"Chronometer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Captain Folger a chronometer made by Kendall, which was taken from him by the Governor ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... to your sleepy navigator, deacon; but the man who keeps his eyes open has little to fear. Had you given us a chronometer, there would not have been one-half the risk there will ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... a substantial non-magnetic cubicle, with a very thick glass window, in order to protect it from the magnetism and electricity which pervaded our vessel. On looking at the chronometer I found the time was nearly eleven o'clock. We had, therefore, been nearly two hours on our journey and had travelled some three hundred miles, mostly in an upward direction from the earth; so if there were any of the earth's atmosphere around our vessel ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... o'clock, midnight, the valet rushed in among the guests, who were discussing the odd circumstances, and said that his master was at the point of death. Lord Lyttelton had kept looking at his watch, and at a quarter past twelve (by his chronometer and his valet's) he remarked, 'This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find.' The real hour was then a quarter to twelve. At about half-past twelve, by HIS watch, twelve by the real time, he asked for his physic. The valet went into the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... minutes from that time, he would hang him from the yard-arm. He then made him sit down under it on the deck. All around him were the passengers and sailors of the midway watch, and in front of him stood the inexorable mate, with his chronometer in his hand, and the other officers of the ship by his side. It was the finest sight, said our informant, that he ever beheld—to see the pale, proud, sorrowful face of that noble boy, his head erect, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... was nearly passed. My chronometer marked five A.M. original Earth starting time. The seal of my cubby door hissed. The ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... of longitude sailed there is four minutes' difference of clock-time," Scott proceeded. "You know that a chronometer is a timepiece so nicely constructed and cared for, that it practically keeps perfect time. Meridians are imaginary great circles, and we are always on one of them. With our sextants we find when the centre of the sun is on the celestial meridian corresponding to the terrestrial ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... powerful telescope with astronomical eyepiece and stand; a prismatic, a luminous, a floating, and two pocket compasses; maximum and minimum thermometers, a case of drawing instruments, protractors, parallel rules, tape rules, a silver water-tight half-chronometer watch and three other watches, section paper in books and in large sheets, Raper's and the Nautical Almanac for 1897 ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... earth as much as either hand may rightly clutch'—of the Wessex master's work makes it indigestible reading for an exile of more than thirty or forty; unless, of course, he is of the fine and robust type, whose minds and constitutions function with the steadiness of a good chronometer, warranted ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... measured by the Martian chronometer aboard the Nomad or by Carr's watch, which he was regulating to match the slightly longer day of the red planet. He was becoming proficient in the operation of all mechanisms of the ship and had developed a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... and quadrant were both unattainable, I did not so quickly renounce all hope of discovering a chronometer, which, if in good order, though at present not ticking, might still be made in some degree serviceable. But no such instrument was to be seen. No: nor to be heard of; Samoa himself ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling pantomime of action, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... observed Commander Y'Nor's bird-of-prey profile with detached interest as Y'Nor jerked his head around to glare again at the chronometer on the farther wall of the ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... do Plane, Traverse, Middle-Latitude, and Mercator's Sailing," I answered. "I can also do a Day's Work; I can use my quadrant with accuracy; can find the Latitude by a meridian altitude of the sun, moon, or a star; can find the error and rate of the chronometer, and also the longitude by it; can determine the variation of the compass; can find the longitude by a 'lunar'; can do the Pole Star problem; and—well, I think that is ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... to bring Wolf Larsen's chronometer and sextant," I said, still gloomily. "Sailing one direction, drifting another direction, to say nothing of the set of the current in some third direction, makes a resultant which dead reckoning can ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... rest, in there,"—he indicated the church with his thumb,—"and you haven't got to make an appointment. You have got a clear forty minutes before the Angelus rings," he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, "and I reckon I kin git through my part of the job inside of twenty, leaving you ten minutes for remarks. I ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... every difficulty of manipulation were successfully overcome. Their experiment could end only in failure, and the measure of this failure neither one, in his own place, could possibly know. If, after the experiment, the Martian, chronometer in hand, could be instantly and miraculously transported to the earth, and the two settings compared, they would be found to be different: how ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... easily covered in two. The march may be about two and a half miles (direct geographical) from Axim, and five along the native path. During the night my companion took a good observation of Castor and Pollux, and with the aid of his chronometer laid down the position of the Apatim village at N. lat. 4 55' and W. long. (G.) 2 14' 2". Consequently the nearest point from Central Axim is 2,200 yards, and 200 from the shore. The north-western ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... equipped so that he could cope with any observation which might turn up. Thus Old Griff on a sledge journey might have notebooks protruding from every pocket, and hung about his person, a sundial, a prismatic compass, a sheath knife, a pair of binoculars, a geological hammer, chronometer, pedometer, camera, aneroid and other items of surveying gear, as well as his goggles and mitts. And in his hand might be an ice-axe which he used as he went along to the possible advancement of science, but the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... navigation was by no means as simple a thing as it has since become. It is true, lunars were usually attempted in India and China ships; but this was not an every-day affair, like the present morning and afternoon observations to obtain the time, and, by means of the chronometer, the longitude. Then we had so recently got clear of the islands, as to have no great need of any extraordinary head-work; and the "bloody currents" had acted their pleasure with us for eight or ten days before ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Plum, solemnly. "By the chronometer I have still seven minutes before the boat and pail sink out of sight forever. However, the pail was there, sitting, like a hen, on the larboard mast, filled with gooseberries, which Pocahontas had picked at dawn, in company ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... in Lyra will shine forth as the brightest of all possible pole stars. These data give us some idea of the extent of the motions which, divided into infinitely small portions of time, proceed without intermission in the great chronometer of the universe. If for a moment we could yield to the power of fancy, and imagine the acuteness of our visual organs to be made equal with the extremest bounds of telescopic vision, and bring together that which is now divided ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... worse than "raining cats and dogs"? Hailing omnibuses. When is butter like Irish children? When it is made into little pats. Why is a chronometer like thingumbob? Because it's ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... "light" at his evening-time; but this we know, that when the day of immortality breaks, the last vestige of earth's shadows will for ever flee away. To the closing hour of time, Providence may be to him a baffling enigma: but ere the first hour has struck on heaven's chronometer, all will be clear. My soul! "in God's light thou shalt see light;" the Book of His decrees is a sealed book now,—"A great deep" is all the explanation thou canst often give to His judgments; the ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... Virtue said; "I shouldn't be surprised if we get a glimpse of the sun between the clouds presently. Will you get my sextant and the chronometer up, Jack, and ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... gold about my wrist was my Barsoomian chronometer—a delicate instrument that records the tals and xats and zodes of Martian time, presenting them to view beneath a strong crystal much after the ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... regularly at eleven and again at three in the afternoon, and a barn owl went by with a screech every evening a little after eight. The starlings told the time of the year as accurately as the best chronometer at Whitehall. When I saw the last chimney swallow, November 30, they went by to their sleeping-trees about three o'clock in the afternoon—a long night, a short day for them. So they continued till in January the day had grown thirty minutes longer, when they went ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a really splendid boat. We had only one sextant and two chronometers on board, but a chronometer journal was lacking. Luckily I found an 'Old Indian Ocean Directory' of 1882 on board; its information went ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the doctor, laughing. "I mean as compared to what there is to know. Now, for instance, there are charts in the captain's cabin, and the proper instruments for taking observations— sextants and chronometer. I ought to be able to tell exactly where we are, Carey, and mark it upon a ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... antiquated time-piece on the staircase (which never spoke but it dropped pearls and crystals, like the fairy in the story) was lisping the hour, when there came three tremendous knocks at the street door. Mrs. Bilkins, who was dusting the brass-mounted chronometer in the hall, stood transfixed, with arm uplifted. The admirable old lady had for years been carrying on a guerilla warfare with itinerant venders of furniture polish, and pain-killer, and crockery cement and the like. The effrontery of the triple knock convinced her the enemy was ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... would not do. Though no mortal oversaw the thief at his task, the eye of science was in that cell and watched every stroke and her inexorable finger marked it down. In plain English, on the face of the machine was a thing like a chronometer with numbers set all round and a hand which, somehow or other, always pointed to the exact number of turns the thief had made. The crank was an autometer, or self-measurer, and in that respect your superior and mine, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... family, having known her great-grandfather in her early years, and living to nurse great-grandchildren in her old age. The landlord of the inn informed us, with much pride, that Couvet was the birthplace of the man who invented a clock for telling the time at sea; by which, no doubt, he meant the chronometer, invented by M. Berthoud. At Motiers, the next village, Rousseau wrote his Lettres de la Montagne, and thence it was that he fled from popular violence to the island on ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... from the river. Here they were safe from the elements and wild beasts, but not from man. Some anxiety is felt, as we have learned that a party of Indians have been camped near the place for several weeks. Our fears are soon allayed, for we find the cache undisturbed. Our chronometer wheels have not been taken for hair ornaments, our barometer tubes for beads, or the sextant thrown into the river as "bad medicine," as had been predicted. Taking up our cache, we pass down to the foot of the Uinta Mountains ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... was left with the dog for company once more. A chronometer showed that the hour was past midnight. She knew sufficient of the sea to understand that the clock was probably accurate, as the course had practically followed the same meridian since the Kansas quitted Valparaiso. So the ship and those left on board had entered on another day! How little ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Taskinar felt. The blood mounted to his brows, and seemed apoplectically congested there. He wriggled his fat fingers, covered with diamonds of great price, along the huge gold chain attached to his chronometer. He glared at his adversary, and then shutting his eyes so as to open them with a more spiteful expression a ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... which the incessant action of the clustering power has brought it at present, is a kind of chronometer that may be used to measure the time of its past and future existence; and although we do not know the rate of going of this mysterious chronometer, it is nevertheless certain that since the breaking up of the Milky Way affords a proof that it cannot last forever, it equally bears witness ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... the stories myself, but Harris did; and now I am sure that he is right. Two years ago a ship left Singapore for Bombay, and never was heard from until her chronometer turned up in Swatow or somewhere. A Portuguese Jew had them in a pawnshop, and he said he bought them from a chink for seven Mex dollars. They never found the chink; but there was the ship's name, or the captain's name written in ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... a chronometer for the voyage was all that now worried me. In our newfangled notions of navigation it is supposed that a mariner cannot find his way without one; and I had myself drifted into this way of thinking. My old chronometer, a good ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... that remained for us to do was either by dint of carrying sail to weather the reef to the southward, (meaning the Cato's Bank,) or, if failing in that, to push to leeward and endeavour to find a passage through the patches of reef to the northward. At ten a.m., we found by chronometer we had got considerably to the westward; and that it would be impossible, with the wind as it was then blowing strong from the S. E. with a heavy sea, to weather the southern reef; we therefore determined, while we had the day before us, to run to the westward ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... technicalities as to-day, when the last new thing may be a benzine bus or a turbine trailer; formerly everything was simple and crude,—and more or less inefficient. To-day many cars are as complicated as a chronometer and require the education of an expert who has lived among their intricacies for many months in order to control their vagaries and doctor their ills, which, if not chronic, are as varied as those of an old maid ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... The chronometer is nothing more than a very finely regulated clock. With it we ascertain Greenwich Mean Time, i.e., the mean time at Greenwich Observatory, England. Just what the words "Greenwich Mean Time" signify, will be explained in more detail later on. What you should remember here is that ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... have slept very soundly; for when I awoke the fire was out, and I saw by the chronometer that it was nearly eleven o'clock. But my sleep had done me great good, and I hurried on deck ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... wall was a stereopticon which shot a beam of light through a tube to which I heard them refer as a galvanometer, about three feet distant. In front of this beam whirled a five- spindled wheel, governed by a chronometer which erred only a second a day. Between the poles of the galvanometer was stretched a slender thread of fused quartz plated with silver, only one one- thousandth of a millimetre in diameter, so tenuous that it could not be seen except in a bright ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... goodness, intellect, and experience, may be deeply prejudiced, and that their judgment in matters where their prejudices are involved cannot thenceforward be trusted. Watches, as electricians know to their cost, are liable to have their steel work accidentally magnetised, and the best chronometer under those conditions can never again be trusted to keep ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... as if aiming blows at the prisoner's nose. Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed infant, looked anxiously at the sixty-guinea gold half-chronometer, presented to him years ago by a Committee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss by fire. Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable appearance. He became silent suddenly, stepped aside to the table, and began a careful examination in the light of the candles. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... chasse a l'affut, station yourself in whichever part of the forest you like, be assured the fly will be there; it was never otherwise. The question is, who sends the fly? how does it know the sportsman? and by what mysterious chronometer does it regulate with such exactness its movements? Chi lo sa? He who doth not let a sparrow fall to the ground without He willeth it. Equally incomprehensible is the departure of this little insect, which, the concert over, and when you are thoroughly on the qui vive, ceases its buzz, and ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... had no artificial means of measuring time, and, the sky being overclouded, darkness visible pervaded the region. But a healthy stomach helped in some degree to furnish a natural chronometer, and its condition when he awoke suggested that he must have slept till near daylight of the following day. Rousing the dogs, he gave them a feed, ate heartily himself, and then went out to look ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea—the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated—dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and were of course followed by all the evils of that cruel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... bore her under. At the same time Cary was carried from his footing and just managed to grasp the line as he came up and escape being borne down the stream. When things were collected and an inventory taken of the loss, it was found to include about one-fourth of the provisions, the barometer and chronometer rendered useless and practically lost, measuring chain, cooking utensils, rifles with much of the ammunition, axe and small stores, such as salt, sugar, coffee, etc. The loss was a severe one, and arose from failure to fasten the stores into the boats before starting, as had been ordered. The ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... character. Certain rumours had reached headquarters, and the Emperor Nicholas appointed as colonel a stern disciplinarian of German origin, who aimed at making the regiment a kind of machine that should work with the accuracy of a chronometer. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Buckstone's bow in the Rough Diamond, and some in a very wonderful manner recited pieces of poetry, about a clock, and may we be like the clock, which is always a going and a doing of its duty, and always tells the truth (supposing it to be a slap-up chronometer I presume, for the American clock in the school was lying frightfully at that moment); and after being bothered to death by the multiplication table, they were refreshed with a public tea in Lady Jane Swinburne's garden." (There ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... years before, Sir Isaac Newton had called the attention of the British Government to the necessity for an accurate portable time-keeper at sea, to determine longitude, and in 1714 Parliament offered a reward of 20,000 pounds sterling for such a chronometer. Thenceforward for fifty years the inventive spirits of England and the Continent were secretly at work to produce a timepiece which would deserve the large reward, amongst them Charles Mason, who labored with such perfect discretion and uncommunicative self-reliance ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... some nautical instruments, but as they had no chronometer and no almanac, Lord Reginald had been unable to work out his observations correctly, though he had ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... though, it lightened again, and we had a brief spell of fine weather until noon, when we had another buster of it. This occurred just as Captain Snaggs was getting ready to take the sun, and sent the first-mate down in the cabin to look at the chronometer, and 'stand by' in order to note the time when he sung out 'Stop!' so as to calculate our ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sunlight, and again Norman could see his companion gripping the edge of the cockpit. There was little conversation, and in order to divert his companion, Norman manufactured a job for Paul by assigning to him the duty of watching the engine revolution gauge and the chronometer. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... that it does," said the mate, walking aft and consulting his chronometer for the last time, after which he put his head down the hatchway and shouted, "Up lights!" in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... success had made us bold, and we determined again to run the canon. Every thing was secured as firmly as possible; and, having divested ourselves of the greater part of our clothing, we pushed into the stream. To save our chronometer from accident, Mr. Preuss took it, and attempted to proceed along the shore on the masses of rock, which, in places, were piled up on either side; but, after he had walked about five minutes, every thing ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... blow awaited me! The sextant and chronometer had both been broken beyond repair, and they had been broken just this very night. They had been broken upon the night that Lys had been seen talking with von Schoenvorts. I think that it was this last thought which hurt me the worst. I could ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has worked alone. His son—Miss Kellner's father—was the inventor of the machine which has enabled us to cut all the stones I showed you. I mailed the application for patent on this machine to Washington three days ago. It is as intricate as a linotype and delicate as a chronometer, but it does the work of fifty expert hand-cutters. Until patent papers are granted I must ask that I ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... whaler, which had just parted with her cargo to a homeward bound ship, and was going to refit, and take in provisions and water at one of the Milanesian islands, before returning for further captures. The master was a man of the shrewd, hard money-making cast; but, at the price of Mr. Ernescliffe's chronometer, and of the services of the sailors, he undertook to convey them where they might fall in with packets ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Royal Geographical Society, he said: "You have not, like an ordinary explorer, made a common route survey, but you have made a scientific survey, a triangulation frequently checked by astronomical observations with theodolite and chronometer." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... treatise on mnemonics, a copy of the Apocrypha in hieroglyphics, daguerreotypes of Mendelssohn and Kosciusko, a kaleidoscope, a dram-phial of ipecacuanha, a teaspoonful of naphtha for deleble purposes, a ferrule, a clarionet, some licorice, a surcingle, a carnelian of symmetrical proportions, a chronometer with a movable balance-wheel, a box of dominoes, ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... only use my chronometer," replied Captain Nemo. "If to-morrow, the 21st of March, the disc of the sun, allowing for refraction, is exactly cut by the northern horizon, it will show that I am at the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... voyage is reckoned by the distance from Greenwich, going from West to East. The variation of the needle amounted to 3 deg. East, its inclination to 9 deg. 28'. As the longitude of Cape Frio has been variously laid down, I took much pains to ascertain it exactly. By a very good chronometer, I found the difference between Cape Frio and Botafogo 1 deg. 6' 20"; so that the true longitude of Cape Frio from Greenwich must be 42 deg. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus the inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun itself. Such as he was, such he had been in the shop ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of the hurricane was almost certainly to be expected. Without the loss of a moment he gave his orders. The boats were made ready; into one they put arms, ammunition, and tools, together with the ship's papers and chronometer, a compass, and Dr. Thesiger Smith's specimens and diaries; into the other more ammunition, and a portion of what provisions could be collected from above or below water. The boats were lowered, the men dropped into them and pulled off, leaving Underhill and two or three of the crew still ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... England, who settled at Maccan River, N.S., Canada, in 1774, was a relative of John Harrison, born at Foulby, in the Parish of Wragley, near Pontrefact, Yorkshire, May, 1693. John Harrison, of Foulby, was the inventor of the chronometer, for which he received from the British Government the sum of L 20,000. He died at his home in Red Lion Square, London, in 1776. The chronometer accepted by the Government from John Harrison was seen in July, 1901, at ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgment and compend of a nation's arts: the ship steered by compass and chart, longitude reckoned by lunar observation and by chronometer, driven by steam; and in wildest sea-mountains, at vast ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... you? W." He tore it up angrily, but before the small bits of dirty paper had the time to flutter down and settle on the floor, the anger was gone and was replaced by a sentiment that induced him to go on his knees, pick up the fragments of the torn message, piece it together on the top of his chronometer box, and contemplate it long and thoughtfully, as if he had hoped to read the answer of the horrible riddle in the very form of the letters that went to make up that fresh insult. Abdulla's letter ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... 1804] Sunday July 15th This evening I discovered that my Chronometer had stoped, nor can I assign any cause for this accedent; she had been wound up the preceding noon as usual. This is the third instance in which this instrument has stopt in a similar manner since she nas been in my possession, tho the first only since our departure from the River Dubois. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... gradually darkening. It was one of Peggy's inherited treasures, and she reverenced it next to her Bible. The glass had been broken and mended with putty, which formed a dark, diagonal line across the venerable crystal. This antique chronometer occupied the central place on the mantel-piece, its gliding sands, though voiceless, for ever whispering of ebbing time and everlasting peace. "Passing away, passing away," seemed continually issuing from each meeting cone. I have no doubt ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... were saved in the same manner, including the captain's chronometer and sextant, the sad neglect of which had caused the terrible disaster. Towards night a change in the wind "knocked down" the sea, and the waves no longer dashed against the shattered vessel. The galley had been washed away; but ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... Yes, you're as crazy as you c'n be. I tormented you, eh? Is that what I did? I picked you up outa the gutter! I fetched you outa the midst of a blizzard when you was standin' by the chronometer an' stared at the lamplighter with eyes that was that desperate scared! You oughta seen yourself! An' I hounded you, eh? Yes, to prevent the police an' the police-waggon an' the devil hisself from catchin' you! I left you no rest, eh? I tortured you, did I? to keep you from jumpin' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... where they lived a quiet retired life, spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I had seen at ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... of my surroundings. I seemed to know exactly how to proceed, and after attending to several important details, and carefully noting the temperature of the virator on a thermometer placed for that purpose, I consulted a chronometer to ascertain how long it would be safe for me to remain on Mars. I found that, allowing a half-hour for the process of arrival and the same for departure, I ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... a total one. The vessel broke up rapidly, and seeing that nothing could be done, the captain and crew, numbering ten men in all, took to one of the boats, carrying with them only a single chronometer belonging to the ship. Even after entering the small boat they were still in great danger, and only succeeded after the utmost difficulty in reaching a small islet some miles to the southward. The storm was still raging so violently that the shelter was a most welcome one, though as there ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... against the giant Carnivora of Inra. Yet something—perhaps a sentimental attachment, perhaps what his ancestors would have called a "hunch"—compelled him to strap it around his waist. He carefully packed a few essentials in his knapsack, together with one chronometer and a tiny gyroscopic compass. So equipped, they could travel with a fair degree of precision toward the mountains some hundred miles on the other side of a steaming forest, a-crawl with feral ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Capt. E.T. Morton. A short treatise on the simpler methods of finding position at sea by the observation of the sun's altitude and the use of the sextant and chronometer. It is arranged especially for yachtsmen and amateurs who wish to know the simpler formulae for the necessary navigation involved in taking a boat anywhere off shore. ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... take a man's pulse from the neck. There—right there—put your fingers where mine are. D'ye get it? Ah, I thought so. Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer." ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... of the world have not been done by men of large means. Ericsson began the construction of the screw propellers in a bathroom. The cotton-gin was first manufactured in a log cabin. John Harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of a church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began to make his famous reaper in a grist-mill. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the meridian (twelve o'clock, noon) the chronometer's reading is taken, and the longitude, or distance east or west of Greenwich, is reckoned by the difference in time between local noon and that ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... decently in my terrors, and, whatever should happen to my life, preserve my character: as the captain said, we are a queer kind of beasts. Breakfast-time came, and I made shift to swallow some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the time, reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on in a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel a rash but an obliged ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interview, as one might have expected, to an abrupt end. The lamb, as the Abbe calls the doctor, trembling, stammered out an account of what he had seen. He explained how he had timed the passage of the black spot. 'Where is your chronometer?' asked Leverrier. 'It is this watch, the faithful companion of my professional journeys.' 'What! with that old watch, showing only minutes, dare you talk of estimating seconds. My suspicions are already too well confirmed.' 'Pardon me, I have a pendulum which beats seconds.' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Board of Health is conveyed in a word not so large as the other,—"Delay." I would suggest, in respect to this, that it would be very unreasonable to complain that a first- rate chronometer didn't go when its master had not wound it up. The Board of Health may be excellently adapted for going and very willing and anxious to go, and yet may not be permitted to go by reason of its lawful master having fallen into a gentle slumber and forgotten ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Varney, "did she tell me, 'I'll be ready in a minute.' And a ten-minute interval elapsed each time, by my grandfather's trusted chronometer." ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the sailor pulled out the compass referred to, and consulted it. Then he pulled out a watch of the warming-pan type, which he styled a chronometer, and consulted that also; after which he looked up at the clouds—seamanlike—and round the horizon, especially to windward, if we may speak of such a quarter in reference to a day that was ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... of man's hands, from a flint implement to a cathedral or a chronometer; and it is because it is true, that we call these things artificial, term them works of art, or artifice, by way of distinguishing them from the products of the cosmic process, working outside man, which we call natural, or works of nature. The distinction thus drawn between the works of nature ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... a few moments before noon, ascended to the observatory with sextant and chronometer, and determined the latitude and longitude of "Silver Cloud," as Mrs. Jones had named the aluminum ship. He made the entry in ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... being strong and hearty, and having read every book I could lay hold of, right out, I was walking down Leadenhall Street in the City of London, thinking of turning-to again, when I met what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool. I chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship's chronometer in a window, and I saw him bearing ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... escaped, seized the boat, and were launching her when they were challenged by a sentry. One of them replied that they were going for Mr. Cunningham, and they got away though they were fired upon. They did go for Mr. Cunningham, and robbed him of his chronometer, pistols, tent, and provisions. Then they sailed away, and were picked up by a whaler, which they seized and finally scuttled. The Government refused to compensate Cunningham for his loss, and he had ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... our watches by the steamer's chronometer, and have the steward call us at 5:30 o'clock and all test the accuracy of the almanac?" Mrs. Harris and several others entered heartily into ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... attempt any rhetoric. But I did not make any apologies. I told them simply of the dangers of lee-shores. I told them when they were most dangerous,— when seamen came upon them unawares. I explained to them that, though the costly chronometer, frequently adjusted, made a delusive guide to the voyager who often made a harbor, still the adjustment was treacherous, the instrument beyond the use of the poor, and that, once astray, its error increased forever. I said ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... is sunk, Mr. Snow," he said to the anxious-faced young mate. "If there is anything in navigation, the atoll is surely under the sea, for we've sailed clear over it twice—or the spot where it ought to be. It's either that or the chronometer's gone wrong, or I've ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... certain hour for all the occupations of his life; he allows himself twenty minutes for shaving and dressing; fifteen for breakfasting, in which time he eats two slices of toast, drinks two cups of coffee, and swallows two eggs boiled for two and a half minutes by an infallible chronometer. After breakfast he reads the newspaper, but lays it down in the very heart and pith of a clever article on his own side of the question, the moment his time is up. He has even been known to leave the theatre ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... another way he revealed that he could apply philosophy to daily life: he exercised regularly in the open air, took long walks, was absurdly exact about his cold baths, and like Kant, served the neighbors as a chronometer, so they set their clocks at three when they saw him going forth for a walk. And in the interests of truth, we will have to make the embarrassing admission that the great Apostle of Pessimism was neither a dyspeptic nor an invalid—if ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... she made in for the land until within about three miles, when she turned eastward, and, although we made fires, was soon out of sight. I afterwards ascertained that they were not sure of their longitude, having no chronometer on board, and therefore wished ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... wonder the table was shaken with laughter. He appealed to Tenby constantly, as to the one man he knew in the room. Tenby it was who made the discovery of him somewhere in the City, where he earned his livelihood either as a corn-merchant; or a stockbroker, or a chronometer-maker, or a drysalter, and was always willing to gratify a customer with the sight of his proofs of identity. Mr. Tenby made it his business to push his clamorous waggishness for the exhibition. I could readily ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... chronometer! That will delay things," said the odd man with a sigh. "But I suppose there is no hope for it," and he proceeded to open the box, while Tom, Ned, the circus man and Eradicate busied themselves over the hundred and one things to be done before they would be ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... came to anchor, I went on land on this occasion also; in the first place with a view to take some solar altitudes, in order to ascertain the chronometer's rate of going; for during the voyage of 1875 I had had an opportunity of determining the position of this place as accurately as is possible with the common reflecting circle and ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... raffle. My visitor was deceiving me, though for what purpose I did not on the instant divine. No one would like to suspect him of having purloined his wife's tiara. Why should I not deceive him, and at the same time get rid of my poor chronometer for a sum that exceeded its ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... The figures marked on the quadrant give the latitude of the ship at the moment of meridian. The ship's time is then made to correspond, that is to say, it must indicate 12 o'clock, M., after which it is compared with the chronometer's Greenwich time, and the difference enables the observer to determine the longitude. As fifteen miles are allowed to the minute, there will be nine hundred miles to the hour. The importance of absolute correctness in the chronometer will at once ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... recognized all those people instantly. That tall, stout old man in the overcoat and forage-cap with a cockade—was the police captain, Mihail Makarovitch. And that "consumptive-looking" trim dandy, "who always has such polished boots"—that was the deputy prosecutor. "He has a chronometer worth four hundred roubles; he showed it to me." And that small young man in spectacles.... Mitya forgot his surname though he knew him, had seen him: he was the "investigating lawyer," from the "school of jurisprudence," who had only lately come to the town. And this man—the inspector of police, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the gold chronometer that was a presentation from the students of St. Stephen's years ago. It is rather typical of the man that, even when under stress of his heroic thirst he has pawned the watch for money wherewith to buy whisky, he should have only borrowed upon it such small sums as are easily repaid. He has ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Titans couldn't have got him out of the mud; and serve him right! But it was not he who suffered; it was Tom. His compass was broken, his chart destroyed, his chronometer had stopped, his masts were gone by the board; his anchor was adrift, ten thousand ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... year on the asteroid when we were due to pass Mars. So our first anniversary was spent in checking our movements with a telescope, a camera and a chronometer. We discovered our mass—or that of Asteroid 57GM—had depreciated another 25 per cent. It now had only half the mass it was supposed to have. This was too much of an error for even a grade ...
— The Minus Woman • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... youth and practical maritime knowledge should have offset Cappy's error; and even if both had erred, there still remained the matchless Skinner, as suspicious as a burglar, as keen as a razor, as infallible as a chronometer. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... own object. He once lost seventy thousand dollars by committing a piece of petty injustice toward his best captain. This gallant sailor, being notified by an insurance office of the necessity of having a chronometer on board his ship, spoke to Mr. Astor on the subject, who advised ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the chronometer. "About eleven minutes. And of course I don't need to ask you to stay out of ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith |
