"Phosphorescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a mistake. The smoothly ordered life of the Oronta's saloon passengers was very much that of a first-class seaside hotel, say in Bournemouth. So far from sprawling upon the snowy deck of a forecastle-head, to watch the phosphorescent lights in the water under our ship's bow, saloon passengers on board the Oronta were not expected ever to intrude upon the forward deck—the ship had no forecastle-head—which was reserved for the uses of the crew. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... monstrous burning straw-stack writhed their way upward to a great height, the upper portion seeming to tremble threateningly, as though there were a shaking fist within the swirl, hidden by clouds. The column was smoky and threatening, yet a whitish light came from beneath it suggesting phosphorescent vapors. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were engaged with their meal, Dr Hopley came on deck and found her leaning over the stern, looking down at the waves which shone with sparkling phosphorescent light. An almost imperceptible breeze had sprung up, and the way made by the vessel as she passed through the water was indicated by a stream of what appeared lambent ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hazel, all in a fidget to go and buy her clothes, looked at them, and wondered what they had to do with her. There was one of an untidy woman sitting in a garden of lilies—evidently forced—talking to an anaemic-looking man with uncut hair and a phosphorescent head. Hazel did not know about phosphorus or haloes, but she remembered how she had gone into the kitchen one night in the dark and screamed at sight of a sheep's head on the table, shining with a strange greenish light. This picture reminded her of it. She hastily ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... John Herschel had extended his father's researches into the Southern Hemisphere he was also led to the belief that some nebulae were a phosphorescent material spread through space like ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... conception that most nearly approximates to this is that embodied in the words placed at the head of this chapter. The Water of Kane. One finds suggestions and hints of this conception in many passages of Hawaiian song and story, sometimes a phosphorescent flash, answering to the dip of the poet's blade, sometimes crystallized into a set form; but nowhere else than in the following mele have I found this jewel deliberately wrought into shape, faceted, and fixed in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... of the Beagle this evening we remarked large luminous spots in the water. They appeared to be about 12 inches in circumference, were very numerous, and perfectly stationary. The light they emitted was phosphorescent, but far brighter than I had ever before witnessed; it was so vivid as to be distinctly visible for nearly a ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... fortress, vast, black and terrible. The lowering peaks above inclined their giant heads to one another in awful conclave, and the ghastly moonbeams pierced to the gloom below, where they enwrapped the lonely form of Atma in a phosphorescent glare. The winds broke among the cliffs, and with shrieks and fearful laughter proclaimed the dark councils of the peaks, and in the din were heard mutterings and imprecations. A transport seized the soul of Atma. The horrible glee of the night awoke wrath, and he hurled ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... nearer and began a wondrous tale of a secret visit that he had lately made to Doom, the Forbidden; of how he had crossed the river on a raft, the moon being in its dark quarter; of his landing upon a shaking wharf, where each foot-fall left a print of phosphorescent fire on the rotting planks; then of the marvels that he had seen there—vast warehouses covering whole acres of ground and filled with incalculable store of goods; lofty buildings, whose chimney-pots were in the clouds; palaces of sculptured stone, now empty ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... from eight o'clock until midnight, and Barry remained on deck with him. A red sun had dipped below the sea line two hours before, and a faint breeze sprang up at his setting. Now the Barang leaned slightly to full canvas and snored easily through the phosphorescent seas with a pleasant tinkling of running wavelets along her sides. Overhead the heavens were luminous with sparks of ultra brilliance; the decks and sails of the ancient brigantine were bathed in soft ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the phosphorescent animals were making the sea glitter like molten metal, when we reached the Isle of Pines, and steamed slowly up the river, among the mangroves that fringe the banks, to the village of Nueva Gerona, the port of the island. It consisted ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... mused. "It is as puzzling as anything that has happened at the Cedars unless the light we saw was some phosphorescent effect of decaying wood ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... watched the sun drop behind the encircling rim of firs. Then he lay on a cushion in the cockpit until dark came and the green shore of the little bay grew dim and then black and the dusky water under the yawl's counter was split with the phosphorescent ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the darkness was setting in and the two lads had walked forward to lean over the side and gaze down at the unruffled transparent sea and wonder which were reflections of the golden glory of the stars and which were the untold myriads of phosphorescent creatures that, as far down as eye could penetrate, spangled the limpid sea, the lad suddenly gave his companion ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... in the year 1669, discovered phosphorus that a substance luminous in the dark, without having been previously exposed to light, had been observed. I should like, in passing, to show you how beautifully these phosphorescent powders shine after having been exposed to a powerful light. See how magnificently brilliant they are! These, or something like them, were known before the time ...
— The Story of a Tinder-box • Charles Meymott Tidy
... bade me good-night, and went below, while a comrade took his place at the helm; but feeling no desire to enter into conversation with him, I walked aft, and leaning over the stern, looked down into the phosphorescent waves that gurgled around the rudder, and streamed out like a flame of blue light in the vessel's wake. My thoughts were very sad, and I could scarce refrain from tears as I contrasted my present wretched position ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... we are; and roundabout us, there seem to be more of such balls, variously heated and chilled, ringed and mooned, moved and comforted; the whole giddy group of us forming an atom in a milky mist, itself another atom in a shoreless phosphorescent sea of such Volvoces ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... are, sir," he said; and as he came into the cabin, I heard him fumbling about and trying to strike a match, but for several minutes there was nothing but a phosphorescent streak made on the boards of ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the vessel bore into the moist, warm air of the Gulf Stream was full of moonshine, of smooth, phosphorescent billows. Herbeck had gone below. The girl leaned over the rail, alone and lonely. And Carmichael, seeing her, could no longer still the desire in his heart. He ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... never thanked me. I craved for that vibrating music as of her deep heart penetrated and thrilling, but shrank from grateful words which would have sounded payment. Running before the wind swiftly on a night of phosphorescent sea, when the waves opened to white hollows with frayed white ridges, wreaths of hissing silver, her eyelids closed, and her hand wandered over the silken coverlet to the hammock cloth, and up, in a blind effort to touch. Mine joined to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as the twentieth magnitude, one hundred millions of them would only be equal in brightness to a single first-magnitude star like Vega. On the other hand, it is possible that the light of the sky at night is not entirely due to starlight, but that some of it may be caused by phosphorescent glow. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms. The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. Not a whisper from a sap-headed ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... grew denser and more dense. In the long battle front of the Allies no sentinel saw a powerful Aviatik biplane glide over the trenches and fly onward toward its goal. Several times the airman inspected his phosphorescent compass and map, each time thereafter altering his course. Finally, making a sign to his observer, he planed to a lower level and, satisfied that he had reached the proper ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of certain bodies at low temperatures: for example, of ice. Changes in colour occur, and vermilion and iodide of mercury pass into pale orange. Phosphorescence becomes more intense, and most bodies of complex structure—milk, eggs, feathers, cotton, and flowers—become phosphorescent. The same is the case with certain simple bodies, such as oxygen, which is transformed into ozone and emits a white light ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... of the woods again and a little later came out into another clearing and Nathaniel knew that it was St. James that lay at his feet. The lights of a few fishing boats were twinkling in the harbor, but for the most part the town was dark. Here and there a window shone like a spot of phosphorescent yellow in the dismal gloom and the great beacon still burned steadily over ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... the belt flapped as the paddle wheel kept on its dead shove of the Marie's keel into the sand. Hogjaw had shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water circling about the bow ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... like anything but a bundle of sticks," Murchard had once said of him. "Or a phosphorescent log, rather," some one else amended; and we recognized the happiness of this description of his small squat trunk, with the red blink of the eyes in a face like mottled bark. He had always been possessed of a leisure which he had nursed and protected, instead of squandering it in ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... and the sky soon became came dark and studded with stars. Lastique got out the oars, and Jeanne and the vicomte sat side by side watching the trembling, phosphorescent glimmer behind the boat and feeling a keen enjoyment even in breathing the cool night air. The vicomte's fingers were resting against Jeanne's hand which was lying on the seat, and she did not draw it away, the slight contact making her ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... captain give a wild cry from the poop and felt the engines stop and reverse beneath him. He cast one glance over the rail and like every man on board was struck motionless and silent. In the phosphorescent gleams of the waves churned up by the incredible muscular power of the killers, the old whale—sixty feet in length at least, and weighing hundreds of tons—was rushing at a maddened spurt of fifteen or even ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a long time, with her shadowed, heavy eyes. Her face was soft and pale and thin, almost phosphorescent, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Seine as gloriously as ever Babylon sparkled on the shores of Euphrates. As godless, as hollow to the very core of rottenness, as her sister of ancient days, wanton "Lutetia" shines,—with the ghastly and unnatural lustre of phosphorescent luminance arising from old graves—and as divinely determined as the destruction of the old-time city splendid, is the approaching downfall of the modern capital. To the inhabitants of Rouen, the very name of Paris carries with it a kind ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... lustrous, radiant, resplendent, glistening, beaming, shimmering, phosphorescent, luciferous, luminiferous, argent, orient, dazzling, glowing, glittering, flashing, scintillating, sparkling, refulgent, effulgent, brilliant, vivid, glossy, fulgent, naif, lucent, glaring, garish, crystalline; intelligent, precocious, apt, acute, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... they undoubtedly must be. He had seen the orbs of a cat shine in this phosphorescent way in the darkness. There could be no doubt but that he was being surveyed by one of those savage beasts whose whining he and Andy had heard around ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... ready. The light fell upon the giant limbs and huge torsos of the men, picking out arabesques of tattooing and catching ruddy gleams from red pareus. The women, in crimson gowns caught up to the waist, their luxuriant hair adorned with flowers and phosphorescent fungus, their necks hung with the pink peppers of Chile, squatted in a close ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... the mere aspect of its vegetation. Without having acquired any notions of astronomy, without any acquaintance with the celestial charts of Flamsteed and De La Caille, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship, or the phosphorescent Clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon. The heavens and the earth,—everything in the equinoctial regions, presents ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... as the eye could see stretched a level plain of ashy white, faintly phosphorescent, a sea of velvet fog that lay like motionless water, or rather like a floor of alabaster, so dense did it appear, so seemingly capable of sustaining weight. If it were possible, I think that sea of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... was impenetrable, black and choking. There was no sound, except for the occasional soft spatter of water that dripped to the stone floor from the mouldy ceiling. Then through a narrow, barred window came the moonlight in a mottled shaft of phosphorescent green, and licked its way across the floor, to the edge of the bier. It shone on two kneeling, crouching figures, and full on the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Cross rise, and overhead a whole heaven of glorious stars most of us have never seen, and never shall see in this world. No belching smoke obscured, no plunging paddles deafened; all was musical; the soft air sighing among the sails; the phosphorescent water bubbling from the ship's bows; the murmurs from little knots of men on deck subdued by the great calm: home seemed near, all danger far; Peace ruled the sea, the sky, the heart: the ship, making a track of white fire on the deep, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... vessel left the harbour and Cette receded in the distance, looking fairer the farther it was left behind. The children were put to bed as soon as they could be persuaded to cease from watching the lights in the harbour and the phosphorescent wake of ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Fire-dance with the yearling seals. The sea is full of fire on summer nights all the way down from Novastoshnah to Lukannon, and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him and a flaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescent streaks and swirls. Then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds and rolled up and down in the new wild wheat and told stories of what they had done while they had been at sea. They talked ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... A clock began to chime in the hall. He jumped to his feet and looked at the phosphorescent hands of his wrist watch. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a snake — and the Igorot never kills a snake, except if it bothers about his dwelling; or it may become a rock — there is one such a-ni'-to rock on the mountain horizon north of Bontoc; but the most common form for a dead a-ni'-to to take is li'-fa, the phosphorescent glow in the dead wood of the mountains. Why or how these various changes occur the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... were flowing over them. The pools seen through the trees are as full of light as the sky. "The light of the day takes refuge in their bosoms," as the Purana says of the ocean. All white objects are more remarkable than by day. A distant cliff looks like a phosphorescent space on a hillside. The woods are heavy and dark. Nature slumbers. You see the moonlight reflected from particular stumps in the recesses of the forest, as if she selected what to shine on. These small fractions of her light remind one of the plant ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... settled within. The river was like a stream of golden fire, each ripple with a kind of phosphorescent gleam as the foam slipped away. For the oars were beating it up in every direction. The air was tensely clear. There was Lake St. Clair spread out in the distance, touching a sky of golden blue, if such colors fuse. And the opposite shore with its wealth of trees and shrubs and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and moonlight may not pierce the boughs. There come shrill cries of many voices from behind, and rushings that pass by and vanish. Then on their sledges I behold the phantoms of the dead who died in Davos, longing for their homes; and each flies past me, shrieking in the still cold air; and phosphorescent like long meteors, the pageant turns the windings of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... after skylight was kept burning through the night. There were also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... his eyes, wandering here and there, lighted upon something, then remained fixed. The room was dimly lighted by a small lamp, but the corners were dark, and in one of these dark corners something was shining with a faint, uncertain light. The phosphorescent match-box! He had made it himself, and had ornamented it with a grotesque face in luminous paint. This face now glimmered and glowered at him from the darkness; and Don Alonzo lay still and looked back at it. Lying ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... great factory. There was a huge engine in the wall which was in full play, with wheels and cylinders resembling our own steam-engines, except that it was richly ornamented with precious stones and metals, and appeared to emanate a pale phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of the children were at some mysterious work on this machinery, others were seated before tables. I was not allowed to linger long enough to examine into the nature ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in another tenement we found a widow[7] weeping and working by the side of a little cradle where lay a sick child, whose large luminous eyes shone with almost phosphorescent brilliancy from great cavernous sockets, as they wandered from one to another, with a wistful, soul-querying gaze. Its forehead was large and prominent, so much so that looking at the upper part of the head one would little imagine how terrible the emaciation of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... or two have done so within a recent period. What will be the effect? That depends on circumstances. There is good reason to suppose we passed through the tail of a comet in 1861, and the only [Page 134] observable effect was a peculiar phosphorescent mist. If the comet were composed of small meteoric masses a brilliant shower would be the result. But if we fairly encountered a nucleus of any considerable mass and solidity, the result would be far more serious. The mass of Donati's comet has been estimated by M. Faye to be 1/20000 ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... blubber, and five heads were bobbing astern at the ends of as many hawsers. The sea all round presented a wonderful sight. There must have been thousands of sharks gathered to the feast, and their incessant incursions through the phosphorescent water wove a dazzling network of brilliant tracks which made the eyes ache to look upon. A short halt was called for breakfast, which was greatly needed, and, thanks to the cook, was a thoroughly good one. He—blessings on him!—had been busy fishing, as we drifted ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... he leaned on the taffrail, looking down at the phosphorescent gleam in the ship's wake, and his own laughter startled him by its evil note. He checked suddenly, and shivered. A sob broke from him to end that ribald burst of mirth. He took his face in his hands and found a chill moisture on ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... wardrobe. After this there was a long and anxious wait. Then Letty saw the wardrobe door slyly open, and the eyes of the cellar—inexpressibly baleful, and glittering like burnished steel in the strong phosphorescent glow of the moon, peep out,—not at her but through her,—at the object lying on the bed. There were not only eyes, this time, but a form,—vague, misty, and irregular, but still with sufficient shape to enable Letty to identify it as that of a woman, tall and thin, and with a total ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... bounded the bay some five hundred yards astern of the galleon. They were almost invisible on the glittering surface of the water, being perfectly white; and, had a sentinel been looking out, he could only have descried them by the phosphorescent flashes along ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of a chant that all of them could chant was the football tune, "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," and we were whooping it up over pa's illuminated remains when the Indians came out to put Pa on the fire, and when they saw the phosphorescent glow all over him, and, his face looking as though he was at peace with all the world, and us whites on our knees, making motions and singing that hot dirge, they all turned pale, and were scared, and they fell back reverently, and gazed fixedly at poor pa, who was winking at us, and whispering to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... its use was said to bring about, and when fully equipped consisted simply of a writing-table with all the appliances and conveniences thereof treated with phosphorus in such a manner that in the blackest of darkness they could all be seen readily. The ink even was phosphorescent. The paper was luminous in the dark. The penholders, pens, pen-wipers, mucilage-bottle, everything, in fact, that an author really needs for the production of literature, save ideas, were so prepared that they could not fail to be visible to ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... observed the Captain. "I well remember what nonsense there was in the papers about the 'phosphorescent auroral glare.'" ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... before us. Rubies were there like great drops of the blood that the chest and its treasure had wrung from the hearts of men; sapphires, mirroring the blue of the tropic sky; emeralds, green as the island verdure; pearls, white as the milk of the cocoanuts and softly luminous as the phosphorescent foam which broke on the beach in the darkness. And there were diamonds that caught gleams of all the others' beauty, and then mocked them ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... snatch the pen out of my hand, no doubt with the intention of writing in his turn, for he was as aesthetic a cat as Hoffmann's Murr. Indeed, I strongly suspect that he was in the habit of inditing his memoirs, at night, in some gutter or another, by the light of his own phosphorescent eyes. Unfortunately, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... got darker, and the waves, breaking from the ship's bows, began to spill a luminous phosphorescence on the sea. I watched a little longer; and then the stars and the phosphorescent wave-crests glistened in ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... alone in infinite space. Above, below, on all sides, was a leaden atmosphere. Neither sun, nor moon, nor stars illumined it, but only some dull, phosphorescent light, which seemed to be born of the murky, stagnant air. It was such a strange, sickly, wavering gleam as she had seen above decaying wood, fish, and other substances. All around was absolute stillness. Not a swallow waved his wing nor an insect hummed ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... with their picturesque occupants, lit up by the blazing torches, the waters so transparent under the light, and phosphorescent- like on every wave, made a picture never to be forgotten. Then so close around was the dense deep darkness of the solitudes that stretched away and away for ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... deck, the intermittent pacing, and resting in the chair. The gale became a hurricane in the occasional squalls; and at these times the seas were beaten to a level of creamy froth luminous with a phosphorescent glow, while the boat's rolling motion would give way to a stiff inclination to starboard of fully ten degrees. Then the squalls would pass, the seas rise the higher for their momentary suppression, and the boat resume her wallowing, rolling both ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... hot stateroom into the refreshing coolness that preceded the dawn, the position of the Southern Cross, scintillating in the blue-black sky to port, told him that the steamer was headed in for the coast. The black surface of the quiet sea crinkled with lines of phosphorescent light under the ruffling of the faint breeze, which crept offshore heavy with the stench of rotting vegetation. It was evident that the ship was already close in again to the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... him; their hands met; the guitar slipped down unheeded; the grasp grew closer, grew warmer—ah, Helen, was it Lilian of whom you thought, whom you would save?—and then an arm was around her; shining eyes, only half guessed in the glimmer that the phosphorescent swells sent through the darkness, hung over her rosy upturned beauty; she was drawn forward unresisting, her head was on his breast, she, heard the heavy throbbing of his heart, and his lips lay on hers and seemed to draw her soul away. And so they sat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... gusts of wind a noise was heard beneath the frozen soil; icebergs, broken from the promontory, dashed away noisily, and fell upon one another; the wind blew with such violence that it seemed sometimes as if the whole house moved from its foundation; phosphorescent lights, inexplicable in that latitude, flashed across the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... to run south until it is possible to give the banks a clear berth, and then stand straight up the coast for home," the former said as the yacht glided almost noiselessly over the phosphorescent lighted waters down the eastern side of the shoals. "If a good head of steam is kept on we should be in ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... sure, he had just been looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful of beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for you know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is phosphorescent; that it soaks itself with light in an instant's exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will, tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first plunged into the negative bath of darkness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... this section—the Ciliograde acalephae, as they are called—is the Girdle of Venus, which resembles a ribbon in form, and is sometimes five or six feet in length, covered with cilia, and brilliantly phosphorescent. This must be one of the most beautiful of the fireworks ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... brilliance break About the keel, as through the moonless night The dark ship moves in its own moving lake Of phosphorescent cold moon-coloured light; And to the clear horizon, all around Drift pools of fiery beryl flashing bright As though, still flashing, quenchless, cold and white, A million moons in the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... change, the mercury rising and falling capriciously; the sea also, in the south-east, raised long surges which indicated a tempest. The sun had set the evening before in a red mist, in the midst of the phosphorescent scintillations of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... continued to stare at us, motionless; and we stared at him. It was so dramatic that it makes my nerves tingle now when I think of it. His eyes alone were enough to harrow up your soul. Huge beyond belief, round and luminous as full moons, they were filled with the phosphorescent greenish-yellow glare that sometimes appears in the expanded pupils of a cat or a wild beast. The great hairy head was black, but the stocky body was as white as a polar bear. The arms were apelike and very long and muscular, and the entire aspect of the ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... were all wet with a horrible dew That mirrored the red moon's crescent, And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue, Dim, wavering, phosphorescent. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... palace of the Doges, pointed without speaking to the mouths of the Austrian cannons, peeping out from the lower arches, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. By now he felt tired, and, with a last glance at the church of St. Mark, at its cupola, where on the bluish lead bright patches of phosphorescent light shone in the rays of the moon, they turned ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... surrounded by mountains, sleeps tranquilly in the stillness of the elements, as if it had not joined the chorus of the tempest on the night before. As first rays of dawn appear in the eastern sky and awaken the phosphorescent myriads in the water, long, grey shadows appear in the dim distance, almost on the border of the horizon. They are shadows of fishermen's boats at work drawing ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied; and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps in his ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... this passage, Von Humboldt says "It would seem as if this picture had its origin in the poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent condition of the ocean in which luminous points appear to rise from the breaking waves and, spreading themselves over the surface of the waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of stars." This mention of a sea brings to mind the striking fact that Dean Church ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... But he warned them not to be alarmed at the sight of a dead bird which lay in the passage. It was a perfect bird, with a beak and feathers, and could not have been dead long, and was lying just where the mole had made his passage. The mole took a piece of phosphorescent wood in his mouth, and it glittered like fire in the dark; then he went before them to light them through the long, dark passage. When they came to the spot where lay the dead bird, the mole pushed his broad nose through the ceiling, the earth gave way, so that there was a large hole, and the daylight ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... feet were naked, so he had no shoes and stockings to take off; after these preparations he placed his finger on his lips, and lowering himself noiselessly into the sea, swam towards the shore with such precaution that it was impossible to hear the slightest sound; he could only be traced by the phosphorescent line in his wake. This track soon disappeared; it was evident that he had touched the shore. Every one on board remained motionless for half an hour, when the same luminous track was again observed, and the swimmer was soon on board. "Well?" exclaimed ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... strong for me. . . . There are many other reasons I could give for being pleased to come: such as that I have some time for writing the novel; that I can make up stories I don't intend to write . . . that there are phosphorescent colours on the sea and a box of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the sea was undulating slightly, and not a breath of wind stirring. I sat up and looked around. Nothing visible but misty atmosphere and leaden-colored water; the phosphorescent sparkle had quite gone out of it. I listened, and with the low dull roar of the surf on Rye Beach on one side came the break of the waves on the Shoals, but so faint that it was doubtful whether it were really audible, when another ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... food to the whale, and, no doubt, to many other of the inhabitants of the deep, those medusae are the cause of the phosphorescent light that sometimes glows on the ocean with resplendent brilliancy. We see this light oftentimes on our own coasts. It is usually of a pale bluish-white colour, more or less intense, apparently, according to the ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... parts like the phosphorescent streak caused by the striking of a match; there was the fall of a light footstep on the floor just behind it: then a pause. Then the foot tapped impatiently, and 'There's no one here!' was spoken imperiously by ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... vaulting of the cavern shimmers to its inmost recesses with a pale blue light of marvelous beauty. A man stands ready to plunge into the water when the boats from the steamers arrive, and to swim about; his body, in the water, then sparkles like a sea-god with phosphorescent silver; his head, out of the water, is black like that of a Moor. Nothing can exaggerate the beauty of the Blue Grotto, and perhaps the effect is rather enhanced than spoiled by the shouting of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... he strolled along the main deck. Barradas was in the waist leaning over the bulwarks, smoking and watching the movements of some large fish in the phosphorescent water. He raised his head as the mate came near, and looked at ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... every particle in nature throws off a gaseous emanation, partaking of its particular shape. These gaseous particles are not discernible with the material eye, excepting when by chance they coalesce, and then a phosphorescent light ensues, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... of Colonel D'Ortez, too, furnished me much food for reflection these long starlit nights, when I sat in my favorite seat in the very prow of the vessel. There would I sit night after night, watching the phosphorescent waves rippling against the vessel, gleaming fitful in the gloom; there observe the steadfast stars, and seem alone with darkness ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... lay gazing into the wonderful rock gardens under the Autelets when the tide was out;—watching the phosphorescent seaweeds flame in the darker pools; seeking out the haunts where the sea anemones lay in thousands, waving their long pale arms hungrily for food and closing them hopefully on anything that offered, even on one's fingers, which they ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... all, however, was the prevalence of phosphorescent minerals which absorbed the sunlight by day, and glimmered feebly in the dusk. Professor Gazen seems to think that the presence of snow and clouds, together with these phosphorescent bodies, may help to account for the mysterious luminosity on ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... tree-high mosses spangled over with blooms of every conceivable shape and colour; cataracts and clusters, avalanches and nets of blossoms in pastels, in dulled metallics, in gorgeous flamboyant hues; some of them phosphorescent and shining like living jewels; some sparkling as though with dust of opals, of sapphires, of rubies and topazes and emeralds; thickets of convolvuli like the trumpets of the seven archangels of Mara, king of illusion, which are shaped from the bows of splendours ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... though the snow had ceased to fall, great clouds of it yet filled the vault of the sky, and behind them was no moon from which any smallest glimmer might come soaking through. But, on the opposite side of the court, the heap of snow familiar to his eyes was shining with an unknown, a faint, phosphorescent radiance. The whole heap was illuminated, and was plainly visible: but the strangest thing was, that the core of the light had a vague SHADOWY resemblance—if one may use the word of a shape of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... am a weakling's symbol of a power That spins the luminous girdle of Saturn in sure hands, And frames the awful face of God in the shifting boreal light. My soul is destiny and immortality; It flashes in the eyes of the tempest, glows along The phosphorescent billows where the hand of the Almighty Is laid for a moment on the breast of the sea, And the sea smiles; My soul is the wingless word That flies from zone to zone and speaks suddenly out of ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... musquitoes vex not, and lesser tormentors of the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon to have such an interval, during some part of which you may sleep in peace. As for the night, you may use it for eating ices, or strolling on the Marina, or pulling out on the phosphorescent waters of the bay; but unless you be very fresh, you will hardly think of using that as the time for turning in. And thus are rendered grateful those slumbers which are induced by the prevailing spirit of noon. Of course, under such conditions of existence, there is no great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... a purplish-red color, with huge, tricornigerous heads and with staring, green, phosphorescent eyes. Two of the six limbs were always legs, two always arms; the intermediate two, due to a mid-section jointing of the six-foot-long, almost cylindrical body, could be used at will as either legs ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... silence, too frightened even to stir, and panic-stricken lest the violent beating of his heart should arouse the mysterious visitor. But at length, impelled by an irresistible impulse, he sat up in bed and opened his eyes. The room was aglow with a phosphorescent light, and in the depths of the glittering mirror he saw a startling ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... closing at any desired depth through the medium of a "messenger." Small crustaceans were plentiful on the surface, but they were if anything more numerous at depths of fifty to one hundred fathoms. Amongst the latter were some strongly phosphorescent forms. The flying birds were "logged" daily by the biologists. Emperor and Adelie penguins were occasionally seen, among the floes as well as sea-leopards, crab-eater ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Miss Augusta Smithers were leaning together over the bulwarks and watching the phosphorescent foam go flashing past. Mr. Tombey was nervous and ill at ease; Miss Smithers very much at ease, and reflecting that her companion's moustachios would very well become a villain in ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... one, by college-learning, vanity, strong-drink, and the world's perversity and his own. Under good guidance, especially if bred to strict silence, he might have been in some measure a luminous object,—not as now a phosphorescent one, shining by its mere rottenness! A sad "Calamity of Authors" indeed, when it overtakes a man!—Poor Gundling probably had lucid intervals now and then; tragic fits of discernment, in the inner-man of him. He had a Brother, also a learned man, who retained his senses; and was even a rather famed ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... woman was short, and stooped; but her eyes were wonderfully bright. Nay, when she looked from the dark corner, phosphorescent jets seemed to break ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... amongst plants and animals which have not acquired any special association or significance. We find that some organisms produce as a result of their chemical life material which oxidises and gives out light and so these organisms are "phosphorescent" without any consequence, good or bad, to themselves. And then we come upon others (as, for instance, the glow-worms and fire-flies) which have made use of this "accidental" quality, and produce phosphorescent light in special organs so ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Regnum is described as triangular in shape; there was no torch, no lamp, no fire; the floor and the ceiling were therefore not unnaturally dark, but an inexplicable veil of strange phosphorescent light was diffused over the three walls, the source of which proved on examination to be innumerable particles of greenish flames each no larger than a pin's head. Seated in front of the Baphomet, Miss Vaughan apostrophised Lucifer ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... whaling quay. It was deserted; for the whales had not yet come in, and there was no chance of seeing a night scene which is described as horribly beautiful—the sharks around a whale while flensing is going on, each monster bathed in phosphorescent light, which makes his whole outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... spread to receive them, and where the mead flowed freely as in Valhalla. The goddess was further supposed to have a great affection for gold, which was called the "flame of the sea," and was used to illuminate her halls. This belief originated with the sailors, and sprang from the striking phosphorescent gleam of the waves. To win Ran's good graces, the Northmen were careful to hide some gold about them whenever any special danger threatened ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... festivities in the Fish-World before. The train of bearers who carried the bride's possessions to her new home seemed to reach across the waves from one end of the sea to the other. Each fish carried a phosphorescent lantern and was dressed in ceremonial robes, gleaming blue and pink and silver; and the waves as they rose and fell and broke that night seemed to be rolling masses of white and green fire, for the phosphorus shone with double brilliancy in honor ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... Pedro," Mr. Gibney decided. He ground his cud and muttered ugly things to himself, for his dead reckoning had gone astray and he was worried. The fog, if anything, was thicker than ever. He could not even make out the phosphorescent water that curled out from ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... reeled out of a hostelry near Wall Street and saw the lights go out in the tap-room windows they started up town to their homes in Leonard Street, but hardly had they come abreast of old St. Paul's when a strange thing stayed them: crying was heard in the churchyard and a phosphorescent light shone among the tombs. Rooney was sober in a moment, but not so Dirck Van Dara, who shouted, "Here is sport, friend Rooney. Let's climb the wall. If the dead are for a dance, we will take partners and show them how pigeons' wings are ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner |
