"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soon as the frost and snow were gone, Quinbey employed laborers to flatten the ground near his house to the extent of a hundred feet by ten; then, with stakes, he laid out the plan of a ship's deck. Next he contracted with spar makers, ship carpenters, and ship chandlers for material and labor; and before June three masts were erected, each with topmast, top-gallant, and royal mast, the standing rigging of which was set up to strong posts driven into the ground; then followed yards, canvas, and running ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... creature, pale and trembling with excitement, seized my arm and clung to me as a shipwrecked sailor to a spar. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... of the saint was preserved there for centuries. After the church fell into decay's early in the seventeenth century, the bell remained in the churchyard. The narrow-pointed spar of granite on which it rested still stands there. The bell, unfortunately, was wantonly removed, by Protestant strangers about thirty years ago, to the great indignation of the inhabitants of the glen, Protestant as well as Catholic; it has ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... gunboats, following the example of the Pinola and Itasca, had their lower masts removed and moored to the shore. Of the four that kept them in three had their masts wounded in the fight, proving the advantage of this precaution. Thus prepared, and stripped of every spare spar, rope, and boat, in the lightest fighting trim, the ships stood ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... a time that seemed endless there was silence, save for a shout now and then, and a thud that might be caused by the work of replacing or repairing an injured spar. Suddenly the hatch above was lifted, raised, and when our eyes became accustomed to the light we saw men swarming down the ladder into the hold. A French seaman among them relit the lamp, and we recognized the faces of some ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... this ruined millionaire, who was contending desperately against his creditors for the vain appearance of splendor, with the despairing energy of a ship-wrecked mariner struggling for the possession of a floating spar. Had he not confessed to M. Fortunat that he had suffered the tortures of the damned in his struggle to maintain a show of wealth, while he was often without a penny in his pocket, and was ever subject to the pitiless surveillance of thirty servants? His agony, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... water; notwithstanding it high state the water remains nearly transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather more than half an inch in length, and is formed much like the Virginia nitingale; it is thick and large ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the machine over, and you should have seen it. From top to bottom it was one mass of holes. One bullet passed through my combination and hit a can of tobacco. Another cut a main spar on one of my wings, and another hit my stabilizer, tearing it half in two. One other hit my gas tank and put a hole clear through it. Luckily my gas was low and it did not explode, but, believe me, I ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... warmly upon the wreck. The foam glistened and sparkled in the rosy sunlight, and looking over the rail I could see deep down into the clear depths. The copper on the ship's bilge looked a light gray, and even the tacks were visible. She drifted slowly along with just steering way, and the spar alongside, which the men had tried to get aboard again, made a gurgling wake ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... have a groove worn in it in a very short time which will cut the line. The poorest ferrules are nickel-plated. The best ones are either German silver or brass. To care for a rod properly, we must keep the windings varnished to prevent them from becoming unwound. Spar varnish is the best for this purpose but shellac will answer. In taking a rod apart, never twist it. Give a sharp pull, and if it refuses to budge, it can sometimes be loosened by slightly heating the ferrule with a candle. If a ferrule is ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... ought rather to promote, in the interests of peace and order, the maintenance of the territorial divisions then made. At the same time, England, amid the storm, ought not to persist in clinging to a wreck if a safe spar is within her reach. He recognised that Austria could hardly restore her sway in Italy, and was not in a position to confront the cost of a protracted war, in which France was certain to take sides ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Mr Rawlings, "but not quite probable, considering the time that elapsed after our saving him to meeting with the water-logged vessel, and the distance we traversed in the interval. Besides, the boy was lashed to the spar that supported him in the water, and he couldn't have done that, with the wound he had received, by himself; so that gets rid of the theory of his being half-murdered and pitched overboard. Altogether, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... attached himself to Hatton and had proved himself to be of real service in many ways. He was an honest man, but he could not box. He came down to the hall one night after I had given four or five lessons, to watch the boys spar. Of course, to the uninitiated eye it did seem as though they were neat in their work. The sight was very different from the absurd exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... and idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and subjected to acids, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of sailing on the Great Lakes, it was requisite to dress the yacht in her proper array, with her high tapering masts; the cords of her rigging stretching from spar to spar with the beautiful accuracy of a picture; and so equipped, as to give her the appearance of a majestic, white winged sea-bird resting gracefully ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... Carleton to put the extensive fortifications of Quebec in a state of repair at a time when there was not a single article of material in store with which to perform such an undertaking....My first object was to secure stout spar timber for palisading a great extent of open ground between the gates called Palace and Hope, and again from half-bastion of Cape Diamond along the brow of the cliff towards Castle St. Lewis. I began at Palace Gate, palisading with loopholes for musketry, and ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... been explored for several miles, but I only passed in a few hundred yards. The stalactites here are very beautiful, assuming the structure of satin spar. A very clear stream of water issues out. West of the Gasconade, on Clifty Creek, is a remarkable Natural Bridge which I have elsewhere described in Geological Survey of Missouri, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Honore, shamefaced but laughing, back from the war within twenty-four hours! Clethera heard the broom-handle strike the floor as one hears the far-off fall of a spar on a ship in harbor. She put her palms together, without flying into his arms or even offering to ...
— The Mothers Of Honore - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... be they summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... task. One moment the great seas lifted him high into the air, and the next down he came again till the massive spar crashed on to the deck of the San Antonio with such a shock that he nearly flew from it like a stone from a sling. Yet he hung on, and, biding his chance, seized a broken stay-rope that dangled from the end of the bowsprit like a lash from a whip, ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Deportment of Water considered and explained Bearings of Crystallization on Optical Phenomena Refraction Double Refraction Polarization Action of Tourmaline Character of the Beams emergent from Iceland Spar Polarization by ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... the outside to an important position with a house he generally gets a breathing-space while the old men spar around taking his measure and seeing if he sizes up to his job. They give him the benefit of the doubt, and if he shows up strong and shifty on his feet they're apt to let him alone. But there isn't any doubt in your case; everybody's got you sized up, or ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the place to look for gold is in the neighbourhood of distinct traces of volcanic action, or in small streams coming direct from hills of volcanic formation, or rivers fed by these streams. An abundance of quartz (commonly called spar) is universally reckoned an indication of the presence of gold; and if trap-rock is found cropping up amid this quartz, and perforated with streaks of it, so much the better. Sometimes the solid quartz itself is pounded, and gold extracted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... dwelt below, On in a course to heaven didst go. Not casten down with doubts and fears, Assured of heaven near thirty years. Labour thou didst in Christ's vineyard; Diligent wast, no time thou spar'd. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Dan's yacht was so great that before the two dazed salts on board realized what had happened their master was far astern. They bustled to bring the Enchantress about and to come to his rescue in the dingy. Stunned by the blow of the—spar, he had gone down like a stone; so, in all probability, they would have been too late. When he came up the second time it was on the port bow of the Firefly, but completely out of reach. Giving the tiller to her friend, and stripping ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... estranging sea" lies Stephen, the boy Prophet—who even while the tempest was hurling his army to death on the open sea, proved the sincerity of his piety; for clinging to a spar, while drifting to a certain doom, he led his little flock in song and prayer, and even as wave after wave dashed over the deck, above the roar of the tempest could his clear triumphant young voice ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of all tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an troubles have come, an mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an shoo's flown far, far ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... it!" returned the woman, with a snort. "Well, whatever you air, you kin jest as eas'ly keep on along that thar road. I ain't got nothing on this place for you. Some of you broke into my smokehouse night befo' last an' stole all the spar' ribs I'd been savin'. Was you ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... that Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works and improvements of a thousand years,—the "wave line," the spar, the sail, and all,—and with them the men of the sea. It may be that "Leviathans" will march unheedingly through the mountain waves,—that steam and the Winans's model will obliterate old inventions and labors and triumphs. Blake and Raleigh and Frobisher ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... opponents drifted apart; and the Albemarle, unable to face her other enemies, took refuge upstream. There, on the twenty-seventh of October, she was heroically attacked and sunk by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. N., with a spar torpedo projecting from a little steam launch. Cushing himself swam off through a hail of bullets, worked his way through the woods, seized a skiff belonging to one of the enemy's outposts, and reached the flagship half dead but ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... that "there are in the mineral world certain crystals, certain forms, for instance of fluor-spar, which have lain darkly in the earth for ages, but which nevertheless have a potency of light locked up within them. In their case the potential has never become actual, the light is, in fact, held back by a molecular detent. When these crystals are warmed, the detent is lifted, and an ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run—the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The Highlanders ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour, With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart! Come, oh, come and partake Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake Thy thirst in the waters of art, That are drawn from the streams Of love ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... me," said the Queen, "how soon these cock-chickens begin to spar!—with children and boys, at least, I may be a queen.—I will have you friends.—Some one send me Henry Seyton hither." As she spoke the last words aloud, the youth whom she had named entered the apartment. "Come hither," she said, "Henry ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... herself in rolling, and that is indeed saying a great deal. This rolling brought us a little damage to the rigging, the gaff of the mainsail breaking; however, that affair did not stop us long. The broken spar was quickly ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... don't really know what to say to you. I am in a town which, for aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my friends out of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... should have been safe: for a little reflection might have told me that a vessel laden with oil could not have sunk—but reflection came too late, and benumbed with the coldness of the waters, I could have struggled but a few seconds more, when I suddenly came in contact with a spar somewhat bigger than a boat's mast. I seized it to support myself, and was surprised at finding it jerked from me occasionally, as if there was somebody else who had hold of it, and who wished to force me to let it go; but it was quite dark, and I could ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... bronco, bridled an' saddled. He gives the public ten minutes; if the bronco is absent at the end of ten minutes Silver Phil allows he'll introdooce about a pound of lead into where that village father does his cogitating. The bronco appears with six minutes to spar'. As it arrives, the vivacious Silver Phil jumps off the roof of the stoop—the same bein' low—an' is in the saddle an' out o' sight while as practised a hand as Huggins is pourin' out a drink. Where the trail bends 'round a ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... this nautical curse, she met with a series of disasters during the war, which were not attributed to ill management, but to ill luck. Thus, one time she was coming up the harbor of Boston, from a cruise, where she lost spar after spar, and topmast after topmast; and when in full sight or the town, and not much wind, over board went her fore-top-mast, and several men were drowned in their fall from the rigging. This was not attributed to lack of judgment, but to ill luck. When this ill-omened ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... face covered with a long white beard—this can be made of flax. The ladies at the table must be costumed in silk or satin dresses, ornamented with spangles, and any kind of jewelry that will look showy; hair decorated with spar beads, hair pins, and plumes. The gentlemen's costume consists of rich velvet suits; long beards. Servants in short white coats, with border on the bottom, red breeches, white hose, and light felt hats with gold bands. Belshazzar's position ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... something about the boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something. His sudden failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; "the old man," whom Jim supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present voyage was an unlucky one by all ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... down-haul over the windlass, and jumped between the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while we got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off of the boom. For some time we could do nothing but hold on, and the vessel diving into two huge seas, one after the other, plunged us twice into the water up to our chins. We hardly knew whether we were ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... for Roasting a Hare with a Pudding in its Belly; when alas he has roasted an Ox with a Pudding in his Belly. There was no Man like him for Invention and Contrivance: And then for Execution, he spar'd no Labour and Pains ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... Ironsides at anchor lay, (sl.) In the harbor of Mahon [Footnote 1]; A dead calm rested on the bay,— The waves to sleep had gone,— When little Jack,[Footnote 2] the captain's son, With gallant hardihood, Climbed shroud and spar,—and then upon ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... rows adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... sloop's jib and mainsail and started on his journey eight miles seaward, with orders to make fast on arrival to the spar buoy which lay within a few hundred yards of the Ledge, and there wait until the tide turned, when she could drop into position to unload. The tug with all of us on board would follow when we had taken ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Aboukir two sailors found themselves clinging to a spar which was not sufficiently buoyant to keep them both afloat. Harry, a Salvationist, grasped the situation and said to his mate: "Tom, for me to die will mean to go home to mother. I don't think it's quite the same for you, so you hold to the spar and I will go down; but promise ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... more. What follows is for no wife's eyes. O Camma, Rome has a glimpse of this conspiracy; Rome never yet hath spar'd ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... he was no match for his heavier opponent if they came to hand grips, Hal stepped quickly back and threw himself into an attitude of defense. It was the lad's plan to stand off, if possible, and spar. ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... he had preach'd about 500 Years to as little Purpose as most of the good Ministers ever did; for we do not read there was one Man converted by him, or at least not one of them left, for that at the Deluge there was either none of them alive, or none spar'd but Noah and his three Sons, and their Wives; and even they are ('tis evident) recorded, not so much to be sav'd for their own Goodness, but because they were his Sons; Nay, without Breach of Charity we may conclude, that at least one ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes disseminated ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... quarter-deck to the forecastle. These gangways were about five feet wide; and here the prisoners were allowed to pass and repass. The intermediate space from the bulkhead of the quarter-deck to the forecastle was filled with long spars and booms, and called the spar-deck. The temporary covering afforded by the spar-deck was of the greatest benefit to the prisoners, as it served to shield us from the rain and the scorching rays of the sun. It was here, therefore, that our ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... all tha mun knaw 'at aw havn't been spar'd, For trials an' troubles have come, an' mi heart has felt well nigh to braik; An' mi wife, 'at tha knaws wor mi pride, an' mi fortuns has shared, Shoo bent under her griefs, an' shoo's flown far, far away aat o' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... all on board did she reach the Congo alive. There was no one, from the butcher to the captain, including the passengers, who had not shielded Fanny from the cold, and later from the sun, fed her, bathed her, forced medicine down her throat, and raced her up and down the spar deck. Consequently we all knew Fanny, and it was a great shock when from the custom-house I saw her running around the blazing parade ground, her eyes filled with fear and "lost dog" written all over her, from her drooping ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 1420 Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... magpie, and another larger bird, probably attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were encamped, is a talcous rock, or steatite, with brown spar. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... the campanile, and now it shone full upon the masts and rigging of an East Indiaman lying off San Giorgio Maggiore. Each rope and spar stood out in the intense white light, distinct ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... and was doing nothing to help himself. Presently the boat was thrown up on the shore, and the fishermen ran down and collected in a little crowd round it. Looking down at the helpless man, still clinging to a spar and drenched with foam and sea-water, they soon saw he was not one of their people. "A Dane, a Dane!" they murmured with sullen hate. Then one who had served in St. Edmund's army suddenly gave a wild exclamation. "By Heaven," he said, "it's Lothparch!" Lothparch was the leader of the Danish ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... hres Corpore, progressus cm pubertatis ad annos Esset, res gessit multas iuueniliter audax, Asciscens comites quo spar sibi iunxerat tas, Nil tamen iniust commisit, nil tamen vnquam Extra virtutis normam, sapientibus qu ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... points of the two probable combatants. The betting was still steadily in favour of Wilson, for he had a number of bye-battles to set against this single victory of Jim's, and it was thought by connoisseurs who had seen him spar that the singular defensive tactics which had given him his nickname would prove very puzzling to a raw antagonist. In height, strength, and reputation for gameness there was very little to choose between them, but Wilson had ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... see the folk busy on the beach below like a swarm of small black insects, and continually augmented by those who, having run off to snatch their Christmas dinner, were returning to the spoil. Some lined the edge of the breakers, waiting the moment to rush in for a cask or spar that the tide brought within reach; others (among whom she seemed to descry Young Zeb) were clambering out with grapnels along the western rocks; a third large group was gathered in the very centre of the beach, and from the midst of these a blue ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my solitude is not mine now, And if I be alone is ofttimes doubt. Alas! far more than eyesight have I lost; For manly courage drifteth after it— E'en as a splintered spar would drift away From some dismasted wreck. Hear, I complain— Like a weak ailing woman ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Fraser, of course, made up the crews. The boats were loaded in the evening of Jan. 6th, as it had been necessary to give the paint a little time to dry. On the 4th, I had sent Clayton and Mulholland to the nearest cypress range for a mast and spar, and on the evening of that day some blacks had visited us; but they sat on the bank of the river, preserving a most determined silence; and, at length, left us abruptly, and apparently in great ill humour. In the disposition of the loads, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Rather than live with the discomfort of not knowing why, they will create an explanation or find some answer, any answer, and then ever after, assert its rightness like a shipwrecked person clings to a floating spar in a storm. This is how I explain the genesis of ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... feet wide, and are steered by a paddle at either end. The sail is lateen, with a boom upon one mast; the prow and stern curve to a high point, and the depth being considerably greater than the width, the proa would, if unsupported, capsize instantly, but a hollow log or heavy-pointed spar rests on the water, parallel with the windward side, and, being secured in place, acts as an outrigger and removes the danger of overturning. The same name is applied to the boats used by the Malays, and which are propelled by ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... shape more resembling a rather fat cigar. The length was 144 feet, and the greatest diameter only 40 feet, while the capacity was 88,000 cubic feet. A net which covered the envelope of the balloon supported a spar, 66 feet in length, at the end of which a triangular sail was placed vertically to act as rudder. The car, slung 20 feet below the spar, carried the engine and propeller. Engine and boiler together weighed 350 lbs., and drove the 11 foot propeller ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... supplemented the other, anxious to display his familiarity with the technicalities of her profession. "'E wouldn't take 'is turn to be attended to aboard of us—we was in a Destroyer, an' picked 'im up 'angin' on to a spar. Would 'ave the doctor fix up a German prisoner wot was bleedin' to death. Said 'e wasn't in no particular 'urry, speakin' for 'isself. An' 'im a-bleedin' to death, too. As fine a gentleman ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... as—well, as Reindeer Mary, wouldn't you marry me?" Ponatah gazed at the unworthy object of her affections with a yearning that was embarrassing, and Laughing Bill was forced to spar ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... accompanying the President to the ground to see experiments with new ordnance in the Navy Yard, in 1862, were diverted by his taking up a ship-carpenter's ax from its nick in a spar, and holding it out by the end of the handle; a feat that none of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... seas, A ship of gold lay on a sea of fire; Each sail and rope and spar, as in desire, Mutely besought the kisses of a breeze; Low laughter told the mariners at ease; Sweet sea-songs hymned the red sun's fun'ral pyre: Yet One, with eyes that never seemed to tire, Watched for the storm, nursed ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... of backs, the continual click of the trowels striking the bricks, The bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... companion's arm and pointed with his right hand to a spar-like object projecting a few feet, close to the waves, at less than a cable's length on the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... course at length; the sails untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... was a thick coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... be no trouble to him to keep his balance, and when up like that he would twist his legs about, open them wide, put them forwards and backwards, and end by insulting me with his feet, so it seemed to me, for he would spar at me with them and ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... it was, and presently she was bearing on us, and was ere long so close aboard that we could see her every spar and rope, and her folk all gathered to the windward, knights, sergeants, archers, and mariners, to gaze at us and mock us; and huge and devilish laughter arose from amongst them as she ploughed the water so close ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... the dark blood trickled down its side, These words it added: "Wherefore tear'st me thus? Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast? Men once were we, that now are rooted here. Thy hand might well have spar'd us, had we been The souls of serpents." As a brand yet green, That burning at one end from the' other sends A groaning sound, and hisses with the wind That forces out its way, so burst at once, Forth from the broken splinter words and blood. I, letting fall the bough, remain'd as one ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... instead, I laugh and say, 'Well, I am bound to break something down'—and suddenly see. 'Oho, there's the place; get weight on there, and the belt won't slip.' With much labour, on go the belts again. 'Now then, a spar thro' there and six men's weight on; mind you're not carried away.' 'Ay, ay, sir.' But evidently no one believes in the plan. 'Hurrah, round she goes—stick to your spar. All right, shut off steam.' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pendency[obs3], dependency; suspension, hanging &c. v.; pedicel, pedicle, peduncle; tail, train, flap, skirt, pigtail, pony tail, pendulum; hangnail peg, knob, button, hook, nail, stud, ring, staple, tenterhook;; fastening &c. 45; spar, horse. V. be pendent &c. adj.; hang, depend, swing, dangle; swag; daggle[obs3], flap, trail, flow; beetle. suspend, hang, sling, hook up, hitch, fasten to, append. Adj. pendent, pendulous; pensile; hanging &c. v.; beetling, jutting over, overhanging, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... part, she let herself go with the current of destiny into which, by strange hazard, she had drifted. She had the humility which is the fiercest form of pride. Although she clung desperately to him, as to the spar that alone could save her from drowning, although the feminine within her was drawn to his kind and simple manliness, and although her heart was touched by his grief at the loss of the dog, yet never for a moment did she count upon the ordinary romantic denouement of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand, To mow 'em down before me; but if I spar'd any That had a head to hit, either young or old, He or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker, Let me ne'er hope to see a chine again; And that I would not for ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... what makes the might of words,— 55 Manhood to back them, constant as a star; His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords, And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, and wooed The ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... and I wish to have you know, I scorn to get a whore for any prince alive, and yet scorn will not help methinks: my Daughter might have been spar'd, there ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the horizon, wondering at their cargo and destination; or chaffed the fishermen, whose boats heaved on the waves at the foot of the promontory. When they were rested, they visited a copper-mine by the side of the head, and filled their pockets with bits of bright quartz or red shining spar, which they found in plenty among ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... To strike this spar would entail danger of a crash, or having their landing-gear torn away, which would prove a disaster. Consequently Jack held himself in readiness to once more start his engine when sufficiently near the ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... particular happened.' Perhaps some of us would have regarded it differently. 'Passed a spar, but not near enough to see what it was.' They saw some whales blow; there were flying-fish skimming the seas, but none came aboard. Misty weather, with fine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no question of confidence, Sir,—and there is no secret or mystery associated with the matter. Gloria was, like myself, cast up from the sea. I found her half-drowned, a helpless infant tied to a floating spar. It was on the other side of these Islands—among the rocks where there is no landing-place. There is a little church on the heights up there, and every evening the men and boys practise their sacred singing. It was ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... leeward, indicated that mischief was in the air, and that there was every probability of the soundness of the renovated rigging being promptly tested. The wind and sea were making, with swift roaring anger, but not a stitch of canvas was taken in, every spar and rope-yarn aboard was feeling the strain as the clipper was crashed into the surging waves which flowed between the shores of an iron-bound gulf. The vessel was swept with exciting rapidity towards her destination, but before morning ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Companion! tis the Guise, but yet those termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd. Companion! He's jealous, by this light. Are you blind of that side, Duke? Ile to her againe for that. Forth, princely mistresse, 125 for the honour of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... a certain repose—it was at least a spar to which to cling. With Kate's help she got over to the laboratory and put the finishing touches on things there. The President detailed two of Fulham's most devoted disciples to make a ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... for houses. The little windows had gay curtains fluttering in the breeze, and the room within looked clean and cheery; the rough walls were adorned with the spoils of the fresh-water seas, shells, green stones, agates, spar, and curiously shaped pebbles; occasionally there was a stuffed water-bird, or a bright-colored print, and always a violin. Black-eyed children played in the water which bordered their narrow beach-gardens; and slender women, with shining black hair, stood in their doorways knitting. ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... "I had called on him many times. He was such a thoroughbred gentleman and treated me so courteously that I could never press matters upon him. There are merchants, you know, of this kind. I'd really rather have a man spar me with bare 'knucks' than with eight-ounce pillows. This gives you a better chance to land a knock-out blow. But there is a way of getting at every merchant in the world. The thing to do is ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... sand and seaweed, a woman with a little boy clasped in her arms! Both had been carefully lashed to a spar, but the child was held to the bosom of the woman, with a pressure closer than any knot that mortal hands could tie. Both were deep sunk in the sand, into which had streamed the woman's long, dark hair, which sparkled with glittering morsels of sand ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we saw one spar of the Merrimac sticking out of the water. We hugged the shore just outside of the breakers for a mile, and then turned towards the Texas, when the batteries saw us and opened fire. It was then broad daylight. The first shot fired dropped thirty yards astern, ...
— Young Peoples' History of the War with Spain • Prescott Holmes
... it, and the mizzen-mast, fifty feet long, and placed on one side, in order to allow the tiller to work when in shallow water. The main-mast was ninety-five feet in length, and ten feet in circumference at the bottom. It was one spar of teak, and just as the tree grew with merely the bark taken off. It was not perfectly straight—a defect with us, but not so considered by the Chinese, who prefer a mast with a bend in it to one without, thinking ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... bird was released he greatly alarmed his companions, and as long as we could see them, they shunned his society. At least eighty miles from land we had a dozen sparrows around us at once. A small hawk seized one of these birds and seated himself on a spar for the purpose of breakfasting. A fowling piece brought him to the deck, where we examined and pronounced him of the genus Falco, species NISUS, or in plain English, a sparrow hawk. During the day we saw three varieties of small birds, one of them resembling the American ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... a violent storm that the waves covered the vessel, in which were twenty-six persons, and we went to the bottom. During the voyage somebody said to me: "Let us recommend ourselves to God and to the Virgin Mary of Roc-Amadour. Let us put her name upon this spar and trust ourselves to the care of this good Lady." He who gave me this good counsel and myself fastened ourselves to the spar with a rope. The tempest carried us away, but in so fortunate a manner that the next day we found ourselves ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Adur came ashore and dined with us, and, as usual, I read Divine Service. On the following morning I went aboard the schooner and examined the log-book and charts. We painted the Red and Black Beacons, and Mr. Adams having trimmed up a spar, we erected a flagstaff thirty-four feet high. I occupied myself the next day with preparing a report to be sent to the Colonial Secretary. My brother went off to the boat and brought ashore the things we ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... pillar buoys (fig. 4), and like all other special buoys, such as bell buoys, gas buoys, and automatic sounding buoys, shall be placed to mark special positions either on the coast or in the approaches to harbours. (7) Buoys showing only a mast above water shall be called spar-buoys (fig. 5).[2] (8) Starboard-hand buoys shall always be painted in one colour only. (9) Port-hand buoys shall be painted of another characteristic colour, either single or parti-colour. (10) Spherical buoys (fig. 3) at the ends of middle grounds shall always be distinguished by horizontal ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... vengeance; for the first idea that struck the captain was, "the utter impossibility of finding anything in this way, in all Leaphigh, befitting a lord high admiral of his length of keel; for, as to going in an ordinary monikin queue, why, he should look like a three-decked ship, with a brig's spar stepped for a lower mast!" Dr. Reasono, however, had kindly removed the embarrassment, by conducting him to the cabinet of natural history, where three suitable appendages had been found, viz., two fine relics of oxen, [Footnote: Cauda Bovum.—BUF.] and another, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the shore, he ventured upon it, only to find out that he had laboured under a mistake. He was immediately projected into the sea, and carried with the tide into the cavern; but succeeding in clasping a jagged spar of elevated rock, he gained by its aid a place of temporary safety. It is impossible to tell how many were killed by being thrown against these rocks by the relentless waves, but that ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... seen them for uncounted time; and while all other ships wrecked on this unhappy coast have gone to pieces, and rotted, and sunk away in a few years, these two haunted hulks have neither sunk in the quicksand, nor has a single spar or board been displaced. Maritime legend says, that two ships of Denmark having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness and dolor on the deep, were at last condemned to the whirlpool and the sunken rock, and were wrecked in this ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... merchantman or ever your teeth were cut. Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus: He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us. We ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar — we know that his price is fair, And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre. And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you, We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true." The skipper called to the tall taffrail: ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... you talk, as in your latest letter, of the making of yourself. It seems so much more possible than that I could do the same. But I am a miserable groping creature, cast on a sea of doubt, rejecting one spar to grasp another, and crying all the time against the storm, for help. I do not know another man who has tortured himself so insistently with the problems that are unsolvable. You are firmer in your grasp, and when you get something you cling ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... shot out of the mountain. It glowed red in the dusty air. It flung great red arms across the sky after the ship. Every man and spar and oar on the vessel seemed burning in its light. Then the fire died, and thick darkness swallowed everything. Ariston's heart seemed smothered in his breast. He heard the slaves on the rowers' benches ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... Nay, fly hither and visit (the remains) of that genuine Republic of ours!...[676] Observe my strength of mind and my supreme indifference to the Felician[677] one-twelfth legacy, and also, by heaven, my very gratifying connexion with Caesar—for this delights me as the one spar left me from the present shipwreck—Caesar, I say, who treats your and my Quintus, heavens! with what honour, respect, and favours! It is exactly as if I were the imperator. The choice was just lately offered him of selecting ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the Dryad met in billow and in spar; The forest fought at Salamis, the grove at Trafalgar. Old Tubalcain had sweated amain to forge the brand and ball; But failed to frame the mighty hull ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... entertain the notion that we were to glide on as smoothly as we were then doing during the whole voyage. We were to be disagreeably undeceived. A gale sprang up with little warning about midnight, and hove us almost on our beam-ends; and though we righted with the loss only of a spar or two, we were tumbled about in a manner subversive of all comfort, to ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... situate at the end of a canal running through the grounds. Upon this labour of leisure much expense and good taste have been bestowed. It consists of four rooms, but one only, for the refreshing pastime of tea drinking, appears to be completed. It is almost entirely covered with a white spar, intermixed with curious and unique specimens of polished pebbles and petrifactions. The ceiling is ornamented with pendants of the same material; and the whole, when under the influence of a strong sun, has an almost magical effect. These and other decorations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... not make the stranger out more fully. Charles, himself, thought that she was heavy and evidently steering for the small bay on which the factory stood. But their curiosity was soon to be satisfied, for spar after spar gradually became more and more clearly defined, until at last the deck itself could be seen, and St. George's cross observed flying saucily in the breeze. The ship was a British sloop-of-war, and ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... make out down there the shape of his black-haired head. However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation which had gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of vain exclamations was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... slumbering spirit roused in one or two of the young and ambitious, they had ventured this in the secret mountains, and perhaps had killed a trapper found there. Editors immediately reared a tall war out of it; but from five Indians in a guard-house waiting punishment not even an editor can supply spar for more than two editions, and if the recent alarm was still a matter of talk anywhere, it was not here in the sick-room. Whichever way the case should turn, it was through Molly alone (the doctor told her) that the wounded man had got this ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... very much pleased. He liked above all things to see a woman stand up to him defiantly; indeed, if they were worth "setting to with," he always tried to get them to spar as soon as possible, to find out if they had any idea of hitting straight. He did not betray his satisfaction, though, as he answered quite calmly, "Pardon me, I could not be so impertinent as to attempt a 'delusion' on so short an acquaintance. I deny ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... enterprise. The five commissioned officers were crowded in the small cabin; the midshipmen and pilot on one side, and the seamen upon the other, were stowed like herrings upon "a platform laid across water-casks, whose surface they completely covered when they slept, and at so small a distance below the spar deck that their heads would reach it when seated." To these inconveniences were added the want of any room for exercise on deck, the attacks of innumerable vermin which their predecessors, the slaves, had left behind them, and (as ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... I felt I'd die between them: but, after all ... And yet, Who kens what green sod's to be broken for him? Queer, that I'll lie, like any innocent Beneath the daisies; but the gowans must wait. Sore-punished, I'm not yet knocked out: life's had My head in chancery; but I'll soon be free To spar another round or so with him, Before he sends me spinning to the ropes. And life would not be life, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... that I am quite ready to drop her now and for ever. But do not let us begin to spar when so little time is left to us. Let us talk of other things. Tell me that you love me, love me, love me, for those are the words that I would hear ringing in my years before they become deaf to this world and its echoes, and those are the words with which I hope that you will ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... arter poor old me when 'e 'ad money, an' when 'e lost everything, didn't 'e look arter me still? An' now 'e 's your shuvver, don' 'e keep a roof over me poor old 'ead like a son—don't 'e give me the run o' jour garridge an' let me watch 'im spar wi' you an' your gentlemen friends? Ain't 'e the best an' truest-'earted man as ever drawed breath? Ah, a king o' men is Joe, in the ring an' out, sir—only never let 'im 'ear me say so—'e 'd be that ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... a spar over her quarter, lashed to the mizen-mast, to shore her up, the heavy surf causing her to bump more than was agreeable. There was quite a fleet of canvas in the bay fishing ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... of encounter On plank and mast and spar; But never the brave barque I launched And waved across ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... pains he had gaind, he kept with small ado. On the other side Caeesar Borgia (commonly termed Duke Valentine) got his state by his Fathers fortune, and with the same lost it; however that for his own part no pains was spar'd, nor any thing omitted, which by a discreet and valorus man ought to have been done, to fasten his roots in those Estates, which others armes or fortune had bestowed on him; for (as it was formerly ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... most expeditious. The tide rose so considerably at night, new moon occurring within an hour of high water, that we were much afraid of our bergs floating: they remained firm, however, even though the ice came in with so much force as to break one of our hand-masts, a fir spar of twelve inches diameter. As the high tides and the lightening of the Fury now gave us sufficient depth of water for unshipping the rudders, we did so, and laid them upon the small berg astern of us, for fear ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... fearful sound. English boats were plying busily about, picking up those who had leapt overboard in time. Some were dragged in through the lower portholes of the English ships, and about seventy were saved altogether. For one moment a boat's crew had a sight of a helpless figure bound to a spar, and guided by a little childish swimmer, who must have gone overboard with his precious freight just before the explosion. They rowed after the brave little fellow, earnestly desiring to save him; but in darkness, in smoke, in lurid uncertain light, amid hosts of drowning wretches, they lost sight ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with Sir John Hawkins. We shall hear of him again. He became the manager of Elizabeth's dockyards. He it was who turned out the ships that fought Philip's fleet in the Channel in such condition that not a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, not a rope parted at an unseasonable moment, and this at a minimum of cost. He served himself in the squadron which he had equipped. He was one of the small group of admirals who met that Sunday afternoon ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... all talked in excited tones as they made their way forward. If the object sticking above the gully's edge proved actually to be a mast it was in all probability a spar of the ship they sought. The thought put new life into every one and they hurried forward over the hard snow at ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... commenced to spar. As a matter of fact she had asked Doc Taylor, and been informed that his late patient responded to the name of Roland McGuire. But there was a hang-dog look in the doctor's eyes which had not escaped Miss Pickett, and intuitively she knew that the worthy medico had lied. Donna's question convinced ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... consequence of storms which he had weathered, gave him a consoling sense of British superiority. "These gentlemen," said he, "are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale: we have buffeted them for one-and-twenty months, and not carried away a spar." He, however, who had so often braved these gales, was now, though not mastered by them, vexatiously thwarted and impeded; and on February 27th he was compelled to anchor in Pula Bay in the Gulf of Cagliari. From the 21st of January the fleet had remained ready for battle, without ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... ha' sold him canvas and rope and spar—we know that his price is fair, And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... in tow, doctor," he said, with the men still rowing and the sail flapping; then a little spar was set up from the stern, and a triangular sail hoisted from the bows to the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... was for a month or so. Says Mel, "Yes, I make clothes. You find the notion unpleasant; guess how disagreeable it is to me." The old squire laughed, and was glad to have him at Croftlands as often as he chose to come. Old Mel and I used to spar sometimes; but he's gone, and I should like to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cold little hand into his free one, and feeling the solid grasp of his broad palm, she clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... shallow part, close inshore, just after they had left the harbour, where a drain ran down, and the smooth black water-polished rock was veined with white spar. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... eager host Beholds the fainting garrison retire, And rushes joyful to the naked wall, Destruction flashes from th' insidious mine, And sweeps th' exulting conqueror away. Perhaps, in vain the sultan's anger spar'd me, To find a meaner fate from treach'rous ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... that lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I sat and lived. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... the winds had gone out with the tide, and when in the afternoon the calm waters had risen, a boat put off from Hall's Harbor and rowed to the Isle of Haut. For several hours the rocky shores were searched for some traces of the wreck, but not a spar or splinter could be found. All about the bright waters laughed, with naught but the sunbeams on their bosom, and not a shadow remained from last ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... follow, were it to the world's end. I believed he would, too, for he had threatened to be the last man in Maida's world; the Countess was now the last woman in his, and he would hold on to her and her money as a drowning man grasps at a substantial spar. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a small spar floating on to the beach. Without hesitation, he ran into the water to bring it out. He seized the prize, and was dragging it on shore, when a large monster darted towards him. He struck out the spar with all his force in the ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... four miles turned out to consist of alternate patches of ancient corduroy road, the logs exposed for a foot or so above the soil, and a long hogs-back of dyke-veined limestone, the ridges of spar and quartz cutting ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... have been wealth to him—lay within his reach, but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive—at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and potatoes, the product of his realm. He ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and other fittings cost, including the sail?-I don't know what quantity of ropes they would require, but with the yawls which are used in fishing in the Firth of Forth, it generally costs about 1, 10s. to fit them with mast and oars, and the necessary spar, without the sail. The sail, I think, would ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... cabin. Suddenly the schooner gave a great lurch and fell off the wind. The mainsail flapped wildly for a moment, and as we luffed again we went over with a list that swung the boom back with such force that the ropes that held it were slipped, and the spar struck the skipper a blow upon the shoulder that sent him headlong overboard into ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... g. powdered CaF2, i.e. fluor spar or fluorite, into a shallow lead tray, e.g. 4x5 cm, and pour over it 4 or 5 cc. H2SO4. A piece of glass large enough to cover this should previously be warmed and covered on one side with a very thin coat of beeswax. To distribute itevenly, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... daddles high upraised, and nob held back, [1] In awful prescience of the impending thwack, Both kiddies stood—and with prelusive spar, [2] And light manoeuvring, kindled up the war! The One, in bloom of youth—a light-weight blade— The Other, vast, gigantic, as if made, Express, by Nature, for the hammering trade; [3] But aged, slow, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... In the harbor of Mahon; A dead calm rested on the bay— The waves to sleep had gone; When little Jack, the captain's son, With gallant hardihood, Climbed shroud and spar—and then upon ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... above, quaint and stiff, but lovely-featured, delicately tinted pictures of Our Lady in the centre, and of St. Anne and St. Cecilia on either side, with skies behind of most ethereal blue, and robes tenderly trimmed with gold. A little shrine of purple spar, with a crystal front, contained a fragment of sacred bone; a silver shell help holy water, perpetuated from some ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Kitty began at once to unpack and arrange her belongings. She felt a little choky as she took out and looked at the photographs and the various little parting gifts that had been given her, particularly when she came across a piece of spar that Tony, without saying a word to any one, must have wrapped up and tucked in amongst her things as a pleasant surprise for her. It was a very pretty bit that he had himself found, and was immensely proud of. Kitty's eyes ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... passed. The crowd was being constantly increased by new arrivals from both shores, sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were loaded with gayly dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man or boy might be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar, apparently as deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if all the town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of the day, determined to take the evening breeze into their pulses, and be cool and tranquil ere going ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... calcareous matter, which now forms a snow-white, highly crystalline basis to a breccia, including small pieces of black, glossy scoriae. A little above this, where the lime is less abundant, and the lava more compact, numerous little balls, composed of spicula of calcareous spar, radiating from common centres, occupy the interstices. In one part of Quail Island, the lime has thus been crystallised by the heat of the superincumbent lava, where it is only thirteen feet in thickness; ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin |
