passengers, and all; and, launching out upon the impetuous current, we reached, after a short navigation, the opposite shore. The river we had crossed was the Po, and the craft ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... planting it in the rocks, and of running out to it two or three parts of a hawser, to which a line of planks might be lashed, and thus give them the means of entering and quitting the ship, without having recourse to the dingui. Mark approved of this plan, and, it requiring a raft to carry ashore the kedge, the dingui being so light they were afraid to trust it, it was decided to commence that work in the morning. For the rest of the present day nothing further was done, beyond light and necessary jobs, and continuing ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... an old raft, lying at one edge of the pond, under the willow tree. "I'll play on the ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... an hour, we came to the main river, but one look at its wild waters was enough. We worked hard to construct a raft, but after cutting down four trees and lashing the green logs together, and pushing them into the whirling current, we saw them sink like lead. We then tied together all the strong rope in our possession, and made a line 180 feet long, with one end of which tied round his body, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... shrine for each, A shrine of rock for ever one, Nor paused till in the westering sun We sat together on the beach To sing because our task was done; When lo! what shouts and merry songs! What laughter all the distance stirs! A loaded raft with happy throngs Of gentle islanders! 'Our isles are just at hand,' they cried, 'Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping; Our temple-gates are open'd wide, Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping For these majestic forms'—they cried. O, then we awoke with sudden start From our deep dream, and ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... youth, high hope, right intent, health and a big red handkerchief is to be greatly blessed. John Jacob got a job next day as oarsman on a lumber-raft. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... boy, it will not be exactly what you would call a vessel. For the present we must be content with a good and solid raft." ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... was encountered, the land-loving men lost their heads, and it was only through Argueello's presence of mind that the boat finally reached its destination. For the return trip, the services of an Indian chief were secured, a native who had been seen so often on the bay in his raft of rushes, that the Spaniards called him 'El Marino,' the Sailor, and this name, corrupted into Marin, still clings to the land where he lived. Many trips were made in this ferry, but the comandante's subordinates were less successful than he, for one, being swept out to ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... extinguish them by the suppleness of his services, and above all by such a magnificence that the imagination of Nero himself would be struck by it. He had arranged to give the feast on a gigantic raft, framed of gilded timbers. The borders of this raft were decked with splendid shells found in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, shells brilliant with the colors of pearls and the rainbow. The banks of the pond were covered with groups of palm, with ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... last, was satisfying this young man; he savoured now what he had longed for as a little boy, guiding a home-made raft on the waters of Neeland's mill pond in the teeth of a summer breeze. Before he had ever seen the ocean he wanted all it had to give short of shipwreck and early decease. He had experienced it on the Channel ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... one's friends, one's loved ones, yea, even one's would-be enemies is equivalent to leaving one's companions on a sinking raft and, without sentiment or remorse, save one's ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... grisly scrap of desert: it has no sweet water; and its three birds would not long have satisfied thirty hungry men. It is far from the mainland; the storm, which lasted through two days, was too violent for raft or boat to live, and at so early a season native craft are never seen on these seas. Briefly, a week might have elapsed before our friends at El-Muwaylah, who were startled by the wildness of the wind, could have learned our plight, or could have ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... experienced a sort of home-coming, mingled with a peculiar dream-like feeling, that they were arriving on a strange planet, after having been ferried across Stygian currents on a Charon's raft. Out there, on the ocean and over the ocean, hovered a gruesomeness of solitudes, in which the human being, himself seeing everything, remains unseen, unknown, forgotten by God and the world. To be happy in his heated, clustered ant nests, man can and must forget the murderous ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... rising all along the shore. A multitude of hands went up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher. There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her crew, while the mob of mixed ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... general way the course of the mighty stream. With their horses, and without large boats, they could not utilize the current, unless perhaps after descending a long distance they were able to construct a large raft. ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... to get in," said Archer gravely. "There was a fight before this. Turner's found a raft of Indians. This despatch is two days old now. Have we nobody who ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... rim, and, making a detour, encountered the river again higher up. In 1867 James White was picked up below the Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said that his hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, attacked by Indians, had escaped upon a raft. This presently broke up in the rapids and his companions were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and was washed through ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the elder of the Indians; "without doubt the canoe is dashed to pieces, and our comrades are even now with their forefathers. We shall see them no more; and my advice is that we construct a raft and try to return on it to the lands whence ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... or October that I began to think of making a raft. By that time my arm had healed, and both my hands were at my service again. At first, I found my helplessness appalling. I had never done any carpentry or such-like work in my life, and I spent day after day in experimental chopping and binding among the trees. I had no ropes, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... proves to me that the reasonings of the Indians are not always infallible; and if it were not that we shall receive a shower of balls, to force us to stay hidden while the islet takes fire, I should care as little for that burning raft as for a fire-fly ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... of verse," Don has plaintively observed, "is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting to hear the echo." Yet if the petal be authentic rose, the answer will surely come. Some poets seek to raft oblivion by putting on frock coats and reading their works aloud to the women's clubs. Don Marquis has no taste for that sort of mummery. But little by little his potent, yeasty verses, fashioned from the roaring ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... last, with a grim sort of humor; "I must do the best I can. It's the same as if I were on a desert island. I must tie together some sort of a raft in order to cross the gulf that separates us, for I never can stand it to stay here alone. Since I have not time to spare I may as well commence with that encyclopaedia, and learn a little about as many things as possible; then if he introduces a ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... of the Nuestra Senora del Rosario at Manila the coastguard cutter Candelaria sailed for Dinshaw's island. Peth and Doc Bird, seeing the steamer approaching, attempted to leave the island on an uncompleted raft, which broke up with them, and both were drowned, Doc clinging to the mate when they were thrown into ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... the Wolf would have been well away and out of danger before we could have got ashore. But they did not entertain any such idea. Some of us requested that the lifeboats of the sailing ship might be sent over to our ship, as we had only two lifeboats, a couple of small dinghies, and an improvised raft made of barrels and planks lashed together and surrounded by iron uprights and ropes—not sufficient for sixty-five people; but the Germans would not send us these lifeboats, as they ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... ships, and towed them fast aground, where they lay burning to the water's edge, without having done the least prejudice to the English squadron. On the very same day of the succeeding month they sent down a raft of fire-ships, or radeaux, which were likewise consumed without ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... delighted tone. "Sometimes we agree, and again we have different minds; but in this case it looks like we might be on the same raft." ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... craft, for it cannot be called raft or canoe or hut. It was all these and yet was neither. Two canoes, forty-eight feet long, sailed side by side. Between the canoes were spars, stretching across from one to the other, lashed to each boat and making a platform ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... of logs of wood, held together by pairs of cross-bars, one of each pair lying above the raft and the other below; then, the whole may be made quite firm by a little judicious notching wherethe logs cross, and a few pegs and lashings. Briers, woodbines, etc., will do for these. If the logs are large, they should be separately launched into the river, and towed ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... work of unloading the wreck. There was an inlet or mouth of a creek not far from the place where they first landed, and, constructing a raft on the wreck and loading it with arms, provisions, ammunition and tools, they took advantage of the tide to float it in to shore. This was repeated daily for weeks. Clothing, sails, provisions of all kinds, half a hundred guns and as many pistols and cutlasses, with other weapons, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... freedom of the pilot's life and its prestige. Wherever he has written of the river—and in one way or another he was always writing of it we feel the claim of the old captivity and that it still holds him. In the Huckleberry Finn book, during those nights and days with Huck and Nigger Jim on the raft—whether in stormlit blackness, still noontide, or the lifting mists of morning—we can fairly "smell" the river, as Huck himself would say, and we know that it is because the writer loved it with his heart of hearts and literally drank in its environment ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... necessary, in the present time and society. Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than with imitative zeal she began ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and unbattened. This was the "spirit-house," used for the storage of the spirits of turpentine when barrelled for market, and awaiting shipment. In the creek, and filling nearly one-half of the channel in front of the spirit-shed, was a raft of pine timber, on which were laden some two hundred barrels of rosin. On such rude conveyances the turpentine-maker sent his produce to Conwayboro'. There the timber-raft was sold to my way-side friend, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then come ashore ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the lad dies before he shall have reached his majority. The story of his father's peril and of Sam's desperate trip down the great canyon on a raft, and how the party finally escape from their perils is described in a graphic style that stamps Mr. Calhoun as a master of ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... simple enough," Fergus said with a laugh. "We have been down with a raft of timber from the mountains, and are on our way back. That must be our story till we have passed Ratisbon. There is but one objection, and that is a serious one. As raftsmen we should certainly speak the Bavarian dialect, which none of us can do. For ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... destination they worked swiftly, Ellen making her selection of necessities while the men skidded the boat down to the water's edge. It was soon loaded. A small pile of lumber from Katleean for making sluice-boxes and furniture was made into a raft to ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... gray Gull. Little Fisher, or Dipper. Ducks, as in England. Ducks black, all Summer. Ducks pied, build on Trees. Ducks whistling, at Sapona. Ducks scarlet-eye at Esaw. Blue-wings. Widgeon. Teal, two sorts. Shovelers. Whistlers. Black Flusterers, or bald Coot. Turkeys wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. Water ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Lord. And those of the brigandine sought not to land, but put themselues to sea, and returned to the Island of Cuba. Vcita commaunded to bind Iohn Ortiz hand and foote vpon foure stakes aloft vpon a raft, and to make a fire vnder him, that there he might bee burned: But a daughter of his desired him that he would not put him to death, alleaging, that one only Christian could do him neither hurt nor good, telling ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... earnest. His first difficulty was to get vessels or rafts sufficient to carry the people over. All he could obtain was seven or eight little boats, each capable of holding about six persons, besides the two men who rowed. Timber there was none of size sufficient to make a raft; and though he sent messengers for leagues, both up and down the river, he could not get a barge. He put the small boats to work, but the passage of the river was so tedious that it seemed to him that it would be ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... a battle royal. Whatever the thing was that had felt the spears, it certainly lost no time in showing its resentment. It thrashed the water into furious waves until I momentarily expected the raft ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... time there was some provision made for escape in case any of them survived the blowing up of their ship. They carried one small dingy along, and an old life-raft was left on board. A steam-launch from the New York was to follow them close in under the batteries, and lie there so long as there was a chance of picking any of them up, or until driven off. Cadets Palmer and Powell, each eager to go on this service, drew lots to ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... Houten's gold sands offered little of allure. On both shores the river seemed exactly as other rivers, except for a small cluster of ramshackle grass huts under a clump of dwarf trees and a rough raft of logs tied with grass ropes to a stake set in the bed of the river itself. Of life there was none visible; but as oars rattled in the boat to swing her inshore, a sleepy native emerged from one of the huts, and his swift cry brought a score of his fellows ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... corner-stones of hate and contempt was a matter into which no conjecture could enter even slightly had their compelling environment been different. In the city they would have turned their backs and walked away from each other. But two storm-driven men upon a raft don't separate until land is sighted. Gloria, at least, was in her present plight comparable to a shipwrecked sailor of little skill and less resource. Hence, what was to be, remained ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... dinner," Hiram said; "and while Pete is cooking it we will get ashore with the saw and cut the heads off some of these small trees, and fasten them to this trunk, so as to make a sort of raft that we can put all these tubs on. The ropes would never hold her with her cargo on board. I reckon some of the sugar is spoilt; but the boss always has good casks, and may be there ain't much damage done. The rum is right enough, and I reckon there won't ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... though he remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt's moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent, thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... him. Haeckel has suggested that man followed the dog, playing as it were the jackal to him. But this sounds rather absurd. It looks as if man had already acquired enough seamanship to ferry himself across the zoological divide, and to take his faithful dog with him on board his raft or dug-out. Until we have facts whereon to build, however, it would be as unpardonable to lay down the law on these matters as it is permissible to fill ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... and this led to his story. Lukerenga came from the west a long time ago to the River Lualaba. He had with him a little dog. When he wanted to pass over he threw his mat on the water, and this served as a raft, and they crossed the stream. When he reached the other side there were rocks at the landing place, and the mark is still to be seen on the stone, not only of his foot, but of a stick which he cut with his hatchet, and of his dog's feet; ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... gardens; at eight went on; at ten reached the first portage, passed it in an hour; went on till one o'clock; afterwards passed two other portages of about three hundred yards each; and went on to the great raft of flood wood, being the fourth portage, where we encamped at three o'clock, at its head. Mosquitoes very annoying. Estimate our distance at ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... very skimpy breakfast, four of us made a raft, and paddled and pushed it down to the office. Nary a wire was there in working order. You see, Galveston is on a very flat island scarcely one mile wide, and the only approach at this time was a low railroad bridge, three miles long. Our wires were strung along the side ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... whiskey, is their diet. Tea and sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods, combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer, whose morale is not much better ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... be severed, and the floating platform rowed towards the further shore. The elephants, seeing the water all round them, would be seized with a panic, and either jump into the river in their fright and swim by the side of the raft, guided by their Indian riders, or else from sheer terror would remain where they stood, trembling with fear. But though the rafts were to be built without delay, the passage was on no account to be attempted till the signal was given from ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that was the case with all the children. They caused very little trouble to any one. They seemed, in my eyes, to get more like one another, not only in quiet manner, but in the face, too. The motion of the raft was usually so much the same, the scene was usually so much the same, the sound of the soft wash and ripple of the water was usually so much the same, that they were made drowsy, as they might have been by the constant playing of one tune. Even on the ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... more, and, when he was fairly awake, a sort of mist seemed to clear away in places, and he remembered things at random. He remembered being at sea on the raft with the dead body; that picture was quite vivid to him. He remembered, too, being in the hospital, and meeting Phoebe, and every succeeding incident; but as respected the more distant past, he could not ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... falls and had come on the mouth of Medicine river to hunt Elk as he had been directed, and never had seen them since. the evening being now far spent I thought it better to pass the Medicine river and remain all night at Shannon's camp; I passed the river on a raft which we soon constructed for the purpose. the river is here about 80 yds. wide, is deep and but a moderate current. the banks low as those of the Missouri above the falls yet never appear to overflow. as it will give a better view of the transactions ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... fire-arms which would make him a more dangerous neighbor. He therefore refused Livingstone guides to Sebituane, and sent men to prevent him from crossing the river. Livingstone was not to be baulked, and worked many hours in the river trying to make a raft out of some rotten wood,—at the imminent risk of his life, as he afterward found, for the Zouga abounds with alligators. The season was now far advanced, and as Mr. Oswell volunteered to go down to the Cape and bring up a boat next ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... snow and ice has so swollen the small streams as to give them power to force and carry the huge pieces of timber, until, at the confluence of the streams, the water becomes wide enough to enable them to form it into rafts, on which raft a hut is built and furnished with the necessaries for subsistence. The gang who have been employed in bringing it so far lay themselves upon it, and allow it to float down the stream, until the breeze ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... improving the natives. Small canoes soon began to come off to the vessel, little craft consisting of no more than the trunk of a tree hollowed out, seldom more than a foot broad, and perhaps eighteen inches deep, all with outriggers—namely, a slight wooden frame or raft to balance them, and for the most part containing two men, or sometimes three or four. Before long, not less than fifteen or twenty had come on board, with woolly hair and mahogany skins, generally wearing ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Falls, an' was a-takin' a raft down the river fur Gibson. Sandy Beale was along o' me, an' I dunno ez ever I enjoyed raftin' more 'n on the first o' thet trip. Doubtless yez all knows what purty raftin' it is in them parts. By gum, it kinder makes a chap lick his lips when he rickolecks it, a-slidin' along ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the wind, sir," was the reply. "A number of logs broke loose from the raft and I had a hard time to collect them. There's a heavy sea ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... boat was not so great but that, with caution, we might move about. There were on board rope and an axe. With the latter I cut away the thwarts and the decking in the bow, and Diccon and I made a small raft. When it was finished, I lifted my wife in my arms and laid her upon it and lashed her to it with the rope. She smiled like a child, then closed her eyes. "I have gathered primroses until I am tired," she said. "I will sleep here a little in the sunshine, and when ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... "There are a raft of Freshies," commented Jack to his chum, as they lingered over the dessert. "We'll have our hands ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... man who sped the woodman's team, And deepest sunk the ploughman's share, And pushed the laden raft astream, Of ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... that he was being guided by fate. He then became confused in mind—dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... spans, and dried in the sun. If the sap is thoroughly dried out, the cane assumes a permanent yellow colour; but if any is left, the cane darkens when soaked in water. When a large number of bundles has been collected, they are bound together to form a raft. On this a hut is erected, and two or three men will navigate the raft down river to the Chinese bazaar, which is to be found in the lower ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of these lands are washed away and as farm lands they are entirely abandoned. Not only are the hillside lands unprotected from the beating rains and flowing streams, but the bottom or lowlands are not properly drained, and the sand washed down from the hill, the chaff and raft from previous rains soon fill the ditches and creeks and almost any ordinary rain will cause an overflow ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... little. The day had not yet broke, but I could see that we were on the brink of a deep and broad river, which we were preparing to cross, but how, I could not discover, for I could see no bridge, but only something like a raft moored by the margin of the stream. On this frail craft we embarked, horses, diligence, passengers, and all; and, launching out upon the impetuous current, we reached, after a short navigation, the opposite shore. The river we had crossed was the Po, and ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the evening, however, it became apparent that the whole island would soon be submerged; and logs, driftwood, green trees, etc., were sweeping down the river at a tremendous speed. To rescue the wounded, sick, and attendants at the hospital seemed impossible. Various suggestions were made; a raft was proposed, but this was decided impracticable as, if made and launched, it would in such ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... of nothing. Gaspard offered to take Veronique on his back and swim with her to a place of safety. Pierre suggested a raft. Cyprien ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... what a time I had of it at the start. First I tried a pontoon bridge, but the stones for the bottom course were so heavy that they sank the pontoons, and I lost a couple of hundred niggers before I saw that it couldn't be done. Then I tried a big raft, but in order to get her to float with the stones I had to use such big logs that she was unwieldy, and before I knew what had struck me I had lost six big dressed stones and another hundred niggers. I got the laugh, of course. Every numskull in Egypt wagged his beard over it; I could ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... This water's running zwift, and we're making the boat move pretty fast. They can't zwim half as fast as we're going, and they've no horses, and the dogs can't smell on the river, even if they made a raft of the trees ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... me of how the poor people went down to a dirty inland river and had killed a hog, taken its heart; killed a dog, taken its heart; and then after putting them on a little raft, floated them off down the river to drive the cholera away. Then he told me of how the natives had, in their desperation, tied tight bands about their ankles to keep the evil spirits from coming up out of the earth ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... the lands lying near the shores of the rivers, and the wood is floated down on rafts to Tombo, where ships come to take in their cargoes. The African oak is so heavy that the natives are obliged to raft it on wood of a much lighter specific gravity. This trade is of considerable benefit both to our colonists and the native tribes. It not only promotes a friendly intercourse between them, but affords ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... and speculate on what might be coming round either corner, and which would yield a vision first! Perhaps there would come along a sandolo rowed by a man standing at the back, his two oars crossed gracefully; perhaps a floating raft with barefooted boys bestriding it; perhaps a barca punted by men in blue blouses, one at front and two at the back, with a load of golden hay, or with provisions for the Ghetto—glowing fruit and picturesque vegetables, or bleating sheep and bellowing bulls, coming to be killed ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... wallowed just before him, the helpless body of the bowhead whale, the killers darting in a mad melee for its head. Then a figure was literally hurled upon the slippery mass of the mammal, its gray belly plain in the welter, a living raft against which the waves broke and tossed ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... and the embrace of night and storm resumes the sole possession of this confusion of corpses, stranded and cramped on a square of earth as on a raft. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... rocks. A few weeks after, portions of the wreck were deposited on Dunk Island, and the beach of the mainland for miles was strewn with timber. That wreck was the greatest favour bestowed me in my profession of Beachcomber. Long and heavy pieces of angle-iron came bolted to raft-like sections of the deck; various kinds of timber proved useful in a variety of ways. What? was I to leave it all, unclaimed and unregarded—in excess of morality and modesty—on the beach, to be honey-combed ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... lost one, though he made it the entire business of his over-hours to stand about in by-streets in the hope of discovering her, and would start up in the night, saying, 'That rascal's torturing her to maintain him!' To which his wife would answer peevishly, 'Don't 'ee raft yourself so, Ned! You prevent my getting a bit o' rest! He won't hurt ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... to me!" said the fox. "Come up to the surface of the water and form a raft that will reach from this island to the mainland. Then I can walk over all of you, and I shall be ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... The ice raft, with its four prisoners, was driving faster now, caught by the swifter water. It was ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... handy, wigeons often raft up offshore until late afternoon when they move to marshes and ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... who steer are obliged to exert the whole strength of the body in those places especially where the fall of water is steep, and the course winding; but the purchase of the scull is of so great power that they can move the raft bodily across the river when both ends are acted upon at the same time. But, notwithstanding their great dexterity and their judgment in choosing the channel, they are liable to meet with obstruction in large trees and rocks, which, from the violence of the stream, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... fish the fishermen use hand-nets, which they throw into the sea from the shore; the larger species they kill with lances, one of which Ayd carried constantly with him as a weapon; there is not a single boat nor even a raft to be found on the whole of this coast, but the Bedouins of the eastern coast have a few boats, which may sometimes be seen in the gulf. We saw here a great number of porpoises playing in the water close to the shore. I wished to shoot at one of them, but was prevented ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Teddy, briskly, "we'd be having our bully canoes and blankets, and tents, and all that raft of grub right now, instead of ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... she steadily refused to be separated from Ossoli and Angelo. On a raft with them, she would have boldly encountered the surf, but alone she would not go. Probably, she had appeared to assent to the plan for escaping upon planks, with the view of inducing Mrs. Hasty to trust herself to the care of the best man on board; very possibly, also, she had never learned the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... he had taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg; or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, and end by being happy in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... around on a raft there, an' first thing you know Dick fell in, right into deep water, over by the dam. Couldn't swim a stroke, neither. And the Perfessor, who jest happened to be comin' along in that 'bus of his, heard the boys yell. Didn't he hop out o' the wagon as spry ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... became very angry, and commanded her sons, saying, 'Throw him into the waters of Ganga!' And at the command of their mother, the wicked Gautama and his brothers, those slaves of covetousness and folly, exclaiming, 'Indeed, why should we support this old man?—'tied the Muni to a raft and committing him to the mercy of the stream returned home without compunction. The blind old man drifting along the stream on that raft, passed through the territories of many kings. One day a king named Vali conversant with every duty went to the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the shrouds, took hold of the planks at his side, and they heaved the rude raft into the sea. In an instant she was seized and whirled over the side; she instinctively held her breath, felt a shock, felt herself swallowed up in an awful, fathomless coldness, and then found herself floating ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... visitors. After passing, by the flare of torches, down long galleries of underground workings, we were plunged into darkness by a rush of wind over a subterranean river through which we had to shoulder our way on a raft. Then suddenly, no face being visible in that black tunnel under the earth, the Polish part of our company broke into a wild, fierce, frenzied singing of their national anthem which, in those days, they dare not sing on the surface and in the light: "Poland is not ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... or four big ones, and Monsieur Delouche is in command; and then there is a great fire raft, as they call it—a lot of schooners, shallops, and such like, all chained together—a formidable-looking thing, for I got one of the sailors to show it me. I suppose they are all pretty much alike, crammed with explosives and combustibles; old swivels and guns loaded up to ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... be drawn. We read that at Mathura on the Jumna doles of food are provided by the piety of pilgrims for the sacred river-tortoises, which are so crowded when there is food going that their smooth carapaces form a more or less continuous raft across the river. On that unsteady slippery bridge the Langur monkeys (Semnopithecus entellus) venture out and in spite of vicious snaps secure a share of the booty. This picture of the monkeys securing a footing on the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... all this raft ye'll be after wantin', Malcolm MacDonald?" he cried in alarm. "Sure, ye know I can't give ye a bite nor sup the day, man; the byes from ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... the channel were too friable to bear the weight of a man. Ropes were thrown out to us. We caught hold of one of them with our four hands, but the sudden pull of the men in drawing us towards them cast our raft so suddenly against the ice edges that it broke in two, and we remained, full of fear this time, on one small part of our skiff. I laughed no longer, for we were beginning to travel somewhat fast, and the channel was opening out in width. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... work to occupy him now. There were a few bolts behind the boom-sticks which he would raft to the mill at his leisure. He walked up to the chute mouth now and looked about. A few hundred yards up the hill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of the fire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... spirits of turpentine, or by a strew of quicklime, which combines with the formic acid. The different species are described in "Palm Land" and "Western Africa" (pp. 369-373), from which even the account of the "tubular bridge" is taken—Mr. Wilson less sensationally calls it what it is, a "live raft." The most common are the Nkazeze, a large reddish and fetid ant, which is harmless to man; the Njenge, a smaller red species, and the Ibimbizi, whose bite ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... agency of the infernal spirit, who must be subdued and caught. The pater, previous to the commencement of his operations, summons all the young men in the village, to assist him in constructing a small raft, of light wood. Three poles are fixed upon it, to represent masts, and some bamboos laid across like oars. The masts are hung with young white cocoa-leaves. This toy, which they call Hanmai, they place between two palongs, each rowed by a crew of stout young men, with a piece of ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... thanks to the natural rollers, not so hard as might have been anticipated. Ben and Frank managed the placing of the rollers, which were carried in front of the logs as fast as its hinder end cleared some of them. In this manner their "raft," if such it could be ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... gathering wood and planks from the wrecks, wrought of them the semblance of a boat [to wit, a raft,] and bound it fast with ropes, saying, 'I will embark thereon and fare with this water into the inward of the mountain. If it bring me to the mainland or to a place where I may find relief and safety, [well and good]; else I shall ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... months he struggled daily against the rapid stream, till he at last reached, in spite of rafts and dangerous eddies, its source at the Rocky Mountains. On his return, a singular and terrible adventure befel him: he was dragging his canoe over a raft, exactly opposite to where now stands his plantation, when, happening to hurt his foot, he lost hold of his canoe. It was on the very edge of the raft, near a ruffled eddy: the frail bark was ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the rudder being shot away, went down lengthwise of the channel. When the firing ceased, the little crew, exhausted, but not one of the eight missing, clustered, only heads out of water, around their raft. A launch drew near. In charge was the Spanish admiral, who took them aboard with admiring kindness, and despatched a boat to notify the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... in again, and stepped upon the raft, which, although it sank down lower in the water and was all awash, still seemed buoyant. He also took Puck with him, and tried to incite some others of the boys to venture out ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... launched from the port side, but the Hawke at that moment heeled over before the boat could be got clear, and the cutter lurched against the cruiser's side and stove in one or two of her planks. As the Hawke went down a small pinnace and a raft which had been prepared for such an emergency floated free, but such was the onrush of men who had been thrown into the water that both were overcrowded. On the raft were about seventy men knee deep in water, and the pinnace ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... serve the chickens, in making Jenny go short to save to-day's baking of havre-bread, in skimping Tim's bowl of porridge—his appetite being a burden on her estate which she often declared would break her—she had more than once given a hundred pounds at a blow to build a raft for a poor drowning wretch who must otherwise have sunk. In fact, she was one of those people who are small with the small things of life and great with the great—who will grudge a daily dole of a few threshed-out stalks of straw, but who sometimes, when rightly touched, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... cotton-wood bordering the river, dashed through it, and plunged into the stream. He swam to a neighboring island, against the upper end of which the driftwood had lodged in such quantities as to form a natural raft; under this he dived, and swam below water until he succeeded in getting a breathing place between the floating trunks of trees, whose branches and bushes formed a covert several feet above the level of the water. He had scarcely drawn breath after all his toils, when he heard his pursuers ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... incoherently, with hoarse voice and quaking lips. She tried with all her might to free herself from his convulsive clutch—but he clung to her like a dying man would cling to the last breath of life—like a drowning man would cling to the raft on which ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the shadowed slopes and threw belts of light upon the water—and these illuminated spots finely relieved the otherwise sombre depth of colour. Our boat was slow, and we had between two and three hours of unsurpassed scenery before reaching our destination. An immense raft of timber, gathered from the loose logs which are floated down the Lougen Elv, lay at the head of the lake, which contracts into the famous Guldbrandsdal. On the brow of a steep hill on the right lay the little town of Lillehammer, where we were ere long quartered ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... same at all times, whether it is moving with the scythe on the hill-slopes, or hewing the timber, or steering the raft down the river which is all effervescent with ice; whether it is drinking in the Gasthaus, or making love, or playing some mummer's part, or hating steadily and cruelly, or whether it is kneeling in spellbound subjection in the incense-filled church, or walking in the strange, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... and bring out the ultimate prosperous result, Jordan threw one-half of his land into market and forced the sale at five dollars an acre. The proceeds of this sale did not last him over six months. Then he got a raft afloat, containing about a thousand dollars' worth of lumber, and sent it off under charge of his overseer, who sold it at Cincinnati, ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... sea, scattered broadcast by the gale; so that by the time of deep night—while the snow still whipped past in clouds that stung and stifled us—our pan rode breaking water: which hissed and flashed on every hand, the while ravenously eating at our narrow raft of ice. Death waited at our feet.... We stood with our backs to the wind, my sister and I cowering, numb and silent, in the lee of the doctor.... Through the long night 'twas he that sheltered us.... By and by he drew my sister close. She sank ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... tool-chest. Be quick now." Kittie was off like a flash, and when she came back, there were three or four logs lying ready for use, with some planks and a long pole, and Mr. Bering with coat off, fell to work with a will and such speed, that in ten minutes, a small raft lay in the water, and Mr. Dering was making preparations for his voyage, by pulling off his boots and tucking ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Trouble, but the Second time she Stuck fast; but this was of no consequence any farther than giving us a little trouble, and was no more than what I expected as we had the wind. While the Ship lay fast we got down the Foreyard, Foretopmast, booms, etc., overboard, and made a raft of them alongside. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... strong and massive rafts were joined together until they extended two hundred feet into the river, being kept in their place by cables fastened to trees on the bank above them. At the end of this floating pier was placed another raft of immense size, capable of carrying four elephants at a time. A thick covering of earth was laid over the whole, and on this turf was placed. The elephants were then ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... finding a human being in a spot which he had at first deemed totally uninhabited, and filled with the hope that the stranger might be able to give him some information relative to the geographical position of the isle, and even perhaps aid him in forming a raft by which they might together escape from the oasis of the Mediterranean, Wagner proceeded toward the mountains. By degrees the wondrous beauty of the scene became wilder, more imposing, but less bewitching, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... to Mrs. Patterson's hand like a drowning man to a raft. "Don't leave me," she whispered imploringly. "Please take me back with you. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... proceeded down the river several miles in this way, managing to keep the Indians at a safe distance with our guns, until the slough made a junction with the main Platte River. From there down, we found the river at times quite deep; and in order to carry the wounded man along with us, we constructed a raft of poles for his accommodation, and in this way he ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... although it swims so deeply immersed that it would appear to float with difficulty. An elephant shot dead within the water will float immediately, with a considerable portion of one flank raised so high above the surface that several men could be supported, as though upon a raft. The body of a hippopotamus will sink like a stone, and will not reappear upon the surface for about two hours, until the gas has to a certain degree distended the carcase: thus the hippopotamus is of a denser and heavier material than the elephant, although ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... struck one, the first boat emerged from the willows, and darting rapidly forward, headed for the middle of the stream; another and another in quick succession followed, and speedily were lost to us in the gloom; and now, two four-oared skiffs stood out together, having a raft, with two guns, in tow; by some mischance, however, they got entangled in a side current, and the raft swerving to one side, swept past the boats, carrying them down the stream along with it. Our attention was not suffered to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... outline he had traced in his mind: he should appear very subdued and sad; should wear an air of condolence. But, after a while, should say, "And yet men have been lost like that, and escaped. A man was picked up on a raft in those very latitudes, and brought into Cape Town. A friend of mine saw him, months after, at the hospital. His memory was shaken—could not tell his name; but in other respects he was all ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... monasteries. Fired with missionary zeal, he left his native land to preach to the pagans of Scotland. Tradition says that the rock on which he stood detached itself from the Irish coast and became a raft to bear him across the waters to the island of Lismore, in Loch Linnhe, where he landed. St. Moluag converted the people of the island to Christianity, and then moved into Ross-shire, where he built many churches, dedicating them to the Mother ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft. The shape and colour of the Plaice tell their own story of a life on the sandy, pebbly bed of the sea. And look at the eyes! Both are on the upper side of the head! What could be better for a fish that lies flat on the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... hollowing the wood, and they, accordingly, would fell the trees upon the shore, cut the trunks of equal lengths, place them side by side in the water, and bolt or bind them together so as to form a raft. The form and fashion of their craft was of no consequence, they said, as it was for one passage only. Any thing would answer, if it would only float ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the vegetation of the teeming earth, where field and granary displayed profusely their abundant stores, the father and daughter now looked on each other, as helpless to replace their exhausted provision of food as if they had been abandoned on the raft of the shipwrecked in an unexplored sea, or banished to a lonely island whose inland products were withered by infected winds, and around whose arid shores ran such destroying waters as seethe over the 'Cities ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... it takes them, and they'll shoot a bit and fish a bit till they've used all the powder and lost their lines. So much for them. Let's talk about ourselves. Well, gentlemen, we might make a sort of raft thing of wood and bundles of rushes,—can't make a boat for want of an axe,—and we might float down the stream, but I'm afraid it would only be to drown ourselves, or be pulled off by the critters ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... here this morning in broad sunlight, which lit up the sea-girt buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork floating raft-like on the smooth, blue deep. But I only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene, and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station. When we got to the front steps the row of black gondolas and the shouts of ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... two cabins was quite dry. Timar installed himself here, and then began the hard work. He tore up the deck, and with the help of a crane drew up one sack after the other. They were first piled near the cabin, that the water might drain away; then they were transferred to a raft, and taken ashore: there straw mats were laid, on which the grain was shaken and spread out. Timar bargained meanwhile with the millers for immediate grinding of the corn. The weather was favorable, there was a strong wind, and the ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... and Louise stood by without saying a word. At last the father kissed his little girl, and lifted her on to the raft again. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... and Billy, he climb on a rock and reach out, but he fall in deep water and was carried far, so he had to swim for his life. I jump on rocks anoder mile to anoder point; I got ahead of de bag, den I get two logs, and hold dem between my legs for raft, and push out; but dat dam river he take dem logs very slow, and dat bag very fast, so it pass by. But Billy he swim ashore, and run some more, and he make a raft; but de raft he stick on rock, and de bag he never stick, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Nort. "Though how they can float a lot of sheep over on a raft made of a few bean poles is more than ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... Buddhist and Brahmin, accompanied by troops of players and musicians, come out to meet him, and conduct him with all the honors to his stable-palace. A great number of cords and ropes of all qualities and lengths are attached to the raft, those in the centre being of fine silk (figuratively, "spun from a spider's web"). These are for the king and his noble retinue, who with their own hands make them fast to their gilded barges; the rest are secured to the great fleet of ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the old wreck was likely to be to him was in affording materials for a raft by which he might find his way ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... It was at the Three Forks that Colter and Potts, two of the Lewis and Clark men, were attacked by the Blackfeet, and Potts killed and Colter forced to run naked, six miles over the stones and cactus—till at last he killed his nearest pursuer with his own spear, and hid under a raft of driftwood in the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... free will; and therefore believe all things are from God and pre-ordained. Such being the case, the judgments or decisions I give are fixed to be thus or thus, whether I have exactly hit off all the circumstances or not. This is my raft, and on it I manage to float along, thanks to God, more or ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed just like a sea-boat. When we were ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... at the old Indian gardens; at eight went on; at ten reached the first portage, passed it in an hour; went on till one o'clock; afterwards passed two other portages of about three hundred yards each; and went on to the great raft of flood wood, being the fourth portage, where we encamped at three o'clock, at its head. Mosquitoes very annoying. Estimate our distance ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... words before the whole group rushed to the ruins, and began to pick up iron bolts, and screws, and pieces of wood and ropes, whatever materials they could find that were suitable for the construction of a raft. A score of soldiers and officers, who were armed, formed a guard, commanded by the major, to protect the workers against the desperate attacks which might be expected from the crowd, if their scheme was discovered. ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... try to knock together one or more rafts. Captain Wellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that the able-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves, taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they had any right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with his head tied up, was for leaving the blackguards to drown in the ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... sayin' yet," Kirby commented. "Splashin' 'round some in a little-bitty wadin' pool, an' gittin' out in this, don't balance none. Ain't every hoss takes kindly to water, neither. I'd say we'd better see what's the chances of knockin' together a raft or somethin'. 'Less we can find us ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... and dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that was the case with all the children. They caused very little trouble to any one. They seemed, in my eyes, to get more like one another, not only in quiet manner, but in the face, too. The motion of the raft was usually so much the same, the scene was usually so much the same, the sound of the soft wash and ripple of the water was usually so much the same, that they were made drowsy, as they might have been by the constant playing ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... pleaded to deaf ears. But at length his promises of promotion and reward moved the man. "Come" he said "I will do my best," and, rising, led the way to his own house. Here in the inner room was a high machan—a huge bamboo shelf made like a raft and suspended from the roof and reached by a moveable ladder, used for storing ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... a few days since Mother had said, "Never go on the raft, Bobby, unless Father or John is at ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... tranquillity and rolled along in peace, but for the presence of an island, which, growing up in the centre of the expanse, consolidated by the roots of a thousand willows and other trees that delight in such humid soils, and, in times of flood, covered by a raft of drift timber entangled among its trees, presented a barrier, on either side of which the current swept with speed and fury, though, as it seemed, entirely unopposed by rocks. In such a current, as ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... followed one another with the ringing of bells and firing of pistols, unheeded. By the time the signal came to clear the course for the crews, the pleasure-craft pushed within the barriers formed a vast, softly undulating raft covering the whole surface of the water, so that you could have walked from the barrier to the shore without dipping foot in the flood. I have suggested that the situation might have had its perils. Any panic must have caused a commotion that would have overturned ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... his ship with sticks and ropes and blocks enough, might as well stay ashore, Mr. Dodge, and publish an hebdomadal. And so, my dear young lady, by looking along the land, the day after to-morrow, in the northern board here, you may expect to see a raft booming down upon you that will cheer your heart, and once more raise the hope of a Christmas dinner in New York, in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... twice run the ship aground: The first time she went off without any trouble, but the second time she stuck fast. We now got down the fore-yard, fore top-masts, and booms, and taking them overboard, made a raft of them alongside of the ship. The tide was happily rising, and about one o'clock in the afternoon she floated. We soon warped her into the harbour, and having moored her alongside of a steep beach to the south, we got ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... very little difficulty, and embarked all our party, also without any difficulty whatever. In obedience to Lancelot's resolution, which he had privately communicated to me beforehand, we divided our forces into two parties. That is to say, half of the sailors were set on each raft, and with each raft half of our armed men; for though we had little or no apprehension now that there would be any trouble with the sailors, we still deemed it best to let them see very plainly that we were and meant to be the masters. I went on the one raft, Lancelot—and ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... graceful. Her hazel eyes were always dancing mischievously. She liked boys' games better than girls'. In her second week she induced several of the more daring girls to go with her to the pond below town and there engage in a raft-race with the boys. And when John Dumont, seeing that the girls' raft was about to win, thrust the one he was piloting into it and upset it, she was the only girl who did not scream at the shock of the sudden tumble ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... great quantities, and the narrow channel which swept round the bend was full of ice, piled one cake over another, thus forming a temporary barrier to the descending ice, which lodged, and formed a great undulating raft, filling up the whole river, and extending almost to the Kentucky shore. Eliza stood for a moment contemplating this unfavourable aspect of things, which she saw at once must prevent the usual ferry-boat from running, and then turned into a small public-house on the bank, to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... cots so close together that the nurses could not walk between them. They lay on the wet decks, in the scuppers, and along the transoms and hatches. They were like shipwrecked mariners clinging to a raft, and they asked nothing more than that the ship's bow be turned toward home. Once satisfied as to that, they relaxed into a state of self-pity and miserable oblivion to their environment, from which hunger nor nausea nor aching bones could ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... were incorruptible. It was not possible to starch the sea; and precisely as the stiffness fastened upon men, it vanished from ships. What had once been a mere raft, with rows of formal benches, pushed along by laborious flap of oars, and with infinite fluttering of flags and swelling of poops above, gradually began to lean more heavily into the deep water, to sustain a gloomy weight of guns, to draw ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... child's hair is shaved for the first time. By the rich the hair is weighed against silver and this sum is distributed to beggars. It is then tied up in a piece of cloth and either buried or thrown into a river, or sometimes set afloat on a little toy raft in the name of a saint. Occasionally tufts of hair or even the whole head may be left unshaven in the name of a saint, and after one or more years the child is taken to the saint's tomb and the hair shaved there; or if this cannot ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... in the Goldsack rockets; but, in consequence of the treacherous handling of the Spanish soldiers who had filled them, they proved worse than useless, doing nearly as much injury to the men who fired them as to the enemy. Only one gunboat was sunk by the shells from a raft commanded by Major Miller, who also did some damage to the forts and shipping. On the night of the 4th, Lord Cochrane amused himself, while a fireship was being prepared, by causing a burning tar-barrel ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... ago, when at Magungo, on the Albert N'yanza, I could not at first believe that the raft-choked entrance of the Victoria Nile in apparently dead water was indeed the mouth of that important river. My subsequent experience in the marshy and lacustrine Bahr Giraffe has confirmed my impressions of the extreme difficulty of deciding upon the non-existence ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... at Green River, Utah, and proceeded down the river. Soon after entering Cataract Canyon, they lost their boat and provisions. Finding a tent which had been washed down the river, they tore it into strips and constructed a raft out driftwood, tying the logs together with the strips of canvas. Days of hardship followed, and starvation stared them in the face; until finally Foote's partner gave up, said he would drown himself. With an oath Foote drew his revolver, saying ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... instinct he struck out through the welter of gasping, bobbing heads till he was clear of the clutching menace of the drowning. The Commander, clad simply in his wrist-watch and uniform cap, was standing on the balsa raft, with scores of men hanging to its support. "Get away from the ship!" he was bawling at the full strength of his lungs. "Get clear before ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... happen," said Haltren, reflectively, closing the breech of his gun. He had hauled his boat up an alligator-slide; now he shoved it off the same way, and pulling up his hip-boots, waded out, laid his gun in the stern, threw cartridge-sack and a dozen dead ducks after it, and embarked among the raft of wind-tossed ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... condemned human sacrifice and taught the nation agriculture, metal work and {130} mechanics. He fixed their calendar so that it was much more reliable than either the Greek or the Roman. There were various legends as to his departure, one of them being that he sailed away across the sea upon a raft composed of serpents, and was wafted into the unknown East whence ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... a less tranquil scene was occurring scarce ten miles from the spot; for it is scarce necessary to say that the light seen by the ruffians on the great raft—and which they had fancifully mistaken for a ship's galley-fire,—was the furnace fed by spermaceti on the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... the windows in a kind of impassivity, as much as he could see of the method by which the racing-boat was attached by long, rigid rods to the steady floating raft that had risen from beneath. (He was even interested to observe that these rigid rods were of telescopic design, and were elongated from their own interiors. One of them pushed forward once to within a foot of the windows; then the tapering end ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... discovery, I came back to my raft, and fell to work to bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day; and what to do with myself at night I knew not, nor indeed where to rest; for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... collect. While groping about in the hold, it appeared to them that the water was rising; if so, the ship must have sprung a serious leak. With the scanty supply of provisions they had obtained, they hurried on deck to report what they had remarked. Considerable progress had been made with the raft, but without food and water it could only tend to prolong their misery. Reuben, with three other men, were therefore ordered below, to get up any more provisions which they could find. They very soon returned with ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... but the swell was still very heavy. Equipped with everything necessary to float the launch, we marched along the beach, which was beaten hard by the waves. We had to cross a swollen river on an improvised raft; to our satisfaction we found the boat quite unhurt, not even the cargo being damaged; only a few copper plates were torn. Next day Mr. W. arrived, lamenting his loss; for his beautiful schooner was pierced in the middle by a sharp rock, and she hung, shaken by the waves that ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... successful, but one day, while the men were busy laying their bricks in cement one of them drove into the roof, and a deluge of water burst in on them, and although they tried to continue their work on a raft the water prevailed and at last drove them out. They escaped with difficulty up one of the air-shafts. The water having put an effectual stop to the work, the directors felt disposed to give it up, but Stephenson ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... cutting through density. And yet—I was not sure. I found myself staring through the black, shiny surface of the window, seeking relief in the obscuring dark. It gave little vision, except its own distorted reflections, but I could distinguish vaguely the outlines of the old mill with the shadowly raft in the high branches and the smudgy round spots that I knew to be the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... himself in silence, and his burden falls in a white cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside are almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing is seen but the snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone at its stem and a sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses, and driven by a young man erect upon ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... as well as we are ourselves, from the boisterous state of the weather. Whilst on the creek in the morning, had there been much difficulty in getting the animals, we should have had to hoist the things up into trees, and constructed a raft of dead timber, and rafted them off to dry land, which would have been a great deal of trouble. Squally still; wind continues from same quarter. Towards evening a great portion of the flat is being covered with water from the creek, beyond the creek there is nothing ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... find that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... bank of the river which ran into the great cave; where, considering the river with great attention, I said to myself, 'This river, which runs thus under ground, must come out somewhere or other. If I make a raft, and leave myself to the current, it will bring me to some inhabited country, or drown me. If I be drowned I lose nothing, but only change one kind of death for another; and if I get out of this fatal ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... now the middle of March, and we had taken nothing; neither had we fired our cannon, excepting at a miserable sort of a half boat and half raft, called a catamaran: made of five light logs, with a triangular sail. From the men on this miserable vessel we got information of a good watering place, where we soon anchored. The commandant of this little settlement ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the sea. Calypso found him there, sitting alone, weeping and longing for his home. She stood by him and said: "Odysseus, my unhappy friend, do not waste thy life any longer in sorrow. The end of thy grief has come. Arise and prepare to depart for thy home. Build thee a raft of the trunks of trees which thou shalt hew down. I will put bread and water and delicate wine on board; and I will clothe thee in comfortable garments, and send a favorable wind that thou mayest safely ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... about two feet across alone combated the white fields and the black trees .... At six o'clock a man's figure carrying a lantern crossed the field .... A raft of twig stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert .... A load of snow slipped and fell from a fir branch .... Later there was a mournful cry .... A motor car ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the lake bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then come ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... vicinity of English people, Mr. Carson decided not to go to Capri by the ordinary steamer that conveyed pleasure-seekers, but to secure passages in a cargo vessel which was crossing with supplies. To Lorna the mode of conveyance was immaterial; she would have sailed cheerfully on a raft if necessary. She rather enjoyed the picturesque Neapolitan tramp steamer with its cargo of wine barrels and packing cases, and its crew of bare-footed, red-capped seamen, talking and gesticulating with all the excitability of their Southern temperament. The voyage across the blue bay was longer ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... in the fall of 1816 to emigrate to Indiana, he at once began to build another boat, which he launched on the Rolling Fork, at the mouth of Knob Creek, about half a mile from his own cabin. He traded his farm for what movable property he could get, and loaded his raft with that and his carpenter tools. Waving good-bye to his wife and two children, he floated down the Rolling Fork, Salt River, and out into the Ohio River, which proved too rough for his shaky craft, and it ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell into the water and was drowned. I watched the police boat go past, carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing. I went and sat with Peter on the stairs. The dog's conduct ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... boat and the boat club, as means of instruction and discipline, as well as of amusement, were suggested by an accidental occurrence. The "Bunkers of Rippleton," a set of idle and dissolute boys, had constructed a rude raft, upon which they paddled about on the lake, and appeared to enjoy themselves very much. Captain Sedley, who had forbidden his son to venture upon the lake on the raft, or even in a boat, without permission, overheard Charles Hardy, the intimate friend of Frank, ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... deepest water, there was a rude pier of logs built out, for the convenience of landing the parties. This loose structure suggested to me the means of reaching the main shore; and, without waiting for breakfast, I "piped" away my boatmen, and proceeded to build a raft. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... at last, with a grim sort of humor; "I must do the best I can. It's the same as if I were on a desert island. I must tie together some sort of a raft in order to cross the gulf that separates us, for I never can stand it to stay here alone. Since I have not time to spare I may as well commence with that encyclopaedia, and learn a little about as many things as possible; then if he introduces ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... we were hungry. The roastingears looked tempting. We pulled off our clothes and launched into the turbid stream, and were soon on the other bank. Here was the field, and here were the roastingears; but where was the raft or canoe? ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... house, and he would remain beside it until the crack of doom, shells or no shells. He would stand off them fire-bugs and looters when they landed, and tell them officers what a plain American citizen thought of them. He wasn't afraid of the swine. By God! he would like to boot the raft of them. He shook his fist in their faces, he did; and as for that villainous launch rolling idly in the swell while the big bully fired on the defenseless town, he spat to express ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... encountered, the land-loving men lost their heads, and it was only through Argueello's presence of mind that the boat finally reached its destination. For the return trip, the services of an Indian chief were secured, a native who had been seen so often on the bay in his raft of rushes, that the Spaniards called him 'El Marino,' the Sailor, and this name, corrupted into Marin, still clings to the land where he lived. Many trips were made in this ferry, but the comandante's subordinates ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... but Judge Twiddler, who is a Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located in that place. In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it to the wharf until they could buy a lot. But as the owner of the wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream. That night a tug-boat, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... hinges on a fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the lad dies before he shall have reached his majority. The story of his father's peril and of Sam's desperate trip down the great canyon on a raft, and how the party finally escape from their perils is described in a graphic style that stamps Mr. Calhoun as a ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... of Waldo Emerson, says "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." Yes, that is comfortable; and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for that), it may go to pieces, I suppose, when the four winds (your only pilots) steer competitively from ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... it will not be exactly what you would call a vessel. For the present we must be content with a good and solid raft." ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... to drive the car by moonlight..." I was going on to defend my suggestion by pleading that such an impulse would, so far as I could judge, be quite in character, but no further argument was needed. I had created a sensation. My feeble straw had suddenly taken the form of a practicable seaworthy raft, big enough to accommodate all the family—with the one exception of Frank, who, as it were, grasped the edge of this life-saving apparatus of mine, and tested it suspiciously. His preliminary and perfectly futile opening to the effect that the moon had already set, ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... in fine weather, how he felt when he saw his stove "reared up on end." We inquired, in the north-east trade and on serene evenings, whether he had to stand on his head to put things right somewhat. We suggested he had used his bread-board for a raft, and from there comfortably had stoked his grate; and we did our best to conceal our admiration under the wit of fine irony. He affirmed not to know anything about it, rebuked our levity, declared himself, with solemn animation, to have ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... George's cross, but I believe thou art right, Dick Spritsail," cried the Captain. "It's some poor fellow, I warrant me, whose ship has gone down, and who made a raft to try his luck. Johnny Shark, do ye see, is no pleasant customer to become acquainted with, and so he took a venture on the spar for a Christian burial, instead of making ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... appealing look these pale cheeks and staring eyes had. Hungry! Yes, that's what they all were. She thought, fantastically, for a moment, of poor Mr. Magnus's Treasure Hunters, and she seemed to see the whole of this company in a raft drifting in mid-ocean, not a sail in sight and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... foundered on her way down from New York to Fortress Monroe. Her underwater hull was shipshape enough; but her superstructure—a round iron tower resting on a very low deck—was not. Contemptuous eyewitnesses described her very well as looking like a tin can on a shingle or a cheesebox on a raft. She carried only two guns, eleven-inchers, both mounted inside her turret, which revolved by machinery; but their 180-pound shot were far more powerful than any aboard the Merrimac. In maneuvering the Monitor enjoyed an immense advantage, with her ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... terrible pass, save my kingdom, and save my race! If the holy Chyavana became angry, he would destroy the three worlds: what need I say them of my poor self who is destitute of penances and who depends only upon the might of his arm? O great Rishi, do thou become the raft unto us that have all fallen into a fathomless ocean with all our counsellors and our priest! Do thou settle what the price should be of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... him, at midnight and in midwinter, thrown from a frail raft into the deep and angry waters of a wide and rushing Western river, thus separated from his only companion through the wilderness with no aid for miles and leagues about him, buffeting the rapid current and struggling through driving ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... until the Tennessee River was reached, a few miles below Kingston. The river was high and there was no means of crossing. A rude raft was constructed, and with the horses swimming, they commenced crossing. When about half were across a company of Federal cavalry appeared and attacked those who were still on the northern bank. On the frail raft, Morgan started to push across to ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... cities of Algeria they found themselves cut off on the east by a French fleet and on the west by an English fleet, but by a very clever bit of stratagem they escaped. The band of the Goeben was placed on a raft and ordered on a given moment to play the German national airs after an appreciable period. Meanwhile, under the cover of the night's darkness the two German ships steamed away. After they had a good start the band on the raft began to play. The British ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... puzzle place of rivers that I don't quite understand. I can't find it, and the longer I live the more I feel, Brace Leigh, that we ought to have eaten our bread when it was ready buttered, and brought the stuff away upon a raft." ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... by simplicity of manners. The kings and nobles did not consider it derogatory to their dignity to acquire skill in the manual arts. Ulysses is represented as building his own bed-chamber and constructing his own raft, and he boasts of being an excellent mower and ploughman. Like Esau, who made savoury meat for his father Isaac, the Heroic chiefs prepared their own meals and prided themselves on their skill in cookery. Kings ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... seem a far cry from the clash of armies to the romance of a honeymoon spent on a raft de luxe drifting lazily down a river of Burma. That is the theme of Love's Legend (CONSTABLE), by Mr. FIELDING HALL, author of The Soul of a People. But there may be a war of sex with sex scarcely less tragic than the wars of men with men (or brutes). The author shows ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... things, will do all that thou hast desired of me. I will by my servants cut thee in abundance timber of cedar and timber of cypress, and will bring them down to the sea, and command my servants to construct of them a float, or raft, and navigate it to whatever point of thy coast thou mayest wish, and there discharge them; after which thy servants can carry them to Jerusalem. But be it thy care to provide me in return with a supply of food, whereof we are in want ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Ribaut was at hand. Marching with a hundred and fifty men, he reached the inlet at midnight, and again, like a savage, ambushed himself on the bank. Day broke, and he could plainly see the French on the farther side. They had made a raft, which lay in the water, ready for crossing. Menendez and his men showed themselves, when, forthwith, the French displayed their banners, sounded drums and trumpets, and set their sick and starving ranks in array of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... he had brought on the train a boat, which was promptly launched. As, however, the boat was small, and hardly capable of holding more than four men, the General gave orders for the construction of a raft. After some trouble this was ready by 4 p.m., and some two hours later about seven companies of the Connaught Rangers had succeeded in ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... adjusted; notes are given and paid with smiling faces; one would think that honor and manliness were the commonest of qualities. Now, every man was put to the severest proof, and showed the inborn and essential traits of his nature. Like a ship's crew on a raft, alone on the ocean without provisions, they looked at each other as they were. There, in their extremity, were to be seen calm resignation, unmanly terror, moody despair, turbulent passion, and stealthy, fiendish glances that blinked ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... getting on too fast. When the good ship crashed upon the rock and split in twain, it seemed like that all aboard must perish. Fortunately OLIVER was made of stern mettle. Hastily constructing a raft and placing the now unconscious JILL upon it, he launched it into the seething maelstrom of waters and pushed off. Tossed like a cockle-shell upon the mountainous waves, the tiny craft with its precious freight was in imminent danger of foundering. But OLIVER was made of ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... hazel eyes were always dancing mischievously. She liked boys' games better than girls'. In her second week she induced several of the more daring girls to go with her to the pond below town and there engage in a raft-race with the boys. And when John Dumont, seeing that the girls' raft was about to win, thrust the one he was piloting into it and upset it, she was the only girl who did not scream at the shock ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... the far side. The cannon would sink from their own weight in such a bog, and either horses or oxen would flounder to death in a few minutes. Again, the fool-hardy enthusiasm of the raw levies overcame the difficulty. They built large stone boats, raft-shaped, such as are used on farms to haul stones over ground too rough for wagons. Hitching to these, teams of two hundred men stripped to midwaist, they laboriously hauled the cannon across the quaking moss ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... red. How often had the traveller seen such a sunset behind the blue summits of those hills before! Flowing yet nearer to him was the noble river Rhine, winding onward to the north, and bearing on its bosom many a little skiff which scudded quickly before the evening breeze, or raft of timber which floated slowly down its stream. How often had the stranger sailed in such little barks upon its surface, or bathed and fished in its waters! At his feet lay the little cluster of cottages which formed the village of Steinheim; and amid its clustering trees ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... out. After all, am I to believe your unsubstantiated story or the evidence of a whole raft of witnesses, the police detail, the accident squad, and the guys who hauled you out of a burning car before it blew up? As I was saying, how can we credit much of your tale when you raved about one man lifting the car and the other hauling you out ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... the Nuestra Senora del Rosario at Manila the coastguard cutter Candelaria sailed for Dinshaw's island. Peth and Doc Bird, seeing the steamer approaching, attempted to leave the island on an uncompleted raft, which broke up with them, and both were drowned, Doc clinging to the mate when they were thrown ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... of observation. He uses largely, but always humorously, the western style of exaggeration; as, for example, when he makes one of his reformers tell a steamboat captain that if he will stop drinking whiskey, he will make a reputation, and "be as famous as the Red River raft or the Mammoth Cave—the only thing of the sort west of the Alleghanies." He describes his people in a way that shows that he has them in the eye of his imagination; as in this portrait of a Mrs. Tappelmine: "With face, hair, eyes, and garments of the same ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... experiment with the catamaran flotilla. The catamaran's were copper vessels filled with combustibles, and so constructed as to explode at a given time by clock-work. They were to be fastened to the bows of the vessels by the aid of a small raft rowed by one man who, being up to the chin in water, was expected in the darkness of the night to escape discovery. Sir Sidney Smith with other able officers were selected for this perilous enterprise; and the attack was to be covered by Lord Keith's squadron. The expedition ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for the young Leander; and her ear had not deceived her. The oars were dashing in the wave's below, and dark and rapid the boat bounded on towards the rocky shore. She gazed long and steadfastly on the dim and shadowy forms which that slender raft contained, and her eye detected amongst the three the loftier form of her haughty wooer. Presently the thick foliage that clothed the descent shut the boat, nearing the strand, from her view; but she now heard below, mellowed ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... the cottage for me, and now all I wanted was to get on board of the Splash. My skiff was destroyed, and my pursuer would not permit me to build a raft. I could have swum off to her; but the water might injure, if not ruin, the priceless document in my pocket. Tom was at my heels, and all I could do ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... travelled without accident. No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable with paved highway, could the Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of the element, all was ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... having an easy country to travel in, as well as to supply us with provisions, though still without inhabitants, we made more despatch, travelling sometimes, as we calculated it, twenty or twenty-five miles a day; nor did we halt anywhere in eleven days' march, one day excepted, which was to make a raft to carry us over a small river, which, having swelled with the rains, was not ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... uncivilised than those of New Holland. They subsist entirely by hunting, and have no knowledge whatever of the art of fishing. Even the rude bark canoe which their neighbours possess, is quite unknown to them; and whenever they want to pass any sheet of water, they are compelled to construct a rude raft for the occasion. Their arms and hunting implements also indicate an inferior degree of civilization. The womera, or throwing stick, which enables the natives of Port Jackson to cast their spears with such amazing force and precision, is not used by them. Their spears, too, instead of being ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... from many a craft Goes drifting by on a broken raft Pieced from a vessel that clove the brine Taller and prouder ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and fish, which were abundant and easily caught, and of which they were soon tired. The captain, therefore, when he had recovered his sobriety and his courage, had no great difficulty in inducing them to return to the ship, and endeavour either to get her off or construct from her timbers a raft which, following the course of the winds, might, it was thought, bring them into the track of vessels. This would take some time, and I meanwhile was allowed to remain (my own wish) on terra firma; the noise, dirt, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Charley, standing where you all stood before him, actually caught a flounder with his own hand, whereat he screamed loud enough to scare all the folks on Eagle Island. We have also been to Maquoit. We have visited the old pond, and, if I mistake not, the relics of your old raft yet float there; at all events, one or two fragments of a raft are there, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed a while through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant water, and then said: "Land be hanged,—it's a raft!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were there, operating a ferry. Whence they came I do not remember, if they told us. We saw no signs of a habitation in which they might have lived. The ferrying was done with what was really a raft of logs, rather than a boat. It was sustained against the current by means of a tackle attached to a block, rove on a large rope that was drawn taut, from bank to bank, and was propelled by a windlass on each bank. ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... the spot by the marines if they had then been seen from the boats. The rope which fastened the float to the ship was too short to let it swing free, and one of the pontoons that supported it was dragged partly under water, lifting the other above the surface. If the raft had lain flat on the water they would have had to climb on top and would have made an excellent mark for the marines. As it was they got under its lifted side, and by thrusting their hands through the slats that formed the deck they kept their heads ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... floods in the western country in the spring of 1884, when every brook was a torrent and every river a deluge. Imagine a party of travelers making their westward way on horseback at such a time, before there was even a raft ferry on any river west of the Alleghanies, and when all the valleys would be covered with water. It was by no means unusual for a party to be detained a month waiting for the waters of a large river to subside, and it was a thing at some seasons of daily occurrence for ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... them, Frank Hatch became discouraged at seeing us lay around the levee, so he tied the oars on with tarred rope and we got off, three of us besides the other dogs. The water was so high that we crossed Barron's island, only having to get out and pull the boat over two or three sand-bars and a raft or two. Every time we got out to pull the boat, the dogs would get out to look for woodcock, around the stumps, and when they got in the boat would be full of water and mud, and of course we had ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... be done up, my fine fellow," answered Roswell, laughing, "did you attempt to pass a winter here. The Sea Lion of Humse's Hull would not herself keep you in fuel, and you would have to raft it off next summer on your casks, or remain here ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... (notwithstanding Campbell's beautiful description,) were extremely litigious, used to receive all their fees in kind, such as skins, corn, whiskey, etcetera, etcetera, and, as soon as they had sufficient to load a raft, were to be seen gliding down the river to dispose of their cargo at the first favourable mart for produce. Had they worn the wigs and gown of our own legal profession, the effect would have ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... came, and the sun stole in through the window. Then, the wiggler grew tired, and came, like many tired beings, to the top. For a time he was quiescent, but soon the sun's rays gave force to the inner impulse which "rent the veil of his old husk," and transformed it into a canoe or raft, containing a draggle-tailed-looking creature with a big head and six staggery legs. Poising itself upon the raft, the outcome of the wiggler sunned its crumplety wings, till "like gauze they grew," and then all of it, a whole pailful of it, made for the sleepers, to help its more mature relations, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... his taking it from her that Miss Theale then could do nothing for them. He frankly brought out what he had ventured to think possible. "If we can't meet here and we've really exhausted the charms of the open air and the crowd, some such little raft in the wreck, some occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... sacrifice or soon afterwards the child's hair is shaved for the first time. By the rich the hair is weighed against silver and this sum is distributed to beggars. It is then tied up in a piece of cloth and either buried or thrown into a river, or sometimes set afloat on a little toy raft in the name of a saint. Occasionally tufts of hair or even the whole head may be left unshaven in the name of a saint, and after one or more years the child is taken to the saint's tomb and the hair shaved there; or if this cannot be done ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... into Buenos Ayres in good season, and I noted where the Peveril was docked. We moored outside a raft of small sailing crafts and had the dickens of a time taking Ben Gibson ashore on his mattress. A couple of blacks helped us, and after sending in a telephone message to the hospital, a very modern and up-to-date motor ambulance came down and whisked us all off to that institution. I ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... two feet across alone combated the white fields and the black trees .... At six o'clock a man's figure carrying a lantern crossed the field .... A raft of twig stayed upon a stone, suddenly detached itself, and floated towards the culvert .... A load of snow slipped and fell from a fir branch .... Later there was a mournful cry .... A motor car came along the road shoving the dark ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... of many wanderings, and loss, Like to Ulysses on his poplar raft, His treasure hid beneath the tunnelled moss Lest that a thief his labour steal with craft, Up the round hill, sheep-dotted, was his way, Zigzagging ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... not more than the sigh of a stray breeze, came from a point far up the stream. He listened and the sound pleased him. The lone, weird note was in full accord with the night and his mood, and presently he knew it. It was some mountaineer on a raft singing a plaintive song of his own distant hills. Huge rafts launched on the headwaters of the stream in the mountains in the eastern part of the state came in great numbers down the river, but oftenest ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... prophet to be honored on two counts. They did make the trek to the river the next day, and there was a wealth of raft material marking the high-water level of the spring flood. The migrations McNeil had reported were still in progress, and the three men hid twice to watch the passing of small family clans. Once a respectably sized tribe, including wounded men, marched across ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... boats across the Rhine was open in the middle to let a wood-raft go by down stream. This raft from some distant forest was so long they had to wait nearly twenty minutes; and the prow of it had all but lost itself in the western purple and gold and dun of sky and river while it was ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... aid, ran to the sledge; he brought one of the uprights, stood it up on the floe for a mast, making it fast with ropes; the tent was torn up for a sail. The wind was fair; the poor castaways put out to sea on this frail raft. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... midsummer and we were rowing on the river; some thirty boats were crowded together under the bridge, when suddenly one of the occupants of a boat near mine threw up his hands and fell overboard. We immediately began diving for him, but in vain; some hours later the body was found under a raft. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... while the tree floated on. The baby's cradle was alone on the waste of waters; the tree approached slowly and surely. The cradle tossed up and down, and then—the forked branches caught and held it firmly just above the water-line. The tree became a raft. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the unfortunate Stewart—who, if there was one innocent man in the ship, was that man. Captain Beechey says (speaking of Christian), 'His plan, strange as it must appear for a young officer to adopt, who was fairly advanced in an honourable profession, was to set himself adrift upon a raft, and make his way to the island (Tofoa) then in sight. As quick in the execution as in the design, the raft was soon constructed, various useful articles were got together, and he was on the point of launching it, when a young officer, who afterwards ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... All Friday night and Saturday morning we divided our time between guarding the money, providing for our own safety and rescuing the poor people floating by. We threw out ropes and gathered logs and timbers together until we had enough to make a raft, which we bound together with ropes and used in rescuing people. During the night we rescued Henry Weaver, his wife and two children; Captain Carswell, wife and three children, and three servant girls; Patrick Ravel, wife and one child; A.M. Dobbins and two others whose ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... not plan to lower the divers from the steamer or from a raft. Instead they will step directly out on the sea floor from a door in the submarine which opens out of an air chamber. In this the diver can be closed and the air pressure increased until it is high enough to keep out the water. All that ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... chuckle. "She may be all right to row round in on a troubled sea, but she'll tip quicker'n scat if you step up on the side of her. This one near spilt me into the drink after I was alongside here. What I want is a flat-bottomed scow or raft. I hope this yacht is good and steady, for I'm going to take ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... River; a fine stream about three hundred yards wide, entering the Missouri from the south. Though fordable in almost every part at the end of summer and during the autumn, yet it was necessary to construct a raft for the transportation of the wagons and effects. All this was done in the course of the following day, and by evening, the whole party arrived at the agency of the Kansas tribe. This was under the superintendence of General Clarke, brother ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... Colon are much given to fishing, for which purpose they venture out to sea in bark-logs.[162] These are constructed of several round logs of wood, forming a raft, but different according to the uses they are intended for, or the customs of those that make them. Those meant for fishing consist only of three or five logs of wood about eight feet long, the middle one longer than the rest, especially ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... west was all that guided them. Athabasca Landing was the portal through which they passed, and by every northward stream they travelled,—down the Athabasca toward the Mackenzie and up the Athabasca to the Peace, leaving stranded men and stranded boats on every shore. By raft and dug-out, scow and canoe, men essayed to travel rapid waterways who had never handled craft before, and the Indians still point out to you near Grand Rapids on the Athabasca the site of the Mounted Police Station where Sergeant ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... same business over again. We drifted, of course, into the same set; for already we had become necessary to each other. We set the pace of that set—were its apparent leaders. But in truth we were alone—you and I—as utterly alone as two shipwrecked men on a raft. The others were shadows to us: we followed their code because we had to be gentlemen, but we did not understand it in the least. For, after all, the roots of that code lay in the breeding and tradition of honour, with which we had no concern. To each other ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and the boat I was in was the hindmost as we went. All at once I heard the hands begin to run over the top of the boat in great confusion, and pull with all their might. And the first thing I know'd after this we went broadside full tilt against the head of an island, where a large raft of drift timber had lodged. The nature of such a place would be, as everybody knows, to suck the boats down and turn them right under this raft; and the uppermost boat would, of course, be suck'd down and go under first. As soon as we struck, I bulged for my hatchway, as the boat was ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... was because they paid less attention than the others to the angling, and allowed their floats to swim back right up to the bank. The high reddish reeds rustled quietly around, the still water shone quietly before them, and quietly too they talked together. Lisa was standing on a small raft; Lavretsky sat on the inclined trunk of a willow; Lisa wore a white gown, tied round the waist with a broad ribbon, also white; her straw hat was hanging on one hand, and in the other with some effort she held up the crooked rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile, at her ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... moon on the mountains shall burn thee; the lamps of the town singe thy wings. small Moth! Each shall seem all the world to thee, each shall seem as thy grave! Thy heart is a feather blown from one mouth to the other. But be not afraid! For the life of a man is for all loves in turn. 'Tis a little raft moored, then sailing out into the blue; a tune caught in a hush, then whispering on; a new-born babe, half courage and half sleep. There is a hidden rhythm. Change. Quietude. Chance. Certainty. The One. The Many. Burn on—thou pretty flame, trying to eat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... upon its surface; here in single logs, there in raft-like clusters. To run a boat against one of these is attended with danger, and the pilot avoids them. Sometimes one swimming below the surface escapes his eye; and then a heavy bumping against the bows shakes the boat, and startles the equanimity ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... die. Not a man of them knew how to pack a mule. Their meat pack slipped, going along one of those high trails, and scared the mule, and in trying to kick himself free the beast fell off the trail—mule and meat both gone. They got tired of carrying their stuff and made a raft to float it down the river, and lost that! Paul has been much better off in camp than he would have been with them. So cheer up, my girl, and think how you'd like to have your bridegroom out ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... his, by the way, having been built several years previously by a couple of miners who had got out a raft of logs at that point for a grub-stake. They had been most hospitable lads, and, after they abandoned it, travelers who knew the route made it an object to arrive there at nightfall. It was very handy, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... with death we learn very little except that the women discard their arm beads, the mourners don old clothing, and all wail for the dead (pp. 44, 90). Three times we are told that the deceased is placed on a tabalang, or raft, on which a live rooster is fastened before it is set adrift on the river. In the tales the raft and fowl are of gold, but this is surprising even to the old woman Alokotan, past whose home in Nagbotobotan all these rafts must ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... grips and fought and floundered till the bed rocked, and the poor little Seraph clung to his pillow as a shipwrecked sailor to a raft in a stormy sea. Exhaustion alone made us stop for breath; still we clung desperately to each other, our small bodies pressed hotly together, Angel's nose flattened against my ear. The Seraph snuggled up ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... after Dolimaman said to Wadagan, "Take care of the boy while I go to the well," and Wadagan said, "Yes." As soon as Dolimaman arrived at the well Wadagan made a little raft and Kanag went to the place where he was working and asked, "What is that for father?" "'What is that for,' you say. I am going to make it for your toy." Not long after he said, "My son go and change your clothes ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... in former days. It was the nature of the man to attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him he took a substitute: as a man looks out for a crutch when he loses a leg, or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastille. There are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic passion, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against me—clutched and held on. It was a brave pine log. Could I recover it at this date I would convert it into a flagstaff for the tricolour. It was our raft, our refuge; and it carried ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... Shields," said Sid, "this afternoon that we spend a little time playing, a little time in bun-lunching, and then we will have a raft-race on the water ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... of the Biobio, he had to use a primitive raft, formed of four trunks of trees, about eighteen feet long, lashed together by hide-thongs to two poles, one at each end. A horse was fastened to it, by knotting his tail to the tow-rope, and on his back was a boy, holding on by ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and dough cakes; fat and unleavened bread, with whiskey, is their diet. Tea and sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods, combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer, whose morale is not ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... uncertain and frail, As I cherish thy light in each draught, His lamp is not more to the miner - their sail Is not more to the crew on the raft. For Hope can make feeble ones earnest and brave, And, as forth thro' the years I look on, Believe me, my friend, between this and the grave, I see ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... side of the bed. At the foot of the bed was a small writing-table, with a penny bottle of ink on it. A few coloured prints and engravings —representing, for example, Louis Philippe and his family, and people perishing on a raft—broke the tedium of the walls. The first impression on Sophia's eye was one of sombre splendour. Everything had the air of being richly ornamented, draped, looped, carved, twisted, brocaded into ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... set, build a raft and set himself and the apparatus adrift upon the water in the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... anchor till we reached the port of Dublin. Then our captain sold the sloop, and we all went aboard a ship and sailed for America. We didn't reach it though. We had done a cursed deed, and God's curse was to follow us. Our ship went down, and we were left floating on a raft; we were well-nigh starved, when a ship fell in with us, and we were taken on board. The captain was a kind-hearted man, and he said he would take care of the little fellow; and as our captain—he that's gone—had got the money for the deed he'd done, he didn't try ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... to keep their heads above water by clinging to a drifting spar, and about two hundred men for a time held on to pieces of the wreck, part of the mainmast supporting a great number. The principal portion of the deck being undestroyed, it served as a raft for those who could reach it, but the numbers were thinning rapidly, as one after another became exhausted and sank; and three boats ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Bushyager, Got a raft of brothers and sisters—so you'll know us better after a while. Mr. Burns, this is ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... patiently and ponderously upon a wooden sea-chest, alone on the platform, but stacked about by such a miscellany of luggage as gave him no slight resemblance to Crusoe on his raft. Besides parcels, boxes, carpet-bags, canvas-bags, tarpaulin-bags, it included a pile of furniture swathed in straw, a parrot-cage covered with baize, and a stone jar calculated to hold nine gallons ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... having crossed over from Asia, and it would require no such statement to corroborate the opinion as that of an officer of the Hudson Bay Company, then resident in Ungava bay, who relates that in 1839 an Eskimo family crossed to Labrador from the northern shore of Hudson's straits on a raft of driftwood. Natives cross and recross Bering straits to-day on the ice and in primitive skin canoes, not unlike Cape Cod dories, which have not been improved in construction since the days of prehistoric man. Indeed, the primitive ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... went on, with immensely convincing emphasis. "She's going to have that little home of her own." He paused a moment for reflection, and then a sudden thought presented itself to him. "Why, darn it!" he exclaimed, "there must be a whole raft of little homes that belong to me in one place or another. Why couldn't I fix you both ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... knocked them over with poles. We passed many beautiful lakes; among others, the Two Sisters, one on each side of the road. At noon we paused at a lake in a deep valley, and fed the horse and had lunch. I was not long in getting ready my fishing tackle, and, upon a raft made of two logs pinned together, floated out upon the lake and quickly took all the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... covered with skins; and Herodotus (I, 94) states that "the boats which come down the river to Babylon are circular and made of skins." But his further description shows that he is here referred to the kelek or skin-raft, with which he has combined a description of the kuffah. The late Sir Henry Rawlinson has never seen or heard of a skin-covered kuffah on either the Tigris or Euphrates, and there can be little doubt ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... came to distract my attention, followed at a distance by a little girl whom I suspected of being very pretty; but I forgot them both in watching a steamboat passing up the river towing a flotilla of barges, covered with awnings and attended by their lighters, and a huge raft laden with timber from the Black Forest, manned by fifty or sixty boatmen, some of whom in front, and some in the rear, directed its course with vigorous strokes of ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... thousand pounds. At the rapids the large rafts are, as it were, unyoked, and divided into small portions, which go down separately. The excitement and motion of such transit must, I should say, be very joyous. I was told that the Prince of Wales desired to go down a rapid on a raft, but that the men in charge would not undertake to say that there was no possible danger; whereupon those who accompanied the prince requested his Royal Highness to forbear. I fear that, in these careful days, crowned heads and their heirs must often find themselves in the position of Sancho ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a good raft necessary, axes, hatchets, hunting-knives, nails, one hundred and fifty feet of rope, and two Juneau sleds were purchased. To these were added snow-shoes, a strong duck-tent, fishing-tackle, snow-glasses to protect themselves against ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... the casks that we had found, and Ernest and I soon cut them in half. With these tubs we made a kind of raft, though it was no slight task. The tubs, in fact, were a fleet of eight small round boats, made so fast to some planks that no one of them could float from the rest. The next thing to be done was to launch ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... the natives. John's ability with the gun. Cooped up in the peninsula. Recollection in animals. A dual self. Memory. No attack during the night. The savage attempt to starve them out. Planning to escape. Determine to build a raft. John and Harry's night adventure after material. Crossing the tributary to the north. Bringing in logs. The structure to imitate the wagon. Driving the team into the river. Floating the logs under the wagon. Crossing the stream. A safe passage. A good retreat. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... rid of the downright vulgarity of phrase in the last stanza, Wordsworth invents an impossible tortoise-shell, and thus robs his story of the reality which alone gave it a living interest. Any extemporized raft would have floated the boy down to immortality. But Wordsworth never quite learned the distinction between Fact, which suffocates the Muse, and Truth, which is the very breath of her nostrils. Study and self-culture did much for him, but they never quite ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... stood by without saying a word. At last the father kissed his little girl, and lifted her on to the raft again. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... night. She was launched in twenty-eight days from laying her keel, and sailed next evening, armed with eighteen twelve-pounders, and fully equipped for service. Two schooners, the Maria, and the Carleton; the Loyal Convert, gondola; the Thunder, a kind of flat-bottomed raft, carrying twelve heavy guns and two howitzers; and twenty-four boats, armed each with a field piece, or carriage-gun, formed, with the Inflexible, a force equal to the service, where but a few days before, the British had scarcely a boat upon the waters. No time was now lost in seeking ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... animal is much more uniform than in the great raft of "domestic" mongrel specimens which make night hideous with their discordant yowls, although we sometimes see a high bred individual which, if his tail was cut off at half its length, might easily pass as an example ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... looks like a raft with two round turrets upon it, and a funnel." A moment's consideration, and the truth burst upon them. It was the ship they had heard of as building at New York, and which had been launched six weeks ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... warmed the air, the boys strength and spirits revived, and in a few hours they were so refreshed that they determined to set about their raft. The wind had now entirely dropped, the waves were still very high, but they came in long, smooth, regular swells, over which they rose ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... met, that funeral of the sea: the prone, tearing steamers, the reluctant bulk. Sometimes a captain's glass might make out a few men lost on the roof like men on a raft, smoking, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... would be dangerous to apprize those on the opposite side of the river of their situation, by hallooing, Lewis set himself to work as silently, and yet as expeditiously [124] as possible, and with the aid of his little brother, soon completed a raft on which they safely crossed the Ohio; ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Several black tail or Mule deer and Sent out to kill them but they were wild and the hunters Could not get a Shot at either of them. a fiew miles below the Teton river I observed a buffalow Skin Canoe lying on the S Shore and a Short distance lower a raft which induces me to Suspect that the Tetons are not on the Missouri at the big bend as we were informed by the Ricaras, but up the Teton river. at Meridn. we halted on the N E. Side opposit a handsom leavel plain ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... pack through to Teslin Lake, build a raft there and float down the Hotalinqua into the Yukon and so on to Dawson City, but at Glenora I found a letter from my mother waiting for me, a pitiful plea for me to "hurry back," and as we were belated a month or more, and as winter comes early ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... time to execute their resolution after it is determined. Before all these times be taken, we may get to our ships, if ye will! though not possibly by land, because of the hills, thickets, and rivers, yet by water. Let us, therefore, make a raft with the trees that are here in readiness, as offering themselves, being brought down the river, happily this last storm, and put ourselves to sea! I will be one, who ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... said with a laugh. "We have been down with a raft of timber from the mountains, and are on our way back. That must be our story till we have passed Ratisbon. There is but one objection, and that is a serious one. As raftsmen we should certainly speak the Bavarian dialect, which ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... their brutal drunken sprees. They had talked big, indeed, and made at first a show of resistance; but the general body of the exiles had authorised a powerful force of young and middle-aged men to take them into custody, and convey them on a raft, constructed for the purpose, to an island some ten miles distant. Here the rioters were left with a sufficient supply of provisions; a warning being given them that, should they attempt to return to Comoro, they would be put in irons, and kept in custody ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... water was, thanks to the natural rollers, not so hard as might have been anticipated. Ben and Frank managed the placing of the rollers, which were carried in front of the logs as fast as its hinder end cleared some of them. In this manner their "raft," if such it could be called, was ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... a long walk into the country to take their gouter, or afternoon meal, at some farm-house. I did not go with them, for now but two days remained ere the Paul et Virginie must sail, and I was clinging to my last chance, as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last raft or cable. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... prove it to me!" said the fox. "Come up to the surface of the water and form a raft that will reach from this island to the mainland. Then I can walk over all of you, and I shall ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... "I have settled it all. Not three weeks ago I chanced upon the most charming raft that can ferry a man sick and tired of this ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... forest in British Columbia are not satisfactory, any way you look at them), I turned me to the lake front of Buffalo, where the steamers bellow to the grain elevators, and the locomotives yell to the coal-shutes, and the canal barges jostle the lumber-raft half a mile long as it snakes across the water in tow of a launch, and earth, and sky, and sea ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... the lake to Northwest River, and besides no mountains to go over. I went about 2 miles and came to a river, which made me feel very bad about it, and I did not know how I could ever get across, and could not make a raft without an axe. I thought I would try any way to make a raft, if I could only get wood to make a raft with. I followed the river up. The banks were so high, and the swift current run so swift along the steep ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... the Boristhenes, which separates Tartary from Russia, and which is some miles broad[9]. As it was necessary to pass the river, our Tartars cut down some trees, the stems of which they fastened together into a raft, which was covered over by the branches, and upon which the whole of our baggage was placed. They fastened their horses by the tails to this raft, by which means it was dragged across the river, they themselves swimming along-side of their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Dan Beard knows and has written about the building of every simple kind of boat, from a raft to a cheap motor-boat, is brought ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... 'Robinson Crusoe' and your 'Swiss Family Robinson' and you will know. We must make a kind of raft, so that we can go back and forth to the houseboat without getting wet every time ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... weather, every trip between the ship and the boat harbour, a distance of a mile, meant that five or six tons had been landed. It was usual for the loaded launch to tow both whale-boats heavily laden and, in addition, a raft of hut timbers or wireless masts. Some of the sailors, while engaged in building rafts alongside the ship, were capsized into the water and after that the occupation was ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... our bows in the morning, the schooner was taking her bath in the afternoon, for occasionally, for five minutes at a time, there was nothing seen of her deck, and only the masts and broad white canvas above, like jury-sticks out of a raft. But when she did slide up with her low, long hull shooting clean out of water, till nearly half her keel, with the copper sheathing flashing in the sun, was visible, she looked like a dolphin making a spring after a shoal of flying-fish. And ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... the view from the river is bounded at a little distance from its banks by low rocky hills. Saw to-day a singular mode of navigating the river; a man, who apparently was traveling down the river with his whole family, had placed his youngest wife and her two young children on a small raft made of bundles of corn-stalks lashed together, he himself swam by its side to guide it, while he kept his old wife a swimming and pushing it by the stern, and in this way they proceeded down ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... wind for his pilot, our argonaut seeks no improvement upon his aerial raft. Like the bow and arrow, it long ago reached perfection, and, though he may cherish some choice and secret recipe for varnish or be the inventor of an improved valve, he generally builds with a birdlike reliance on instinct and tradition. Gas-bag, netting, concentrating-ring, basket, valve, anchor, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "Tuppence" to the care of the ship's carpenter and begged him to find a spare lifebelt for him, so that if the worst came to the worst he could use it as a little raft! ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... eel. I see also small fish, resembling our perch and chub. Some plants of white clover, and some of yellow, on the banks of the canal near Capestan; santolina also, and a great deal of yellow iris. Met a raft of about three hundred and fifty beams, forty feet long, and twelve or thirteen inches in diameter, formed into fourteen rafts, tacked together. The extensive and numerous fields of saintfoin, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... dear boy, it will not be exactly what you would call a vessel. For the present we must be content with a good and solid raft." ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... struck the Little Tennessee river, was strongly Union, and the people would have betrayed him to a certainty, if they had discovered who he was. The river was guarded at every point, and there was no boat or raft upon it, which was not in possession of the enemy. He was, in this vicinity, joined by some thirty nomadic Confederates, and they set to work and constructed a raft ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... however, was to see the tombs of Henry II. and of my beloved Richard the Lion-hearted, who are both buried at Fontevreault. To go to Fontevreault, we were obliged to cross the river Vienne on the most curious little old ferry, which was only a raft with the edges turned up. Charles drove the brake on to this raft, but we preferred, after one look into the eyes of the American horses, to climb down and trust to ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... shipped to Wilmington and to Cincinnati. Wild-fowls abound, and the shooting is excellent. The fishermen say flocks of ducks seven miles in length have been seen on the waters of Bogue Sound. Canvas-backs are called "raft-ducks" here, and they sell from twelve to twenty cents each. Wild geese bring forty cents, and ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... company,—the Sparrow. There was a many of us wasn' too good, but we thowt wrong of 'e's takun the Lord's Day to 'e'sself.—Wull, Sir, afore I comed 'ome, I was in a great desert country, an' floated on sea wi' a monstrous great raft that no man never made, creakun an' crashun an' groanun an' tumblun an' wastun an' goun to pieces, an' no man on her but me, an' full o' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... are so constructed that they can be lifted bodily off the posts, and removed anywhere, either by land, or by a raft of canoes. But in removing a house, they generally divide the roof into four parts—viz. the two sides, and the two ends, where there are particular joints left by the carpenters, which can easily be untied, and again fastened. There is not ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... dat school." Besides, Joe was a creature of the open fields. His French Canadian father, Joe Gagneau, "Ol' Joe," was a survival of a bygone age, the glorious golden age of the river and the bush, of the shanty and the raft, of the axe and the gun, the age of Canadian romance, of ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... Appalachicola Bay, where, some of us remembered, a newspaper item had said that we had gunboats stationed. The creek that ran through the stockade flowed to the east, and we reasoned that if we followed its course we would be led to the Flint, down which we could float on a log or raft to the Appalachicola. This was the favorite scheme of the party with which I sided. Another party believed the most feasible plan was to go northward, and endeavor to gain the mountains, and thence get into ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... being built by the enterprising Mahmat on a large raft, and he had securely moored it just inside the muddy point of land at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai so as to be out of the way of drifting logs that would no doubt strand on the ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... comrade, and then, with hideous yells, resumed the pursuit. The stream was fringed with a dense growth of cotton-wood trees. Colter rushed through them, thus concealed from observation, and seeing near by a large raft of drift timber, he plunged into the water, dived under the raft and fortunately succeeded in getting his head above the water between the logs, where smaller wood covered him to the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... climbing over the Blue Mountains, entered the fertile valleys about the present city of Walla Walla. From this place the emigrants followed the Columbia River to The Dalles, whence they proceeded either by boat or raft until Fort Vancouver and the mouth of the Willamette were finally gained. Wagons were taken through on this route, and it was not dangerous, although accidents sometimes happened at the Cascades, where locks were ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... point of my argument! A raft was found moored between four of the great pillars in the cistern, and there was a structure on it with furnished rooms. A small boat was used ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... sighed at last, with a grim sort of humor; "I must do the best I can. It's the same as if I were on a desert island. I must tie together some sort of a raft in order to cross the gulf that separates us, for I never can stand it to stay here alone. Since I have not time to spare I may as well commence with that encyclopaedia, and learn a little about as many things as possible; then if he introduces a subject he shall at least see that I know what ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... water transportation is the giant raft, Fig. 30. When such a raft is made up, logs of uniform length are placed together, the width of the raft being from sixty to one hundred feet and its length, one thousand feet or more. It may contain a million board feet of timber. The different sections are placed end to ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... over, and we were off. As the Charles Auchester glided out into the stream, two young women with camp stools in their hands pushed through the crowd at the entrance to the hurricane deck—an elevation I had succeeded in attaining—and took their seats near a life-raft ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... offered no effective resistance. The obstructions had been opened to remove accumulated raft, and could not be closed; and the fleet moved slowly up to seize the rich prize that lay entirely ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... now to be filled to the depth of three feet with a bed of water, intended to support a water-tight wooden disc, which worked easily within the walls of the projectile. It was upon this kind of raft that the travelers were to take their place. This body of water was divided by horizontal partitions, which the shock of the departure would have to break in succession. Then each sheet of the water, from the lowest to the highest, running off into escape tubes toward ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... carry and pile logs of wood, as big as cocoa-nut trees, to the number of the hairs on the beast's body. Therefore cats are not killed; but, if they become too daring in their raids on the hen-coop, or the food rack, they are tied to a raft and sent floating down-stream, to perish miserably of hunger. The people of the villages, by which they pass, make haste to push the raft out again into mid-stream, should it in its passage adhere to bank or bathing hut, and on no account is the animal suffered ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... possible exception of the Ganges, no other river in the world transports yearly a greater tonnage of merchandise. The early traders were content to carry their supplies back and forth in canoes. As settlement and business increased, the canoe gave place to the raft, and the raft yielded to the flatboat. In the course of time, steam was applied to the propulsion of boats, and the flatboat yielded to the inevitable: the palatial steamboat was supreme. But the days of the steamboat were numbered when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... first clear the river of the obstruction placed below the forts. Farragut ordered two gunboats to steal through the darkness without lights and clear this raft. The work was swiftly done. The task was rendered unexpectedly easy by a break caused by a ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... this time. It was great fun, he said, and he was a little ashamed of the part he had taken in keeping Katie out of it all. So he proposed that she should go with him that morning and stay for an hour or two. She could go quite easily, he said, for he could put her over the river on a raft which he had made for his own convenience, to save the walk round by the bridge. But Katie could not be spared. The children were all expected to go with the Scott's Corner Sunday-school to the High-School, from thence to walk with several other Sunday-schools in procession to the Grove, ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... colonists was Teuʹcer. During his reign a prince named Darʹdanus arrived in the new settlement. He was a son of Jupiter, and he came from Samʹo-thrace, one of the many islands of the Ægean Sea. It is said that he escaped from a great flood which swept over his native island, and that he was carried on a raft of wood to the coast of the kingdom of Teucer. Soon afterwards he married Teucer's daughter. He then built a city for himself amongst the hills of Mount Ida, and called it Dar-daʹni-a; and on the death of Teucer ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... the sedge-crowned God ascends From his verdant spring to light, And his raft's direction bends At the goddess' word of might,— While the hours, all gently bound, Nimbly to their duty fly; Rugged trunks are fashioned round By her ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... impolite, Mammy," he complained. "He said he'd never send his family to a Graymouse school. He said that Uncle Squeaky's band couldn't play as good as the Frog Orchestra, and that Uncle Squeaky didn't know anything about the Lake, if he did make a raft and float around. Ah, Grandpa Bull Frog thinks he is ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... commonly find that the men who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... solitude of the waters naught Was seen but here and there unfrequently A frail raft, heaped with languid men that fought Weakly with one another for the grass Hanging about a cliff not yet submerged, And here and there a drowned man's head, and here And there a file of birds, that beat the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... a heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, dropped her anchors in mid-channel between Churruca Point and Smith Cay, opened her sea connections, exploded a number of torpedoes hung along her sides at the water-line, and when she sank, hung on to a raft attached by a rope to the sunken vessel. They were rescued from this position by the Spaniards and thrown into Morro Castle, but were treated with the consideration and courtesy to which their gallantry entitled them. On the afternoon of the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... rule was that if a Jewish traveller died, the physicians took half his property. Petachiah saw through the real danger that threatened him, so he escaped from the perilous ministrations of the royal doctors, had himself carried across the Tigris on a raft, and soon recovered. Clearly, it was imprudent of a Jewish traveller to excite the rapacity of kings or bandits by wearing rich dresses. But it was also desirable for the Jew, if he could, to evade recognition ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... them with harpoons, much in the same way as whales are killed in the northern and southern oceans. The harpoons have a sharp barbed blade of iron, and this point is secured by strong string to a stout shaft of wood, the end of which is attached by a line to a float. Two canoes are dragged on to a raft of bundles of reed tied together, and between them the black hunters crouch with harpoons and light javelins in their hands. When all is ready, the raft is pushed out into the current and drifts noiselessly down the river. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... - two hours, perhaps - I cannot tell. We clutched each other fast, to save ourselves from being thrown off the raft. We felt violent shocks whenever we were borne heavily against the craggy projections. Yet these shocks were not very frequent, from which I concluded that the gully was widening. It was no doubt the same road that Saknussemm had ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... stairs to the inner room, where was a large-sized figure of Buddha, with the attendant figures at each side called his sons, Buddhavista, meaning "future Buddhas." Driving on, we came to another missing bridge. Here we were taken across on a rude raft, the carriage following, and then the horses. As we drew near Boro Boedor, a feeling of awe came over us, for we were to behold a temple which for centuries had been buried from the sight of man. Indeed, until the debris of time was removed, after English occupation in 1811, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... was obvious we must soon all be drowned, if we remained upon it as it drifted seaward into more open water. If we were to save our lives, no time was to be lost. When I stood up, I could see about twenty yards away a larger pan floating amidst the sish, like a great flat raft, and if we could get on to it we should postpone at least for a time the death that already seemed almost inevitable. It was impossible to reach it without a life line, as I had already learned to my cost, and the next problem was ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... in the Upper Country, and Harper left down-stream, with a raft-load of supplies, to start a small post at the mouth ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... are any more books like them in the world, send them to me quick." I had to humbly confess to him that if there were any others I had not the good fortune to know of them. What a red-letter-day it is to a boy, the day he first opens "Tom Sawyer." I would rather sail on the raft down the Missouri again with "Huck" Finn and Jim than go down the Nile in December or see Venice from a gondola in May. Certainly Mark Twain is much better when he writes of his Missouri boys than when he makes sickley romances about Joan of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of unloading the wreck. There was an inlet or mouth of a creek not far from the place where they first landed, and, constructing a raft on the wreck and loading it with arms, provisions, ammunition and tools, they took advantage of the tide to float it in to shore. This was repeated daily for weeks. Clothing, sails, provisions of all kinds, half a hundred guns and as many pistols and cutlasses, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... poetically, and we want it politically. With the poetical necessity of the case I shall not trouble myself. I leave it to our poets to tell how they manage to steer that collocation of words, "The United States of North America," down the swelling tide of song, and to float the whole raft out upon the sea of heroic poesy. I am now speaking of the mere purposes of common life. How is a citizen of this republic to designate himself? As an American? There are two Americas, each subdivided into ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... understand how the industrious cultivators and weavers, finding the flat and so-called loess territory too confined for their ever-increasing numbers, threw out colonies wherever attraction offered, and wherever the riverine systems gave them easy access; whether by boat and raft; or whether—as seems more probable, owing to the scanty mention of boat-travel—by simply following the low levels sought by the streams, and tilling on their way such pasturages as they found by the river-sides. When it is said that ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... Gillam again: "Shiver my soul! Let 'im set sail, I say! Aren't you and me to be shipped on a raft for the English fort at the foot o' ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... a delighted tone. "Sometimes we agree, and again we have different minds; but in this case it looks like we might be on the same raft." ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... of the steamer Farringford, on the upper Missouri, in which my father and mother and myself—then a child two years old—were passengers, I had been committed to a raft formed of a state-room door, and bolstered with pillows to keep me from rolling off. By an accident this frail craft was carried away from the burning steamer, then aground, and I was separated from my father, who, ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... all along the shore. A multitude of hands went up to shade the eager eyes, and exclamations of wonder burst out from many men at the sight of a crowd of canoes of various sizes and kinds lying close together with the effect as of an enormous raft, a little way off the side of the Emma. The excited voices rose higher and higher. There was no doubt about Tengga's being on the lagoon. But what was Jorgenson about? The Emma lay as if abandoned by her keeper and her crew, while the mob of mixed boats seemed to ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... will not be exactly what you would call a vessel. For the present we must be content with a good and solid raft." ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... and saw. A whole section of the atoll near where we were standing was movable! Kippy jumped up and down on it and it rocked like a raft. At the edges I saw that it was lashed to the near-by trees with vines! Cheap? You could have bought me for a bad clam. As I thought of the days we had sweated over those damned cocoanuts, of Triplett's peril, of the danger to ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... placed in the Goldsack rockets; but, in consequence of the treacherous handling of the Spanish soldiers who had filled them, they proved worse than useless, doing nearly as much injury to the men who fired them as to the enemy. Only one gunboat was sunk by the shells from a raft commanded by Major Miller, who also did some damage to the forts and shipping. On the night of the 4th, Lord Cochrane amused himself, while a fireship was being prepared, by causing a burning tar-barrel ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... luxurious beds, and they slept profoundly all night. In the morning they went down to the sea. Not a vestige of a boat was to be seen, and they began to question whether it would not be possible to make a small raft, and to paddle along ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... letter, Frank. We want to con it so that every word will be photographed on our brains from this time on. Didn't old Jesse say that Martin Mabie was a big stockman now, and had really quit being a guide and hunter? Then it's mighty kind of him to undertake to convoy a raft of tenderfeet into the wilderness. Money didn't enter into ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... Campbell's beautiful description,) were extremely litigious, used to receive all their fees in kind, such as skins, corn, whiskey, etcetera, etcetera, and, as soon as they had sufficient to load a raft, were to be seen gliding down the river to dispose of their cargo at the first favourable mart for produce. Had they worn the wigs and gown of our own legal profession, the effect would have been ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to walk along its banks. To reach the Tinguians, it is necessary to have recourse to a slight skiff, that can easily pass through the current and the most shallow parts. My guide and my lieutenant soon contrived to make a small raft of bamboos; when it was finished we embarked, Alila and myself, our guide refusing to accompany us. After much trouble and fatigue, casting ourselves often into the water to draw our raft along, we at ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the Mississippi river, we know not how, perhaps in the birch canoe of some friendly Indian, perhaps on a raft, swimming the horses. They then continued their journey two hundred miles farther west, till they reached a spot far enough from neighbors and from civilization to suit the taste even of Mr. Carson. This was at the close of the year ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... "Pitt Bushyager, Got a raft of brothers and sisters—so you'll know us better after a while. Mr. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... . I come back to what I said just now; we have found our poor reasonable minds, our wills to live well, ourselves, adrift on a wash of instincts, passions, instinctive prejudices, half animal stupidities. . . . Here we are like people clinging to something—like people awakening—upon a raft." ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... passes to a new cell to confide to it another of her descendants. During this time the parasite larva hastily descends the abdominal hairs and allows itself to fall on the egg of the Anthophora, to be then borne upon it as upon a raft; its fall must take place at the precise instant which will enable it to embark without falling into the honey, in which just now it would be glued fast, and perish. This series of circumstances results only in the introduction of a single Sitaris into ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... the roaring torrent in dismay. 'Oh, child, behold the flood! Even if I could build a raft, we should be carried out to sea, and no swimmer could stem that tide with you in his arms. How ever ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Bluebell went down, he and Ruel Gross escaped on a raft, and after several days of suffering, reached the ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... "blue-devil" frights that had seized all my men. I felt greatly alarmed about the prospects of the expedition, scarcely knowing what I should do. I resolved at last, if everything else failed, to make up a raft at the southern end of the N'yanza, and try to go up to the Nile in that way. My cough daily grew worse. I could not lie or sleep on either side. Still my mind was so excited and anxious that, after remaining one day here to enjoy Grant's society, I pushed ahead ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and a Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft. The shape and colour of the Plaice tell their own story of a life on the sandy, pebbly bed of the sea. And look at the eyes! Both are on the upper side of the head! What could be better for a fish that lies ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... with the help of a seabreeze I ran into 7 fathom and anchored; then carried a small anchor ashore and warped in till I came into 3 fathom and a half. Where having fastened her I made a raft to carry the men's chests and bedding ashore; and before 8 at night most of them were ashore. In the morning I ordered the sails to be unbent, to make tents; and then myself and officers went ashore. I had sent ashore a puncheon and a 36 gallon cask of water with one bag of rice for our common use: ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... Down on the raft of tangled logs the men are shouting, as they strain to free the timber that has caught and stuck fast among the rocks and boulders in the river-bed. Stick after stick comes floating down and joins ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... roses above them in the high hedges, or by the small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Russian fairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of the Volkhov (which has its part in one of the stories) are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that forest of great trees—a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it—is the hut where ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... is more reason to believe that they were conveyed across on rafts; which plan, as it must have appeared the safer before execution, is after it the more entitled to credit. They extended from the bank into the river one raft two hundred feet long and fifty broad, which, fastened higher up by several strong cables to the bank, that it might not be carried down by the stream they covered, like a bridge, with earth thrown upon it, so that the beasts might tread upon it without fear, as over solid ground. Another raft ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... a boat remaining, and had a raft been formed, the people would have been swept off in that ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... now towards the end of all such gear. It represents a bareheaded young lady in a white gown pinned very high. She is standing in a pond, with the water well over her knees. One hand keeps her balance with a pole, the other grasps a streamer of water-weed. Floating beyond her upon some kind of raft is a man, bareheaded also, in a white sweater with a rolling collar. His face is shadowed—you can see that his hair, black and straight, falls over his eyes. He is raking up the weed with his hand, his arm bare to the shoulder. Below is written, in a round, sprawling hand, "To Sanchia from Percy." ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... was being built by the enterprising Mahmat on a large raft, and he had securely moored it just inside the muddy point of land at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai so as to be out of the way of drifting logs that would no doubt strand on the point during the freshet. ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... contracts with the natives inhabiting the lands lying near the shores of the rivers, and the wood is floated down on rafts to Tombo, where ships come to take in their cargoes. The African oak is so heavy that the natives are obliged to raft it on wood of a much lighter specific gravity. This trade is of considerable benefit both to our colonists and the native tribes. It not only promotes a friendly intercourse between them, but affords constant employment to great ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... battered awry. Wedged clumsily in between these pieces, and secured by a supplementary nail, is a bit of broken rope. Let us touch that rope tenderly; for who knows what despairing hands may last have clutched it when this rude raft was made? It may, indeed, have been the handiwork of children, on the Penobscot or the St. Mary's River. But its Condition betokens voyages yet longer; and it may just as well have come from the stranded "Golden Rule" on Roncador Reef,—that picturesque shipwreck where (as a rescued woman told me) ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of the Indians; "without doubt the canoe is dashed to pieces, and our comrades are even now with their forefathers. We shall see them no more; and my advice is that we construct a raft and try to return on it to the lands whence ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... near the fire, from time to time I swept the horizon with my marine glasses; but there was no sign of Kemper; no sail broke the far sweep of sky and water; nothing moved out there save when a wild duck took wing amid the dark raft of its companions to circle low above the ocean and settle at random, invisible again except when, at intervals, its white breast flashed ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... into the water. With the beautifully adapted transfer of the functional spiracles, their position is appropriately arranged for the gnat's emergence at the surface, and the empty pupal cuticle floats serving the insect as a raft. On this it rests securely and the crumpled wings have opportunity to expand and harden before ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... came back to my raft, and fell to work to bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day; and what to do with myself at night I knew not, nor indeed where to rest; for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but some wild beast might devour ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... men springs naturally from the first. They are always on the look-out. This does not mean that they are industrious. I stated in a previous article my belief that as a rule successful men are not particularly industrious. A man on a raft with his shirt for a signal cannot be termed industrious, but he will keep his eyes open for a sail on the horizon. If he simply lies down and goes to sleep he may miss the chance of his life, in a very special sense. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... Stewart—who, if there was one innocent man in the ship, was that man. Captain Beechey says (speaking of Christian), 'His plan, strange as it must appear for a young officer to adopt, who was fairly advanced in an honourable profession, was to set himself adrift upon a raft, and make his way to the island (Tofoa) then in sight. As quick in the execution as in the design, the raft was soon constructed, various useful articles were got together, and he was on the point of launching it, when a young officer, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... escape was thought impossible. The murids, however, having devised a plan for preserving the life of their chief by the loss of their own, constructed from materials previously collected in the cave, a raft of sufficient size to carry several persons, and letting it down at night into the river below, then followed themselves. The guard on the bank observing this manouvre, immediately gave chase to the raft, those on horseback plunging into the stream, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... might be coming round either corner, and which would yield a vision first! Perhaps there would come along a sandolo rowed by a man standing at the back, his two oars crossed gracefully; perhaps a floating raft with barefooted boys bestriding it; perhaps a barca punted by men in blue blouses, one at front and two at the back, with a load of golden hay, or with provisions for the Ghetto—glowing fruit and picturesque vegetables, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell into the water and was drowned. I watched the police boat go past, carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing. I went and sat with Peter on the stairs. The dog's conduct ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... grief! how different the tale! That bygone time loomed upon me like a wave borne down on a mariner on a frail raft, the passion of the past ground me ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... living in one of Mr. W.W. Jacobs' cottages at Dunton Green told me, with a guarded significance of manner not uncommon in those parts, who would "get washed up anyhow," and as regards the devouring element was "fit to put a fire out." He considered that Skinner would be as safe on a raft as anywhere. The retired seafaring man added that he wished to say nothing whatever against Skinner; facts were facts. And rather than have his clothes made by Skinner, the retired seafaring man remarked he would take his chance of being ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... months of wandering, hardships, and peril, they all came in sight of the Euxine, and perhaps no shipwrecked sailors clinging to a raft ever cried "Land!" "Land!" with more joy than those Greeks who had climbed a hill-top ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... took pity on me; he said he was allowed to take a man with his horse and cart, besides himself, and I could go over as the man. And in this way I crossed over on the ferry, which was a sort of raft. When I got into Howden—it was now early morning—it turned out to be the Fair Day. So I wended my way into the fair-ground, thinking that possibly I might meet with some of my former theatrical acquaintances ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... to produce eggs for her. He gathered barks and sluiced roots on the raft in the lake, for her. He grubbed the spice thicket before the door and moved it into the woods to make space for a lawn, for her. His eyes were wide open for every woven case and dangling cocoon of the big night moths that propagated around him, for her. Every night when he left ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... position, and Hovey went on: "Lads, I've bad news, bad and good news together. The boats are gone—though who the devil destroyed them we don't know—and now the wireless is destroyed. The boats are a big loss, for now we'll have to rig up some sort of a raft to make shore when we beach the Heron. The busting of the wireless almost balances that loss. Now we're sure they can't slip out any quick wireless call that would bring a dozen ships after us. Bad news and good news together; and here's ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... for, scarcely rendered it less marvellous than hers.—Just after the loss of Snowball, came floating into the farmyard, over the top of the gate, with such astonishment of all who beheld that each seemed to place more confidence in his neighbour's eyes than in his own, a woman on a raft, with her four little children seated around her, holding the skirt of her gown above her head and out between her hands for a sail. She had made the raft herself, by tying some bars of a paling together, and crossing them with what other bits of wood she could find—a ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... job on board of a vessel, which has a number of misfortunes. She loses several officers, then her captain dies, leaving a totally unsuitable officer, Kydd, in charge. Finally she runs aground near the shore, where the natives slay some of the crew. They leave the ship on a raft, Kydd being on one, and our hero and many other passengers on a second. The latter is picked up by a fine-looking vessel, that proves to be a Portuguese slaver. They are attacked by a British man-of-war on slaver-patrol, but manage to get away from ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... they could perceive their friend in the far distance, busily employed on the ice, they could not make their voices heard. As the gale increased the floe drifted faster out to sea, and Annatock was observed running anxiously towards the land; but before he reached the edge of the ice-raft on which he stood, the increasing distance and the drifting clouds of snow hid him from view. Then his companions, fearful for their own safety, hastened back to the camp with ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... being carried down the stream. His peril was extreme, for below as well as above the fire was sweeping down on either side of the mill, and it was a question of minutes, almost of seconds, whether the bridge-raft would pass down the river before the fire struck or whether ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... in silence, Paula apparently much interested in the manoeuvring of a raft which was passing by. 'Dear Miss Power,' he resumed, 'before I go and join your uncle above, let me just ask, Do I stand any chance at all yet? Is it possible you can never be more pliant than you ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... passage of these torrents is extremely dangerous, as they cannot be then forded, and must be crossed in barks or floats like those formerly mentioned, or on a kind of rafts made of gourds inclosed in a net, on which the passenger reclines, while one Indian swims before pulling the raft after him with a rope, and another Indian swims behind and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... which he struck the Little Tennessee river, was strongly Union, and the people would have betrayed him to a certainty, if they had discovered who he was. The river was guarded at every point, and there was no boat or raft upon it, which was not in possession of the enemy. He was, in this vicinity, joined by some thirty nomadic Confederates, and they set to work and constructed a raft for ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... abate, and the sea became tolerably calm, and by the ebb of the tide the ship was much nearer the land than when she first struck. King Pippin now conceived hopes of gaining the shore, by means of a raft which he had constructed in the best manner he could; and, furnishing himself with such things as he thought might be useful to him on shore, he let down his raft into the sea, and placing himself on it, began to ...
— The History of Little King Pippin • Thomas Bewick
... occupy him now. There were a few bolts behind the boom-sticks which he would raft to the mill at his leisure. He walked up to the chute mouth now and looked about. A few hundred yards up the hill the line of green timber ended against the black ruin of the fire. There the chute ended also. Hollister walked on across the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to de sho'. Dey was dat mad when dey see us dat dey fired all dar shot-guns at us, an' Challenger was dat s'prised dat he jumped right into de arr, an' come down on his feet ag'in like a jack-rabbit. Dat was a leetle too much for de ole raft, an' she done went to pieces like a bundle of straw. John Brown was a-holdin' on to Challenger's neck, an' she jus' held on, legs an' han's, wid her fingers clenched into de mane, so dat I had to cut some ob it off arterward to git 'em away. We'se ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... slavery. The village was burned after being plundered, and the unfortunate people have since been living in the jungle, with only such food as they could get there. The head of the tribe and about six of his followers came down the river on a raft to ask assistance from me, and I had the story from them. They were relieved as far as my means admitted, and returned far happier than they came. The very same day arrived news that six men of the Sows were cut off by a ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... less decently clothed in bodies, having been crowded upon the raft, the shore-line was cast off, and she drifted magnificently out into the stream, and stuck fast about a rod ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... of Life, by its Athenian banks, he had floated upon his raft of reason serene, in cloudy as in smiling weather, for seventy years. And now the night is rushing down, and he has reached the mouth of the stream, and the great ocean is before him, dim heaving in the dusk. ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... something truly Stoical in the aspect of Seneca's exile. But was this grand attitude consistently maintained? Did his little raft of philosophy sink under him, or did it bear him safely over the stormy waves of ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... the magnate, "that may be. I hope he has kept a close tongue in his head for his own good, if nothing else. It will save him trouble. Go and tell James to pack my grip," he directed, suddenly, as he scattered the raft of papers with a quick move of his arm and closed and locked the secretary. "Hurry up. I must catch that ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... determined to strike to the northeastward, in order to avoid this low country and, if possible, reach the Macquarie River and follow it up to the settlement of Bathurst. After experiencing some difficulty in manufacturing a raft out of pine logs, whereby to cross their baggage over, Oxley and his party ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... and then forced the sea to wash away their foul remains. Here, to please his sister, Sainte-Marguerite, a cherry tree burst into full bloom every month; here he threw his cloak upon the waters and it became a raft, which bore him safely to visit the neighbouring island; here St. Patrick received from St. Just the staff with which he imitated St. Honorat by driving all reptiles from Ireland. Pillaged by Saracens and pirates, the island was made ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Ericsson, in spite of sneers and doubts, a contract was given him in October to construct a vessel after his design. The form of the Monitor is too well known to need description—"a cheese-box on a raft," the name given her in derision, describes her as well as anything. She was launched on the last day of January, and three weeks later was handed over to the Government, but it was not until the fourth of March that her guns were mounted, two powerful rifled cannon. At the request ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... disappear behind them, when we saw before us a rapid river rushing between lofty and precipitous cliffs. How to cross it, was the question. We could see no bridge or canoe, and it ran too furiously for us to breast its foaming billows; while it would be dangerous to cross on a raft, even if we could find materials for ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... is a tennis ball, a broom stick and four rafts— one large and three small. The batsman and catcher stand on the big raft. On a small raft, ten yards away, stands the pitcher and the other two rafts are placed at easy swimming distance for bases. In striking, everything counts—bunt, swat or foul tip. The moment bat and ball come in contact the batsman starts for first ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... at work with an axe in her hand. I knew it, before ever I came to this place, in her memoirs. I felt, as sure as if I had read it, that when day broke, we should find Kate hard at work. Thimble or axe, trousers or raft, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Boone, musingly, "we'd ha' saved some o' the varmints the trouble of paddling over thar; or ef we only had the means o' crossing now, we'd be upon 'em afore they war aware on't. Howsomever, as it is, I suppose we'll have to make a raft to cross on, and so give the red heathen a little ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... their clothing and fastened it and the arms, ammunition and knapsacks of food on the tree. Then, they pushed off, with a caution from the hunter that they must not allow their improvised raft to turn in the water, as the wetting of the ammunition could easily ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... you've something between you and the river, my boy. Twenty-four years ago this very week I was returning from a mission to the Ohio, and to cross a river we made a raft of logs. The ice surged against us so forcibly that I set out my pole to prevent our being swept down the stream; but the rapidity of the current threw the raft with so much violence against the pole ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... churches, banished their bishops, tortured and put to death many. Some bishops he made slaves. He exposed Quodvultdeus, bishop of Carthage, with a number of clergy, to the mercy of the waves on a wretched raft. Yet they reached Naples. The Arian clergy encouraged the king in all his cruelties. It was only in private houses or in suburbs that the Catholics could celebrate their worship. The violence of his tyranny, which led many to doubt even the providence of God, brought the Catholic ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... my fine fellow," answered Roswell, laughing, "did you attempt to pass a winter here. The Sea Lion of Humse's Hull would not herself keep you in fuel, and you would have to raft it off next summer on your casks, or ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... right. This water's running zwift, and we're making the boat move pretty fast. They can't zwim half as fast as we're going, and they've no horses, and the dogs can't smell on the river, even if they made a raft of the trees they've ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... people, Mr. Carson decided not to go to Capri by the ordinary steamer that conveyed pleasure-seekers, but to secure passages in a cargo vessel which was crossing with supplies. To Lorna the mode of conveyance was immaterial; she would have sailed cheerfully on a raft if necessary. She rather enjoyed the picturesque Neapolitan tramp steamer with its cargo of wine barrels and packing cases, and its crew of bare-footed, red-capped seamen, talking and gesticulating with all ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... reason, however, to regret that she had set about this task, however decent and necessary, in the present time and society. Madge Wildfire, who, among other indications of insanity, had a most overweening opinion of those charms, to which, in fact, she had owed her misery, and whose mind, like a raft upon a lake, was agitated and driven about at random by each fresh impulse, no sooner beheld Jeanie begin to arrange her hair, place her bonnet in order, rub the dust from her shoes and clothes, adjust her neck-handkerchief and mittans, and so forth, than with ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Skandinavia's, every mile of it. An' I guess there's hundreds an' hundreds of 'em. Ain't that what Canada's forests are for? To feed us the stuff we're needin'? But you don't need to worry any. We ain't cuttin' that stuff for years. Guess the waterways out there are mostly a mean outfit that wouldn't raft a bunch of lucifers. We need to wait permanent railroad ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... in England. Ducks black, all Summer. Ducks pied, build on Trees. Ducks whistling, at Sapona. Ducks scarlet-eye at Esaw. Blue-wings. Widgeon. Teal, two sorts. Shovelers. Whistlers. Black Flusterers, or bald Coot. Turkeys wild. Fishermen. Divers. Raft Fowl. Bull-necks. Redheads. Tropick-birds. Pellican. Cormorant. Gannet. Shear-water. Great black pied Gull. Marsh-hens. Blue Peter's. Sand-birds. Runners. Tutcocks. Swaddle-bills. Mew. Sheldrakes. Bald Faces. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... to do as he had done in preceding years. Only, when the raft was made up, he was going to leave to Benito all the detail of the trading part of the business. But there was no time to lose. The beginning of June was the best season to start, for the waters, increased by the floods ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... fallen asleep and dreamt; nothing less, indeed, than the sound of a woman's voice. He began to reason with himself. What was there strange in this? He was told, or had inferred, that a woman had been left upon a ship. Doubtless this was she, upon some rock or raft, perhaps. Only then she would have been crying for help, and this voice was singing, and in a strange tongue, more sweetly than he had ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... through a lot, but it strikes me we'd better be on the safe side and help God a little at this stage of the game. He is wonderful, Andrew, but He isn't wonderful enough to keep man afloat very long unless man himself builds the raft. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... bank, but lilies have a provoking way of growing just out of reach. Then they tried to hook them in with sticks, but got only three or four, without stems. Then they looked for a board to use as a raft. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... newspaper item had said that we had gunboats stationed. The creek that ran through the stockade flowed to the east, and we reasoned that if we followed its course we would be led to the Flint, down which we could float on a log or raft to the Appalachicola. This was the favorite scheme of the party with which I sided. Another party believed the most feasible plan was to go northward, and endeavor to gain the mountains, and thence get ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... boathouse, stood near, the water lapping its underpinning. Close by it was a buoyed mooring float six or eight feet square, bobbing in the rushing water. One of the four air-tight barrels which supported it had caught in the mud and kept the buoyant, raft-like platform from being carried downstream in ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... on land. In the country, back a little from the coast, we have found a shelter from the shipwreck. That we live at all is owing to the bravery of a seaman who superintended the making of a raft after the ship struck, and almost forced us to save our lives by risking them upon it. The other passengers refused to go, and for a long time we hesitated, but Ben Benson was so determined, that at last we trusted every thing to his ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... the Captain, "order the Chinaman to make a raft from the beams of the boat, and to arm themselves as best they can. We must force a landing and get some drinking water or we are lost. It we only had half a dozen guns and some ammunition.—Just listen to the cries of these ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... all, am I to believe your unsubstantiated story or the evidence of a whole raft of witnesses, the police detail, the accident squad, and the guys who hauled you out of a burning car before it blew up? As I was saying, how can we credit much of your tale when you raved about one man lifting the car and the other hauling you ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... this, together with the husband's goods, forms the sum and substance of the wealth of an inhabitant of the southern land. In Wellesley's Islands, on the north coast of New Holland, the catalogue of a native's riches appears somewhat different, from his maritime position.[66] A raft, made of several straight branches of mangrove lashed together, broader at one end than at the other;—a bunch of grass at the broad end where the man sits to paddle,—a short net to catch turtle, or probably a young shark,—and their ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... bas-relief of a Bacchanalian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus—and especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with the god. There were singing of hymns and the floating of the chief actors on a raft round a sacred lake. And then came the final Act. Siva, or his image, very weighty and borne on the shoulders of strong men, was carried into the first chamber or hall of the Temple and placed on an altar with a curtain hanging in front. The crowd followed with a rush; and then ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... therefore believe all things are from God and preordained. Such being the case, the judgments or decisions I give are fixed to be thus or thus, whether I have exactly hit off all the circumstances or not. This is my raft, and on it I manage to float along, thanks to God, more or less successfully. I do not pretend my belief could commend itself to any wisdom or science, or in fact anything; but as I have said elsewhere, a bag of rice jolting along these roads could, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... stealthy labour under the nose of their proprietors. Twelve were arrested one morning in my own boys' kitchen. Farther in the bush, huts, small patches of cultivation, and smoking ovens, have been found by hunters. There are still three runaways in the woods of Tutuila, whither they escaped upon a raft. And the Samoans regard these dark-skinned rangers with extreme alarm; the fourth refugee in Tutuila was shot down (as I was told in that island) while carrying off the virgin of a village; and tales of cannibalism run round the country, and the natives shudder about the evening fire. For the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we crosses the Red River on de Red River Raft. Back in them days the Red River was near closed up by dis timber raft and de big boats couldn't git up de river at all. We gits a li'l boat, and a Caddo Indian to guide us. Dis Red River raft dey say was centuries old. De driftwood floatin' down de river stops in de still waters ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the most wonderful strain coming from that direction. The river was about three or four hundred yards away across the road, in front of them, and upon a raft slowly passing by were a couple of habitans singing. What strain was this, so weird, so solemn, so earnest, yet so ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... and of routine. The thrilling years he had spent—business! This was the adventure of which he had always dreamed, and since it would never arrive as a sequence, he had proceeded to dramatize it! He was Tom Sawyer grown up; and for a raft on the Mississippi substitute a seagoing yacht. There was then in this matter-of-fact world such a man, and he sat ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... would be murmurs, and sweet scents; the old castle would stand out clear, high over the woods and the chalky-white river. There would be singing far away, and the churning of a distant steamer's screw; and perhaps on the water a log raft still drifting down in the blue light. There would be German voices talking. And suddenly tears oozed up in her eyes, and crept down through the powder on her cheeks. She raised her veil and dabbed at her face with a little, not-too-clean ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... unreflecting way in the world, say "Oh, d—n Dobbin!" and go right ahead after somebody else. I don't say Becky was all that a perfect Sunday School teacher should have been, but in the group in which she was born to move she smells cleaner than the whole raft ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... the same way as all the common savage chiefs had done wherever I went, because they wished me to stop for their own satisfaction, quite disregarding my wishes and interest; so I said I would not stop there any longer I would raft over the river, and find my way through the Bari, as I had through the rest of the African savages. We talked and talked, but could make nothing of it. I maintained that if he was commissioned to help me, he at least could not refuse to give me a guide and interpreter; when, if I failed in the direct ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... ship. The mate sprang to clutch it—missed—and fell into the sea, to be seen no more alive. 'Another rope!' was the cry. But from the mismanagement of those in charge there was no other there. They then saw the poor fellows constructing a raft and launching it. A call for the lifeboat, one of large cost, provided with all good gear, kept close by. She was run down to the water. A shout for men—none—a few of the Hovillers, pilotmen, got on board, but refused to put off—all Bude lining the cliffs and shore—Well, well—to abbreviate ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... emergency ration-cask put aboard each, and Mr. MacMasters brought his instruments and papers, taking his place in the stern of the boat. The latter had a small engine, and there was a hawser with which she might tow the raft. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... the object of our devotion, "There is nothing like it." Now, in all Egypt, and I suppose in all the world there is nothing just like Philae. There are temples, yes; but where else is there a bouquet of gracious buildings such as these gathered in such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And where else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility? Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... wanderings, and loss, Like to Ulysses on his poplar raft, His treasure hid beneath the tunnelled moss Lest that a thief his labour steal with craft, Up the round hill, sheep-dotted, was his way, Zigzagging ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... great thing to feel a good deck beneath your feet, when a shark heaves in sight," remarked Bill. "Even in a boat no bigger than the Ariel, we're reasonably safe. But think of what it must be like to be on an open raft on the ocean with a crowd of these hungry ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... you had so much energy and strength in your little body," said Lydia, as Jean, with a shriek of enjoyment, drew herself on the raft and wiped the water from ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... bottom selected for a feeding-ground lies at a depth of fifteen or twenty feet below the surface, and is covered with a short growth of algae and other aquatic plants,—facts I had previously determined while sailing over it on a raft. After alighting on the glassy surface, they occasionally indulged in a little play, chasing one another round about in small circles; then all three would suddenly dive together, and then ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... west side discovered that his cellar was full of water. When that startled freeman opened the front door to see what was up, he uttered a tremendous ejaculation; and so, shortly, came to the construction of a raft. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... to a raft that bore a man and four women that whirled like a spool in the rapid waters. Then suddenly the raft was sucked down in the water and another chapter was added to ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... instant the ship which had borne me through what had seemed great perils was, so far as appeared to me, swallowed up in the sea,—crushed and broken into fragments by the falling ice, and every one of my companions was swallowed up with it. And there I was on an ice-raft, in the middle of the Arctic Sea, without food or shelter, wrapped in a great black, impenetrable fog, with the prospect of a lingering death staring me in ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... operations and bring out the ultimate prosperous result, Jordan threw one-half of his land into market and forced the sale at five dollars an acre. The proceeds of this sale did not last him over six months. Then he got a raft afloat, containing about a thousand dollars' worth of lumber, and sent it off under charge of his overseer, who sold it at Cincinnati, and absconded ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... reached was a long, narrow lake, surrounded at the upper end by fir-woods. The rest of the route was to be by water, and here a suitable raft had to be made. ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... freshets come on and the snow begins to melt in the spring up in the Yola Bolas, where the San Hedrin has its source, we'll have plenty of water for driving the river. Once we get the logs down to tide-water, we'll raft them and tow them up to the mill. So you see, Bryce, we won't be bothered with the expense of maintaining a ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... with the spasms in my labouring chest to destroy vitality. The black fragment of the wreck rose with the waters, and raised obliquely the side of the bell, which may have been an additional cause for the rising of the sea within. Through my glazed eye I saw, lying in a hollow of the broken raft, a white figure—probably that seen by Vanderhoek when he fell into the sea. By and by, it became more visible as the waters rose, and I saw that it was the body of a female who had perished in the vessel. The image of the apparition has haunted me to this hour, and shall do till I die. A part of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... see the stranger and found her aunt in high spirits. "She is as natural and sweet as a flower," said Mrs. Murray. "To be sure she has a few Western tricks; she says she stopped awhile at Chicago, and that she has a raft of things in her trunks, and she asks haeow, and says aeout; but so do half the girls in New York, and I will break her of it in a week so that you will never know she was not educated in Boston and finished in Europe. ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... to dislike us quite so much as before, and he helped the girls into the boat, which was now in the water at the edge of a sort of floating, unsteady raft, with openings in it that you could see the water through. The water was very rough, just like real sea, and not like a river at all. And the boy rowed; he wouldn't let us, although I can, quite well. The boat tumbled and tossed ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... at the head of the procession, his proud little head crowned with a wreath of fire-tree blooms, the corners of his raft decorated with sprigs of the flaming buds. Cautiously they poled down the swift stream, avoiding treacherous logs and snapping crocodiles. Piang chuckled with delight as they stole along, for the enemy would not discover the ruse ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... four big ones, and Monsieur Delouche is in command; and then there is a great fire raft, as they call it—a lot of schooners, shallops, and such like, all chained together—a formidable-looking thing, for I got one of the sailors to show it me. I suppose they are all pretty much alike, crammed with explosives and combustibles; old ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... o' Brushy Fork and Tinker Creek whar dey goes together dar is a large pond o' water. Us n'used to fish in dat pond. One day, me and Matilda tuck off a-fishing. I fell in dat pond, and when I riz up, a raft o' brush held my head under dat water and I couldn't git out no ways. 'Tilda sees my dangerment, and she jump in dat deep water and pull me from under dat raff. She couldn't swim but us both got out. Can't ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... floating steadily, safely, splendidly, in the crisp clear air, with the pale bright blue of the sky above them, and far down below the pale bright sun-diamonded waves of the sea. The carpet had stiffened itself somehow, so that it was square and firm like a raft, and it steered itself so beautifully and kept on its way so flat and fearless that no one was at all afraid of tumbling off. In front of them ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
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