"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him to resent the order, feeling that it was nice to be accused of delaying their progress; but the mirthful look on Vince's face disarmed him, and after a skirmish and spar to get rid of a little of their effervescing vitality, consequent upon the stimulating effects of the glorious air, they broke into a trot and went past a large patch where a man was busy hoeing away ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... Spaniards no sooner perceived, but they, mounted on generous Steeds, well weapon'd with Lances and Swords, begin to exercise their bloody Butcheries and Strategems, and overrunning their Cities and Towns, spar'd no Age, or Sex, nay not so much as Women with Child, but ripping up their Bellies, tore them alive in pieces. They laid Wagers among themselves, who should with a Sword at one blow cut, or divide a Man in two; or which ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... her warm in his seaman's coat Against the stinging blast; He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... had their brethren car'd To keep them just and pure, Perchance their pitying God had spar'd, The pains they now endure. What if to fault of ours those pains be due, To ill example shown, or ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... chief amusements is to see the boys sail their miniature vessels on the Frog Pond. There is a great variety of shipping owned among the young people, and they appear to have a considerable knowledge of the art of managing vessels. There is a full-rigged man-of-war, with, I believe, every spar, rope, and sail, that sometimes makes its appearance; and, when on a voyage across the pond, it so identically resembles a great ship, except in size, that it has the effect of a picture. All its motions,—its tossing up and down on the small waves, and its sinking and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gripped his 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 ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... 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 at the end of the process it is as white and fine as the best bolted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the sailor, that, in case of extremity, no wreck yet known to ocean could be so hopeless as this. Solid iron from keelson to turret-top, clinging to anything for safety, if the Monitor should go down, would only insure a share in her fate. No mast, no spar, no floating thing, to meet the outstretched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... you, but the chances is as you would not get out of such a row as that would be without being marked. I knows of a place over the other side of the water, not far from the New Cut, where they meet. Bill Lowe, him as comes here to spar twice a week, yer know, he goes there; he takes up with them Chartist notions, which I don't hold with no ways. I don't see nothing in them seven pints as would do anything for the ring; and that being so, let it alone, says I. However, Master ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... 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 and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... plan is to get on board the boat in which they are to be placed—you might find out which it is from your friend in prison—hide down in the hold until the guards leave her; then join them; and when she sinks fasten them to a spar and drift down the river with them till out of sight of the town, when Pierre could row off ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... old straw hat moving among the borders; and, in the midst of the emptiness, the sight was strength and hope. The whole world seemed to narrow to Mrs. Talcott. She was secure and real. She was a spar to be clung to. The nightmare would reveal itself as illusion if she kept near Mrs. Talcott. She ran ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... false way, undebarred By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves, And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck." ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... to the Phosphates, or metals mixed with phosphoric acid, including crystals of the phosphate of iron from Fernando Po, Bavaria, and Cornwall; phosphates of manganese; phosphate of copper; yellow and green uranite; phosphates of alumina, including the blue spar, which has been mistaken for lapis-lazuli, and the phosphate of alumina known as turquois, found only in Persia, and esteemed as an ornament. In the two supplemental table cases, 57 A and B, the visitor may notice specimens of Pyromorphite, a combination of phosphate and chloride of ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... maximus 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, ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... Captain Zeb of the lightkeeper. "That her off back of the spar buoy? Let me have a squint through that glass; my eyes ain't what they used to be, when I could see a whale spout two miles t'other side of the sky line and tell how many barrels of ile he'd try out, fust look. Takes practice to keep your eyesight so's you can see ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this morning the yacht plunged so heavily into a deep sea, that the jibboom, a beautiful spar, broke short off, and the foretop-gallant mast and topgallant yard were carried away almost at the same moment, with a terrible noise. It took about eight hours to clear the wreck, all hands working all night; and a very forlorn ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... said to be a fine specimen of artistic beauty and elegant workmanship, bears the following device:—One side of the medal represents a group on a raft. One of the men is seated on a spar, waving a handkerchief, as a signal to a small boat seen in the distance; another is supporting a sailor who appears in a drowning state. There is also a female holding a child in her arms, the sea having a stormy ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... been flying on board the frigate several minutes, and yet no symptoms of any preparation for an answer could be discovered. At length the halyards moved, and then three fair, handsome flags rose to the end of le Feu-Follet's jigger yard, a spar that was always kept aloft in moderate weather. What the signal meant Raoul did not know, for though he was provided with signals by means of which to communicate with the vessels of war of his own nation, the Directory had not been able to supply him with those necessary to communicate with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... fasten a rope round his own waist, the other end secured round a stanchion, and to spring towards David. "We will die together," he said to himself as he did so, "or I will save him. May we be protected!" He alighted on a spar close to David, whose arm he saw was caught by a rope, from which he could not disengage himself. To do this without the risk of his friend being washed away was no easy task. He succeeded at length, however, in doing so, and by an effort, of which he would not ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 outflow ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck, I outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... of the old days are in his possession, and just between the burly bits of granite at the very threshold of his home is a smooth-faced crystal from the Rocky Mountains. This stone has no soul yet. The rough, jagged rock on its left is George Washington. The granite spar on the right is glorified with the spirit of good Queen Bess. The smooth-faced crystal one of these days is to know the bliss of swallowing up the spirit of good Farmer Edgar Garton Stokes. It was not until ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... an enormous crew compared to a merchant vessel, and her rigging is set up accordingly. The things that are done on a man-of-war in spar-drill make a merchant sailor's hair stand ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... spoiled it all, for meeting the ball he took it such a kick that away it flew none could tell whither. They were angry with Tom as you may fancy, but got nothing by that as Tom took hold of a big spar, and laid about with a will, so that though the whole country-side was up in arms against him, he cleared ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... strength of England sweep proudly by. Now a squadron of men-of-war: not the hideous, shapeless ironclad of to-day, but the traditional three-decker, with its tiers of snarling teeth and its beauty of white-bellying canvas and majestic spar. Now a troopship with its consorts, two, or three, or more, tightly packed with their living cargo—whole regiments of red-coated soldiers on their ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the fossil must be of an indifferent quality. The little island of Pisang, near the foot of Mount Pugong, was supposed to be chiefly a bed of rock crystal, but upon examination of specimens taken from thence they proved to be calcareous spar. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... who was standing close by, instinctively caught hold of it—just as he had grasped the jib-boom of the Serapis—and, at the same moment, hearing the call to take possession, in the valiant excitement of the occasion, he leaped upon the spar, and made a rush for the stranger's deck, thinking, of course, that he would be immediately followed by the regular boarders. But the sails of the strange ship suddenly filled; she began to glide ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... resided in London; he was one of the half-dozen great shipbuilders and owners who founded "Lloyd's." Splendid East Indiamen, of some 1000 tons burden, were then built at Scarborough; and scarcely a timber was moulded, a plank bent, a spar lined off, or launching ship-ways laid, without my being present to witness them. And thus, in course of time, I was able to make for myself the neatest ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... where the sunlight hung between blue water and bluer sky, a sea-gull swinging round her spar, the Roumania ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... our guns had roared, yet (though she was now so close that I made out her very rope and spar) she made no sign. In a little our guns fell silent also, wherefore, looking about, I beheld Don Miguel standing beside the tiller yet with his impassive gaze ever bent upon the foe; and, as I watched, I read his deadly purpose, and a great fear for the English ship came upon ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... didn't mind, and would she come and sit by him instead—for one dance? ... As soon as two sailors had fixed cushions for Audrey, and the skipper had given the owner the course, all persons seemed to withdraw respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... are strongly resembled by his brother Henry's, if Henry be he of King's College. His passion for boxing was so great, that he actually wanted me to match him with Dogherty (whom I had backed and made the match for against Tom Belcher), and I saw them spar together at my own lodgings with the gloves on. As he was bent upon it, I would have backed Dogherty to please him, but the match went off. It was of course to have been a private fight, in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... her departure from Cochin in India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, the hugeness of the whole is apparent, and far ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... being nearly 1000 links square. About these there were some lines of sandhills running about north-east and south-west; and in one of the flats between the sandhills I found several pieces of satin spar in lumps of the size of one's hand, partially buried in the ground, and all of them with the plane of cleavage nearly perpendicular with the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... to a person wholly unacquainted with these things, will he understand you? Talk to him of stamens, pistils, calyxes; of monandria, diandria, triandria; of gypsum, talc, calcareous spar, quartz, topaz, mica, garnet, pyrites, hornblende, augite, actynolite; of hexahedral, prismatic, rhomboidal, dodecahedral; of acids and alkalies; of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon; of the configuration of the brain, and its relative powers; do all this, and what will he know of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... room I dropped into my chair. My faculties had so failed me that for some minutes I was unable to think. Presently my tired brain recalled the word "Reported" and to that my last hope began to cling as a drowning sailor clings to a drifting spar. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a stout spar overhanging the tide, and thence along a vessel's deck, empty, glimmering in the moonlight; upon mysterious coils of rope; upon the dew-wet roof of a deck-house; upon a wheel twinkling with brass-work, and behind it a white-painted taffrail. Her eyes were travelling forward to the ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... 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 as ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... is it, sir? I didn't know but it might turn out to be galley-news. Pray what is the rumpus all about, Admiral Bluewater? for, I never could get that story fidded properly, so as to set up the rigging, and have the spar well stayed ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... undebarr'd By thwarting signs, and braves The freshening wind and blackening waves. And then the tempest strikes him; and between The lightning-bursts is seen Only a driving wreck, And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck With anguish'd face and flying hair Grasping the rudder hard, Still bent to make some port he knows not where, Still standing for some false, impossible shore. And sterner comes the roar Of sea and wind, and through the deepening gloom Fainter and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... present occasion he ran us a rare race with the main-royal yard, we getting the mizzen spar below but a second or two in advance of ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... rings, where a branch had broken and fallen away in the struggle. Why, this noble fellow had been a straggling sapling a thousand years before the birth of Christ! Before Darius led his conquering hosts from realm to realm, or ever Caesar knew life, or Christopher Columbus framed mast and spar to discover America, this sun-crowned monarch had over-topped his fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are, We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour. And I when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... and found Eudena already vanished into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya preferred to spar in the water below him until the others were beside him. Human tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the tactics of the pack. Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and rushed. Ugh-lomi felt the rush coming, and hurling the antler at ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the end of the flag-staff was shot down, and the flag fell.[20] It had been previously hanging by one halliard, the other having been cut by a piece of shell. The exultation of the enemy, however, was short-lived. Peter Hart found a spar in the fort, which answered very well as a temporary flag-staff. He nailed the flag to this, and raised it triumphantly by nailing and tying the pole firmly to a pile of gun-carriages on the parapet. This was gallantly done, without undue haste, under Seymour's ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... ha' knowed 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'. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... if upon the cold, green-mantling sea Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar, Both castaway, And one must perish—let it not be he Whom thou ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— The Mothers Of Honore - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... as we payed before the gaining wind, was brilliant blaze that showed where Muanza was. Against the blaze stood out the lakeward boma wall. I stood due east away from it, and discovered presently that by easing on the halyard so as to lower the long spar I could obtain something ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... lovers had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... nothing to stop him; but the men made a line fast to themselves, and worked away with a good will, and soon got the deck and the house over the engine as tight as a bottle. The smoke-stack, which was well forward, had been broken down by a spar when the masts had been cut, and as the waves washed into the hole that it left, the captain had this plugged up with old sails, well fastened down. It was a dreadful thing to see the ship a-lying with her bows clean under water and her stern sticking ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... of mica. Some deep creeks came from the eastward. To the west and north-west nothing was to be seen but ridges; but high imposing ranges rise to the north and north-east. At one spot, large masses of calcareous spar were scattered over the ground; they were probably derived from a vein in ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... for their lives amongst broken oars, and tangled rigging and floating bottom-boards; one voice less, two less, a smashing sea and then no voices at all, no boat, no men, no anything but the howling wind and the driving spray, and he himself, Logotheti, gripping a spar, one of those long booms the fishermen carry for running, half-drowned again and again, but gripping still, and drifting with the storm past the awful death of sharp black rocks and pounding seas, into the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... man John is still, as he says, "in fustrate fettle." I saw him spar, not long since, at a private exhibition, and do himself great credit in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a professional gentleman of celebrity. I am pleased to say that he has been promoted to an upper clerkship, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... 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 filled as she held the little cold stone and kissed it. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... The dhow was on the rocks. Scarcely a minute had passed before she began to break up under my feet, I cannot describe the terrible cries of the poor slaves as the sea rushed down upon them. I had seized a spar, and a sea rolling on lifted me up and carried me forward. I knew no more till I found myself clinging to a rock. I climbed on till I discovered that I was safe on shore. When daylight broke not a human being could I see—not a vestige of the wreck remained. There ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... would be down. It was now or never. We could bring nothing to bear except the gun on the forecastle. Fortunately it continued smooth, and we were no longer troubled with smoke. Shot after shot went hissing through the air after her; a number tore through the sails or rigging, but not a spar was touched nor an important rope cut. We could see some of her crew aloft reeving and stopping braces and ready to repair any damage done, working as coolly under fire as old man-of-war's men. But while we were looking, down came the gaff of her mainsail, and the gaff-topsail fell all adrift; ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... huge spars, all clean and spick and span with green and white paint, the ubiquitous Calcutta crows perched in serried ranks on their yards. To my mind a full-rigged ship is the most beautiful object man has ever devised, and when the dusk was falling, with every spar and rope outlined in black against the vivid crimson of the short-lived Indian sunset, the long line of shipping made a glorious picture. Nineteen years later every sailing-ship had disappeared from the Hooghly, and in their place were rows of unsightly, rusty-sided iron tanks, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe. Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Anow of such as for their bellies sake, Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold? Of other care they little reck'ning make, Then how to scramble at the shearers feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest. Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... is only forty miles from Hong-Kong. The arrangements on the river steamers are rather peculiar, for only European passengers are allowed on the spar deck. All Chinese passengers, of whatever degree, have to descend to the lower decks, which are enclosed with strong steel bars. Before the ship starts the iron gates of communication are shut and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... this frail spar, Bella bravely took up arms against her sea of troubles, and rode out the storm. When her lover came to know his fate, she hid her heart, and answered "no," finding a bitter satisfaction in the end, for Harry was right, and, when the fortune was denied him, young ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... scalding—that almost swept me off the ladder. If it had I should probably have become food for the fishes. I got to the upper deck just in time to see Captain Thomas get a crack on the head from a fragment of flying spar of the wreckage from the upper bridge—luckily a glancing blow that did no more damage than leave ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... still sense enough to reflect that it would be little use to expect that the harassed mate would listen to reason then. Clawing his way up the ratlines he laid his chest upon the main-topsail-yard and worked his way out to the lower end of the long inclined spar. Here, still faint and dizzy, he hung with the footrope jammed against his heel, as he felt for the gasket that held the canvas to the yard. Swinging through the blackness across a space of tumbling foam he felt a horrible unsteadiness. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... and under this conviction Arthur rolled himself in the blanket (cut from the spar of the ice-boat), and went into dreamland straight from his brushwood bed, Mr. Holt continuing to sit by the fire gazing into it as before; which sort of gazing, experienced people say, is very bad for the eyes. Perhaps it was ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... perquisite of twenty peats to the grammar school, and as payment was at times foolishly refused, the party of boys commissioned by the master to exact it almost always succeeded, either by force or stratagem, in securing and bringing along with them, in behalf of the institution, some spar, or sail, or piece of rigging, which, until redeemed by special treaty, and the payment of the peats, was stowed up over the rafters. These peat-expeditions, which were intensely popular in the school, gave noble exercise ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... muffled echo, and the slow, solemn boom of a brazen-tongued bell struck midnight. Then Theos, raising his eyes, saw that all further progress was impeded by a great wall of solid rock that glistened at every point with flashes of pale and dark violet light—a wall composed entirely of adamantine spar, crusted thick with the rough growth of oriental amethyst. It rose sheer up from the ground to an altitude of about a hundred feet, and apparently closed in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... My dear Lady Kicklebury! [To T., who has come forward.] They spar so every night they ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... merited my approbation. My servant, Harris, Hopkinson, and 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, I placed all the flour, the ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... Styria. He was assigned a comfortable chamber, but the night was too fine for bed. He did not feel sleepy, and he went along the road he had come by; the church was an opaque mass, the spire alone showing in the violet twilight, like some supernatural spar on a ship far out at sea. He attempted to conjure to his tired brain the features, the expression, of the girl. They would not reappear; his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... rational hope, And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can 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 of far childhood throb back on the ear? Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 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 ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... he labours to bring forward into light. If he can convince you or himself of the principle a priori, he generally leaves the facts to take care of themselves. He leads us into the laboratories of art or nature as a showman guides you through a caravan crusted with spar and stalactites, all cold, and dim, and motionless, till he lifts his torch aloft, and on a sudden you gaze in admiration on walls and roof of flaming crystals and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... top-mast very dangerous; and that, therefore, he must rig something lighter in its place. He also informed me, that he had lost his main-top-gallant-yard, and that he neither had another, nor a spar to make one, on board. The Resolution's sprit-sail top-sail yard which I sent him, supplied this want. The next day, he got up a jury top-mast, on which he set a mizen-top-sail, and this enabled him to keep way ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... we had left, we passed a number of stalactites and stalagmites, bearing a remarkable resemblance to coral, and a hundred or more paces beyond, arrived at a recess on the left, lined with innumerable crystals of dog-tooth spar, shining most brilliantly, called Angelica's Grotto. One would think it almost sacrilege to deface a spot like this; yet, did a Clergyman (the back of the guide being turned,) deliberately demolish a number of beautiful crystals to inscribe the ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... With shellac, paraffin, sulphur and resin, for instance, the absorption is very slight; with gutta-percha, stearine, and glass, the absorption is relatively great. The term is due to Faraday. Iceland spar seems almost or ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... 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
... enormous spar of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of the pressure when running before ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Printers importunity, and that, of my own avocations (and perhaps also considerabler solicitations) would permit. But though some few preambles of the particular Experiments might have (perchance) been spar'd, or shorten'd, if I had had all my Papers under my View at once; Yet in the most of those Introductory passages, the Reader will (I hope) find hints, or Advertisements, as well as Transitions. If I sometimes seem to insist long upon the circumstances of a Tryall, I hope I shall be easily ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... said "good night," and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay The Somerset, British man-of-war: A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon, like a prison-bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Mr. Mellaire's gaze, and saw the burnt-out, aged little Scotchman squatted on a spare spar and sucking a pipe. One arm was in a sling and his head was bandaged. Beside him squatted Mulligan Jacobs. They were a pair. Both were blue-eyed, and both were malevolent-eyed. And they were equally emaciated. It was easy to see that they had discovered ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... hundred yards. Mr. Walker went back for the end of the spar and Mr. Smith cut some firewood. There they halted, catching fish ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... protection for bows seems to be spar varnish. This keeps out moisture. It has two disadvantages, however; it cracks after much bending, and it is too shiny. The glint or flash of a hunting bow will frighten game. I have often seen rabbits or deer stand until the bow goes off, then ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... lash you to a spar," said he, "for she can't last much longer." He ordered Sharpe ashore. Sharpe shook hands with him, and went on the rope with ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... in white simarre Arachne-spun with argent woof; her wede Starred with strange crystals wrought from frozen spar, Sprent with pearl frost-flowers; girt with diamond brede, Rubied with berries red as drops of blood, Befringed with gelid, many-irised gems; Broidered with lace weft of an elfin brood— Hoar filagree to deck ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... and power, adorned the portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon, and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... bad luck followed him even on the sea. He had scarcely lost sight of the land when a violent storm arose, and after several hours of beating about, the vessel was driven on to some rocks, on which it dashed itself to bits. The Prince was fortunate enough to be able to lay hold of a floating spar, and contrived to keep himself afloat; and, after a long struggle with the winds and waves, he was cast upon a strange island. But what was his surprise, on reaching the shore, to hear sounds of the most heartrending distress, mingled with the sweetest songs which had ever charmed him! His curiosity ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... is turned into a tent by erecting a gable-shaped framework: the mast or other spar being the ridge-pole, and a pair of crossed oars lashed together supporting it at either end; and the whole is made stable by a couple of ropes and pegs. Then the sail is thrown across the ridge-pole (not over the crossed loops of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... and cut off from society by bashfulness, the poor girl who was lying there had evidently gone through all the stages of suffering which the shipwrecked mariner endures, who floats, resting on a stray spar in ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... to what I have had to go through in the North Seas," remarked Bruff. "I've known it so cold that every drop of spray which came on board froze, and I've seen the whole deck, and every spar and rope one mass of ice, so that there was no getting the ropes to run through the sheaves of the blocks, and as to furling sails, which were mere sheets of ice, that was next to an impossibility. I warn you, if you don't like what we have got now, you'll like ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... modestly placed over his nose. Ramshaw and Cottle were engaged in deadly strife on the floor, each under the fond delusion that the other was a Classic; while the twin brothers, armed with the better pair of boxing-gloves, were having a friendly spar in the middle. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... wound had been dressed, she dispatched a messenger to Baiae to inform Nero of what had occurred. The vessel in which she had embarked had been wrecked at sea, she said, and she had narrowly escaped destruction. She had received a severe hurt, by some falling spar, but had at length safely reached her home at Antium. She begged, however, that her son would not come to see her, as what she needed most was repose. She had sent the messenger, she said, to inform him of what had occurred only that he might rejoice with her in ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... play; Save them that by the fabled shore, Down the pale stream are washed away, Far to the reef of bones are borne; And never revisits them the light, Nor sight of long-sought land and pilot more; Nor heed they now the lone bird's flight Round the lone spar where mid-sea ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... grounds for Colney's more than usual waspishness. He trotted out the fulgent and tonal Church of the Rev. Septimus; the skeleton of worship, so truly showing the spirit, in that of Dudley Sowerby's family; maliciously admiring both; and he had a spar with Fenellan, ending in a snarl and a shout. Victor said to him: 'Yes, here, as much as you like, old Colney, but I tell you, you've staggered that poor woman Lady Blachington to-day, and her husband too; and I don't know how many besides. What the pleasure of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... disintegration. Portions of the rock may, nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the latter is of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the direction indicated showed the boys an object like a spar buoy apparently standing upright in the water. The next moment a swell rolled over something ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... forever doing me a service. Now, in order to ignore the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr. and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a few moments ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the spar went. It would have been a heavy job for three young men of their size in civil life, but midshipmen are constantly undergoing the ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... 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 beside us, that one might well-nigh ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; but what is luxury to the mind ill at ease? or can a restless conscience be stilled by red Bohemian glass or pale ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... in this heel of the war?" continued the mariner of the India-shawl, disregarding the complaint of the burgher. "The times are getting heavy for men of metal, as may be seen by the manner in which yon cruiser wears out her ground-tackle, instead of trying the open sea. May I spring every spar I carry, but I would have the boat out and give her an airing, before to-morrow, if the Queen would condescend to put your humble servant in charge of the craft! The man lies there, at his anchors, as if he had a good freight of real Hollands in his hold, and was waiting ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... I was ready enough to spar with my sister; to-night I had not the spirit. To-night, moreover, she, whom as a rule I could treat with good-humoured indifference, had power to wound. The least weighty of people speaking the truth can not be wholly disregarded. I prepared to go ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... kindest manner possible, and then sat down by the bedside and chuckled very much, while Mr. Feeder leaning over the bottom of the bedstead set all the little bristles on his head, bolt upright with his bony hands, and then made believe to spar at Paul, with great science, on account of his being all right again, which was so funny and kind, too, in Mr. Feeder, that Paul, not being able to make up his mind whether to laugh or cry, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... at the heel to 7 at the end. The jibboom is made of two pieces of yellow pine, grooved out and hooped together; it is about 70 feet long and about 8 inches in diameter; the foot of the jib is laced to this spar ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the gentlemen who represent the monks in this scene playfully spar at one another, or lunge with walking-sticks at imaginary foes. The carpenters are busy measuring the stage in all directions with tapes in accordance with a plan which one of them holds in his hand. Before Mr. Irving returns, the "supers" group themselves ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... done 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
... I slip back into encircling shadows. I move among men once more with no certainty that I am not absolutely alone. Even the passion I have felt becomes unreal as if enacted in the dim past. And that is the torture of it,—the torture of a man in a wide sea who beholds the one spar that was to rescue him drifting beyond his reach, beyond his vision. Ah, sweet Jessica, if only I could understand your grief so that in sympathy I might forget my own! But it all seems to me so unnecessary—that we should be sacrificed ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... for miles. From the chimneys of old houses, long abandoned to the rats, rose the smokes of many fires and the rush and whine of passing automobiles told of races to distant grounds. All the old mines in the district, and of neighboring districts where the precious "heavy spar" occurred, were re-located—or jumped, as the case might be—and held to await future developments. The first thing was to stake. They could prospect the ground later. Tungsten now was king. Men who had never heard the name, or pronounced it haltingly, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... our vision to the gloom; when, both of these ends being attained, we advanced a few paces into the cave, and a sight of the most indescribable sublimity burst upon us. The appearance was that of a huge Gothic cathedral, having its roof supported upon pillars of spar, moulded into the most regular shapes, and fluted and carved after the most exact models of architecture. The roof itself was indeed too lofty to be discerned, nor could the eye penetrate to anything like an extremity, all beyond a certain ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... two toots on the whistle and Shirley feared that his man had boarded her. But the hydroplane, ploughing through the cold waves, whizzed toward the yacht, as he climbed out to the small flat stern. A small boat had swung close to the yacht now. A ladder had been lowered from a spar, while a man standing in the little craft missed it. The yacht was gliding past the boat, when another rope ladder was deftly ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... and survived the war. While making a voyage on the steamer Vera Cruz he was shipwrecked off the Florida coast, August 29, 1880. He heroically aided others to escape death, and with almost superhuman exertion kept himself afloat on a broken spar for twenty hours, and thus reached shore, only to sink down ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... two Months, but Misson seeing him in a fair way of Recovery, took what Hands could be spar'd from the Bijoux, leaving her sufficient for Defence, and went out, having mounted ten of the Portuguese Guns, for he had hitherto carried but thirty, though he had Ports for forty. He stretched over to Madagascar, and coasted along ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... the country of the sea-people. In that land there grew neither grass nor flowers, bushes nor trees, but the ground was covered with bright-coloured shells and pebbles. There were hills of marble, and rocks of spar. Over all was a cold blue sky with no sun, but a light clear and silvery as that of the harvest moon. The fisherman could see no smoking chimneys, but there were caves in the rocks of spar, and halls in the marble hills, where lived the sea-people—with ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... bottom will give us a tolerably even admixture of the different ores. This is always desirable to a certain extent, since the ores being of different constitution, the one materially assists in the reduction of the other. Thus an ore containing a large proportion of fluor-spar may with great advantage be employed to flux another containing felspar or quartz, which substances are almost infusible alone. Indeed, the judicious admixture of ores constitutes the most important vocation ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... bears malice; he hasn't time, especially now, with competition so keen in the fish business, and Church's fish pails only of the ordinary size. There is never any ill-feeling after a little spar, and each proceeds, in the most amicable way, to steal some other pelican's fish. A spar at this club, by-the-bye, is a joyous and hilarious sight. Two big birds with stumpy legs and top-heavy beaks, solemnly prancing and manoeuvring before one another with an accompaniment of valiant ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... other; a collision seemed inevitable: a death-like silence prevailed during the awful crisis; but happily they passed off side by side. Instantly, however, the Cato struck on the reef, and was totally lost. All hands were preserved, except three boys; of these, one spent the night on a spar, bewailing his unhappy lot: four times he had embarked in different vessels, and each time had been wrecked; this was the last, for before morning he disappeared. The Bridgewater was yet safe: she was seen at dawn; but while awaiting her help, the captain, with a selfishness happily ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... the Muses win, With high-pitch Paeans to applaud him in: When cowardise had tyed vp euery tongue, And all stood silent, yet for him I sung; And when before by danger I was dar'd, I kick'd her from me, nor a iot I spar'd. Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes scorne, Me aboue earth and her afflictions borne; 30 He next my God on whom I built my trust, Had left me troden lower then the dust: But let this passe; in the extreamest ill, Apollo's brood must be ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... noble broadness; I've no complaint to make on that score. It's the length of the way that is troubling me just now—this cursed leg of mine! Might I be so bold to ask the loan of your arm so far as the fortress? An old sailorman with a sprung spar navigates but badly on ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and Ensign Howard fell, mortally wounded. The little floating object was responsible for all this. It was a Confederate submersible boat, only fifty feet long and nine feet in diameter, carrying a fifteen-foot spar-torpedo. She had been named David and the Confederate authorities hoped to do away by means of her with the Goliaths of the Federal navy. Manned only by five men, under the command of Lieutenant W. T. Glassel, driven by a small engine and propeller, she had managed to come ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot |
