"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut by shadows ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Right up 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
... starboard, that is the southward, rail of the spar-deck, and Michael, straining his eyes to the utmost, saw him take a round flat object from under his coat, and then look round stealthily to see if he was observed. As he did so Michael whipped a pistol out of his pocket, ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... "I meant it for the most glorious possible praise; but somehow people always seem to take me for a little hard bit of spar, a barbarian, or a baby; I wish I had a more ...
— Magnum Bonum • 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 Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... not yet 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 in the cabin of the ark Raleigh and sent the fire-ships down to stir ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... the hills, and was covered by masses of porphyry, forming hills with rocky summits of columnar structure, as at the head of the Gilbert River a dark-coloured trap changing into porphyry formed some of the lower ridges, and was largely developed on the bank of the Suttor. Thin veins of calcareous spar and quartz intersected the granite. The bed of the Burdekin where we last saw it, one mile above the junction of the Suttor, was about half a mile wide with a stream of water varying from twenty yards wide to the whole breadth of the channel, which was very level ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... be useless; but, from subsequent experience, they proved to be far from deserving such contempt, for during the voyage we made two pole-top gallant-masts of it; which, although very full of knots, were as tough as any spar I ever saw; and carried a press of sail longer than would be trusted on many masts. These trees are very abundant on the Cumberland and Northumberland Islands, but do not attain any large size; being seldom higher than fifty or sixty feet, or of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... at the end of an ordinary boat's spar. Then came the special torpedo boat with its great speed, then the revolving cannon and rapid-fire gun to meet the torpedo boat. At present the possible rapidity of fire is much greater than can be utilized, on account of the smoke; hence the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... The flower, the flower of war it is, Where deep i' the midnight gloom Its waves are the waves of the sea, And the glare of battle grows, And red over hulk and spar it is, Till the grim black broadsides bloom With ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... no saying at all. All I know is that your father, the captain, was washed ashore at the same time as I was. As you have heard me say, I owed my life to him. I was pretty nigh gone when I caught sight of him, holding on to a spar. Spent as I was, I managed to give a shout loud enough to catch his ear. He looked round. I waved my hand and shouted, 'Goodbye, Captain!' Then I sank lower and lower, and felt that it was all over, when, half in a dream, I ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... note of wistful melancholy, the look of strained jauntiness fell from his face like a mask, and for an instant she saw the real man, old, ruined, lonely. Yes, that was it: he was lonely, desperately lonely, foundering in such deep seas of solitude that any presence out of the past was like a spar to which he clung. Whatever he knew or guessed of the part she had played in his disaster, it was not callousness that had made him greet her with such forgiving warmth, but the same sense of smallness, insignificance and isolation which perpetually hung like a cold fog on her own horizon. Suddenly ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... 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 ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... only the ship. "Oh, great Lord!" he loathingly drawled, "is it Damned Fools' Day again?" Her web of cordage began to grow dim in a rising smoke, and presently a gold beading of fire ran up and along every rope and spar and clung quivering. Soon the masts commenced, it seemed, to steal nearer to each other, and the vessel swung out from her berth and started down the wide, swift ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... 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 make believe ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... I've come half-way across the continent to thresh this thing out with you, face to face, and I'm not in the humor to spar for an opening. Do you mean to run your son or not? That is a plain question, and I'd like to have ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... force an engagement without delay, but the British fleet retired to Amherstburg because Barclay was waiting for a new and powerful ship, the Detroit, and he preferred to spar for time. The American vessels thereupon anchored off Erie and took on stores. They had fewer than three hundred men aboard, and it was bracing news for Perry to receive word that a hundred officers ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... 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 and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... continued the old man, "I know nothing certain: they have stood as you have 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 bonnie bay, as a sign to ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... nothing is ever cast in that sense on board ship but the lead, of which a cast is taken to search the depth of water on which she floats. A lashed boat, a spare spar, a cask or what not secured about the decks, is "cast adrift" when it is untied. Also the ship herself is "cast to port or starboard" when getting under way. She, however, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Sea brake upon the poop and quarter, upon us, as it covered our ship from stern to stem, like a garment or a vast cloud. It filled her brimful for a while within, from the hatches up to the spar deck. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... whom I would have married. To you alone am I willing to entrust the education of my little Lila. She was but six months old when we were wrecked off Barnegat, and, in attempting to save his wife, my brother was lost. With the child in my arms I clung to a spar, and finally swam ashore; and since then, regarding her as a sacred treasure committed to my guardianship, I have faithfully endeavored to supply her father's place. There is a singular magnetism about you, Edna Earl, which makes me wish to see your face always ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... no answer, and though the flood of light that dyed the water blood-red struck out every rope and spar distinct and clear, his straining eyes could see no living soul aboard. As they came nearer, they could distinguish the gilded letters of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... 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 ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the debris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her that it was all right and I should be up in another minute. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... fast to that slight spar within her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the wind. There seemed to be a man in it, but he was evidently weak and exhausted, 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. ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... 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, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... any 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 I refuse to watch one hour with ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to set fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting different kinds of stone into groups of figures, houses, mountains, and sometimes into whole landscapes, they discover more of persevering labour, of a determination to subdue difficulties, which ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... explained by the slow carbonization of the anhydrous lime under the influence of the air; the external layers passing to the state of carbonate of lime or Iceland spar, which, as well known, has great influence on polarized light. This transformation, which takes place without disturbing the crystalline state, does not lead to any general modification of the form of the crystals, and the final product ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... amid the vertical rocks—walls of crystal spar—shutting in the river, touching as it seems the blue heavens, peak, parapet, ramparts taking multiform hues under the shifting clouds, now of rich amber, now dazzlingly white, now deep purple or roseate. And every one of these lofty shafts, so majestic of form, so varied of ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... warm in his seaman's coat, Against the stinging blast: He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound her to ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... scene was so new, and withal so splendid in its details, that it comes before me now fresh and undimmed. The night was one of summer's softest, earliest beauty: the moonlight slept upon the still waters, and the tall masts, with all their graceful tracery of spar and line, were bathed with rich radiance, mingled with the hundred lights of coloured lamps, suspended from festoons of flowers; low couches stood along the bulwarks of the noble ship, and the meteor flag of England, which waved so oft amid the battle and the breeze, now wafted its ruby cross ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... make diamonds of yourselves, and rubies of yourselves, and emeralds; and Irish diamonds; two of those—with Lily in the middle of one, which will be very orderly, of course; and Kathleen in the middle of the other, for which we will hope the best; and you shall make Derbyshire spar of yourselves, and Iceland spar, and gold, and silver, and—Quicksilver there's enough of in you, without ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... was this 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. I put her before the fire; I heated some brandy and poured ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... mantled 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 ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... forgiven for turning Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward 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
... me prostrate on the plat- form, and as my head came in collision with the corner of a spar, for a ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue, Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... one of the precious lives of her crew had been sacrificed; but the skipper was as dissatisfied as the skipper of a lake sloop could be; more so, probably, than if the vessel had gone to the bottom, and left him clinging for life to a lone spar on the angry waters, for men are often more reasonable under ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... was not yet out of sight when a topmast on the Rosan broke off short in a sudden squall. Bijonah Tanner immediately laid her to and set all hands to work stepping his spare spar, as he would not think of returning to a shipyard. Nat Burns, when he noticed the accident, laid to in turn and announced his intention of standing by the Rosan until she ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the hour I sailed away. With the dawn I descended the tower and looked for wreckage upon the rocks, but what I found was only this: a strange dead bird whose hue was as of the azure sky, and a single shattered spar, of a whiteness greater than that of the wave-tips or ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... kint erzogen, dar an sie beide sint betrogen: sie brechent dicke Salom[o]nes l[e]re: der sprichet, swer den besmen spar, 445 da[z] der den sun vers[u]me gar: des sint die ungebatten gar [a]n' [e]re. hie vor d[o] was diu werlt s[o] sch[oe]ne, n[u] [i.]st sie worden als[o] h[oe]ne. des enwas niht w[i]lent [e]: 450 die jungen h[a]nt die alten s[o] verdrungen. n[u] spottet alse dar der alten! e[z] wirt iu ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... writes, "The first [the Loves, etc.] is all glitter and point like a piece of Derbyshire spar, and the other is dark and massy like a block of marble.... Moore writes with a crow-quill, ... Byron writes with an eagle's plume;" while Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh, likens Moore to "an aurora borealis" and Byron to "an eruption ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... been very common in this locality. It differs, perhaps, as I have before explained, from magnesite in containing lime besides magnesia, and from calc spar by the vice versa. Much of the magnesite in this serpentine contains more or less lime, and is consequently in places almost pure dolomite, although crystals are seldom to be found in this outcrop, it all occurring as veins about a half-inch thick and resembling somewhat the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... the great sail lying out on the water, bethought him to hack out a great sheet as far as we could reach, and this he took to lay over the started plank and staunch the leakage, while I severed the tackle and freed us from the great weight of the hanging mast and long spar. And certainly we thought ourselves safe when this was done, for the hull lifted at once and righted itself upon the water. Nevertheless, we were not easy, for we knew not what other planks below the water line were injured, nor how to sink our sheet or bind it over the faulty part. So, still ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... Captain Casabianca, I heard, was his name. He was a brave man. He had his son with him, a little fellow only ten years old, as gallant, those we rescued told us, as his father. They were blown up together. We saw the two, the father holding on his son clinging to a spar. We pulled towards them, but just then a bit of the burning wreck must have struck them and carried them down, for when we got up to the spot they were nowhere to be seen. That's the worst of a battle; there are so many young boys on board who often ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Mr. Middleton; "I s'pose I understand; you want her to be more accomplished like, afore you take her down to New Orleans. Well, it's perfectly nateral, and old Josh'll spar ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... 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 ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... before its conclusion. Earlier in the Reading, in fact, the drollery of the comic characters introduced—of themselves irresistible—would have been simply paramount, but for the incidental mention of the mother's death, when clinging to that frail spar within her arms, her little daughter, "she drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the world." Paul's little wistful face looked out every now and then, it is true, from among the fantastic forms and features grouped around him, with a growing sense upon the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Up forward on the spar deck a few enlisted men opened their mouths to sing. The chorus grew in volume and the words ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... in order for trial in his Majesty's dock-yards, to see if they were, as had been said, fit for his Majesty's navy, or not. In providing a top-mast and a top-sail-yard for a seventy-four gun ship, a thirty-two, a twenty, or a sloop, and one rough spar, in all seven sticks, 34 trees were cut down, 27 of which were found defective. When these trees were falling, it was observed that most of them discharged a considerable quantity of clear water, which continued ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... hollow-eyed Litton crept up the dormitory steps and asked the overjoyed maid for Professor Binley. When she appeared he caught her in his arms as if she were a spar and he a drowning sailor. They made up like young lovers and swore oaths that they would never quarrel again—oaths which, fortunately for the variety of their future existence, they found capable ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... 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. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... man evidently saw his danger, but was quite calm, although his end seemed near, as only about two hundred yards now intervened between the vessel and the rocky shore. He proceeded to lash a spar across the two water barrels, which he emptied and bunged up, and then stood ready to jump overboard with them, when the vessel struck. I also was on the alert with my coil of rope, following the vessel as she drifted slowly along the shore, till she neared a spur of cliff, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... 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 ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... greater part of the cargo of the Halbrane was left in our cavern, fully protected from the weather, at the disposal of any shipwrecked people who might chance to be thrown on the coast of Halbrane Land. The boatswain had planted a spar on the top of this slope to attract attention. But, our two schooners notwithstanding, what vessel would ever venture ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Under spar-enchased bowers, Bending on their twisted stems, Glow the myriad ocean-flowers, Fadeless—rich as orient gems. Hung with seaweed's tasselled fringes, Dyed with all the rainbow's tinges, Rise the Triton's palace walls. Pallid silver's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... enemy who thus strove to avoid the conflict. Both vessels were under full sail; and the size of the schooner was beginning to tell, when, in jibing, she carried away her main boom. Nevertheless, she was so far ahead of the sloop that she was able to put into Holmes Bay, and take a spar out of a vessel lying there, before the sloop overtook her. But the delay incident upon changing the spars brought the sloop within range; and Capt. Moore, still anxious to avoid an encounter, cut away his boats, and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... wait till I've had my chow, I'll attend to you proper; now off with you—now!" And he tossed Master Marmaduke off his wrist up into the air. The parrot lit on a spar overhead, just under a sail, and peered down at the company without the least ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... connected with a pipe, which in turn after divers wanderings led through a hole in the roof, offered an exit for the smoke. Needless to say, this offer was frequently ignored. Around this fireplace was a foot-railing constructed from the main spar of a crashed Handley-Page. The rest of the furniture fortunately was not homemade. Large easy-chairs and lounges, the gift of a friendly merchant of Nancy, often made progress from one end of the room to the other,—a feat requiring considerable skill ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of the wonders of the place, for running in 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 in these cases what looked, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... would like that silver shrine! and it is an extremely rare and perfect specimen. But you need not be afraid in handling it; if the little bit of spar does come off it, or out of it, ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... second Arab was close at his heels; two gleaming scimitars flashed in the sun, the shrill, guttural, savage war-cry of the Moslems rent the air, and the captain fell, the first victim to their blood-thirsty fury, with a deep cut across the face and forehead; in a moment, however, a heavy spar sang through the air down on the head of the Moslem leader and laid him low. The helmsman, the brother of the fallen pilot, had wielded it with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dear Lady Kicklebury! [To T., who has come forward.] They spar so every night they ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I was half mad," she moaned through her tears, clinging to Honor as a drowning woman clings to a spar. "And I am dreadfully frightened still. But I will do whatever you tell me. I will try to be ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... 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 ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... the "unplumbed, salt 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 be heard—"In the name of Christ and ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... sold off everything (at an alarming sacrifice, I am sorry to say) and inclose draft for net amount. Shall begin to spar for orders at once. I trust everything to you—but, I say, has anybody tried to grow ice in this vicinity? There is Lake Ponchartrain, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the low, far-off play of the northern lights of his mind, irradiating the long polar night of his bachelorhood. But even on the polar night the sun rises—a little way; and the time came when he married—as one might expect to find the flame of a volcano hidden away in a mountain of Iceland spar. ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... on board which we could use in the way of storm canvas, and the sails of the boat were too small to be of any use. Nor was there a spar which we could use as mast, save the yard itself. It must be that or nothing, ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... the Frenchman, "the Parisian" looked round from his occupation of superintending the transfer of the rigging from the Saint-Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave General, seized him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him over with no more concern than if the man had been a broken spar. They were at the very edge when the General looked into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... 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! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... all hearts were with you: I withdraw For one. Too horrible! But we mistake Your purpose, Pym: you cannot snatch away The last spar from the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... the topmast snapped like a carrot, a moment later. That was the worst dive we made. There is no doubt that getting rid of the leverage of the bowsprit, right up in her eyes, eased her a good bit; and as the topmast was a pretty heavy spar, too, that also helped." ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and the sound of an English voice. As to the fact that it is possible that the lad might catch fever, or be killed in an affray with natives, that must, of course, be faced; but as a sailor he runs the risk of shipwreck, or of being washed overboard, or killed by a falling spar. Everything considered, I think the idea of his going with you is a good one. I don't suppose that many guardians would be of the same opinion, but I have been so many years knocking about in one part of the world or another, that I don't ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... P.M. People making booms and getting water. A.M. Got on board a spar for sprit-sail yard: ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... day dawned over the hills and sea, she knew that God was still in His Heaven, behind the clouds—while she clung as a drowning mariner—the more desperately for her weakness—to the spar of this faith in the wreck of her happiness, though the love to which her whole being had moved in rhythmic content was as a lost star, glimmering ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... 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
... an 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 ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... 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
... the Mississippi to Cairo, where we debarked and took the cars, and went to Springfield, Illinois, arriving there August 24th. The Mississippi was low, and our progress up the river was very slow. Two or three times our boat grounded on bars, and after trying in vain to "spar off," had to wait until some other boat came along, and pulled us off by main strength. Near Friar's Point, not far below Helena, where there was a long, shallow bar, the captain of the steamer took the precaution to lighten his boat by landing us all on the west bank ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... was a ship of Rio Sailed out into the blue, And nine and ninety monkeys Were all her jovial crew. From bo'sun to the cabin boy, From quarter to caboose, There weren't a stitch of calico To breech 'em - tight or loose; From spar to deck, from deck to keel, From barnacle to shroud, There weren't one pair of reach-me-downs To all that jabbering crowd. But wasn't it a gladsome sight, When roared the deep sea gales, To see them reef her fore and aft A-swinging by their tails! Oh, wasn't it a gladsome sight, When glassy ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts attention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being washed ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... doctor, and saw the smile of satisfaction that played upon his usually stern features. It augured hope—more than hope; and, as the wrecked mariner clings to the disjointed spar, his mind fastened upon that smile as the forerunner of a blissful reunion with her ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... in sailed the "Southern Cross" with not a spar carried away or sail lost, perfectly sound, and in a fit state to be off again at once. She left England on the same day that we did, and arrived just a fortnight after us, and this is attributable to her having kept in low latitudes, not going higher than 39; whereas ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old man, falling back upon his dignity, "hit e'en about takes all my spar' time fer ter keep up wid you en Brer Rabbit, let 'lone keepin' up wid Brer Fox. Ole Brer Rabbit tuck'n tuck keer hisse'f, en now let Brer Fox ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... being mad as brute beasts, they seized me and, lifting me, hurled me into the raging waters, I did but utter one prayer to Isis and made ready for death. But it was fated that I should not die; for, when I rose to the surface of the water, I saw a spar of wood floating near me, to which I swam and clung. And a great wave came and swept me, riding, as it were, upon the spar, as when a boy I had learned to do in the waters of the Nile, past the bulwarks of the galley where the fierce-faced sailors clustered to see me drown. And when ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 needed nothing but an island to be a Robinson ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er the ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... any consequence came ashore. A stray spar or two, a hen-coop, two or three empty barrels, a child's light straw hat, and a sailor's ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... mar jar fur slur tart cart bur furl star turf first curl gird jerk lard fern bird dart firm scar card char spar hurl lark hurt part arch turn blur purr pert spur hard barn darn carp herd dark burn term hark yard start shirt bark yarn harp sharp clerk skirt chirp park spark shark mark spurt third parch smart churn perch harm ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... things I can't explain," he said. "But I think God made you for a spar for drowning men ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... signal had now 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 ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... which had been thrown back on the rock. They were eager to get across, for they had no food and no water on the rock. Several attempts were made to heave a rope to the man on the island, but in vain, the distance was too great. At length a short piece of a spar was fastened to the end of the signal halyards. How eagerly it was watched, as it floated now in one direction, now in another; gradually it drew out the line; it was hoped that it might be drifted by some surge towards the man, who was eagerly on the watch ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... pistol-shot, till half past three in the afternoon; when Le Genereux, with a light breeze, passed the Leander's bows, and brought itself on the starboard side, where the guns had been all nearly disabled by the wreck of the spar, which had fallen on that side. This necessarily producing a cessation of the Leander's fire, the enemy hailed, to know if the ship had surrendered. Being now a complete wreck; the decks covered with killed and ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... place to place—of men And manners treating with a flying pen; Not he who climbs, for prospects, Snowdon's height, And chides the clouds that intercept the sight; No curious shell, rare plant, or brilliant spar, Enticed our traveller from his house so far; But all the reason by himself assign'd For so much rambling, was a restless mind; As on, from place to place, without intent, Without reflection, Robin Dingley went. Not thus by nature:- never man was found Less prone to wander ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... but that which immediately followed was not a fight; it was not even a spar. The ratel never moved, although he was moved—astoundingly. The gnu bull did the moving, and produced the most amazing bit of violent activity one could dream of. It was quite indescribable. A buck-jumping mustang of the most hustling kind would have been as a gentle lamb to it. The ground all ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... exaggerated by the narrator, who had written it while fresh and warm from the scene of altercation. Some sailors being aloft in the main-topsail rigging, the captain had ordered them to race down, threatening the hindmost with the cat-of-nine-tails. He who was the farthest on the spar, feeling the impossibility of passing his companions, and yet passionately dreading the disgrace of the flogging, threw himself desperately down to catch a rope considerably lower, failed, and fell senseless on deck. He only survived for a few hours afterwards, and the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... 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 ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... a vertical sheath 10 ft. high, which is set into the center of the frame, and in the interior of which slides a wooden spar that exceeds it by 5 ft. at first, and is capable of being drawn out as many more feet for the final apotheosis. This part of the mast carries three footboards and a platform for the reception of "supers." It is actuated by a windlass placed upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... These mines are charged with gun-cotton, the development of which owes so much to Sir Frederick Abel, while for purposes of attack the same material, not yet in practical use for shells, is taken as the charge for torpedoes, which are either affixed to a spar or are carried in the head of a submerged cigar-shaped body. By a compressed air or by a direct steam impulse arrangement these weapons are started on their course and are directed, and then the running is taken up by their own engines operating on screw propellers, driven by a magazine of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... came at any time from the St Fermin was strictly searched by some of our people appointed for the purpose, that they might not appropriate any thing of value. Our carpenter also was employed in making a slight spar-deck over the Mercury, as she might be of great use while cruizing along the coast. On the 30th December a boat came off to us with a flag of truce from the governor of Conception, and an officer, who acquainted us that two of our people, taken in the late skirmish, were still alive, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... lusty, as the saying is—that is, in good condition. It's very strange that Mrs Oxbelly has an idea that she is not large. I cannot persuade her to it. That's the reason we always spar in bed. She says it is I, and I know that it is she who takes the largest share ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... 'im, when I promised fair To chuck it, even to a friendly spar. Stoushed 'im! I never roughed 'is pretty 'air! I only spanked 'im gentle, fer 'is mar. If I'd 'a' jabbed 'im once, there would 'a' been An inquest; an' ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... ever do. We new people are only in demand when there is a vote to be taken. We are put on minor committees, and are thankful for any crumbs that fall from the great man's table. I am a very small spar in the ship of state. It takes all the conceit out of a fellow when he finds how little he amounts to in Washington. He leaves his own part of the world a giant, puffed up with pride and importance; but the shrinking process begins as soon as the train ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three .. minutes or more he was seen ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 200 feet from the ground the air-craft buckled up and fell to the ground. A large piece of the lower left wing, composing the whole of the front spar between the fuselage and the first upright, was picked up at least 100 yards from the spot where ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... For 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 of our comrades on the Dolphin. Among the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... lost, Mr Simple; for the next cruise he lost his masts; and the loss of his masts occasioned the loss of his ship, since which he has never been trusted with another, but is laid on the shelf. Now he never carried away a spar of any consequence during the whole time that I was with him. A mast itself is nothing, Mr Simple—only a piece of wood—but fit your rigging properly, and then a mast is strong as a rock. Only ask Mr Faulkner, and he'll tell ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... poured in broadside after broadside, double-shotted with round and grape; and without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Hull, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep her ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of unutterable loneliness swept over Patsy. She came back to the stairs and stood with her hands clasping the newel-post—for all the world like a shipwrecked maiden clinging to the last spar of the ship. No, she did not believe a shipwrecked person could feel more deserted—more left behind than she did; moreover, it was an easier task to face the inevitable when it took the form of blind, impersonal ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... that flatterer from thy throne. K. Edw. So, sir, you have spoke: away, avoid our presence! [Exit Kent. Accursed wretches, was't in regard of us, When we had sent our messenger to request He might be spar'd to come to speak with us, And Pembroke undertook for his return, That thou, proud Warwick, watch'd the prisoner, Poor Pierce, and headed him 'gainst law of arms? For which thy head shall overlook the rest As much as thou in rage outwent'st the rest. War. Tyrant, I scorn thy threats and menaces; ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... 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 With anguished 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as the ruddy rays of morning peer, Him seem'd his kind physician's step drew near; She comes; his cheeks with new-found blushes burn; Nogiva—she, too, blushes in her turn: Love sure had neither spar'd; yet at the last Faintly she asks him how the night had pass'd? O! how the trembling patient then confess'd Strange malady at heart, and banish'd rest: And sued once more for life, restor'd so late, Now hers alone to grant, the mistress of his fate. She speaks assurance ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... and sprang forward, threw the 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 ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... I 'low dat dar's mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own hinder parts on er ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... with her. Her appearance spoke so strongly in her favor, that notwithstanding the absence of credentials, they engaged her, and in a little while sailed for America. When near the place of their destination, a violent storm arose, and they were shipwrecked. The young girl was lashed to a spar, and the last thing she remembered was, being washed overboard by a mountain wave. She was picked up by a merchant vessel bound for Havana. There she arrived in a state of utter destitution, and she who was once the companion of princesses, was obliged to sing in the ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... in the ocean, clinging to a spar, and were brought here by a sailing vessel. You had a fracture of the skull and you were half drowned. It is supposed that you were one of the passengers of the Abyssinia, which took fire and ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Davis being among the first drawing out their knives from their pockets as they did so. In a few seconds the ropes were severed, and the mast and spar fell overboard, with the still loudly flapping sail. At the same moment the crew throwing themselves out on the fore-topsail yard, that sail was quickly reefed. "You must take another reef in it, Mr Matson," said the commander, "closely reef it, or ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... mass of light that resolved itself as it drew nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in the midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them. Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right into those half-eaten—things. If your ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... SPAR,' says the fellow, grinning: 'seven's the main, hey?' and being exceedingly proud of this reminiscence, I bade ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remembered, and there was no doubt that the other was rather the worse for wear. They set off down the descending road, which wound, unconfined, through the heather, where the raindrops sparkled like diamonds. Farther down, they ran in between rough limestone walls with gleaming spar in them, smothered here and there in trailing brambles and clumps of fern, while the streams that poured out from black gaps in the peat and flowed beside the road flashed with coppery gold in the evening light. It was growing brighter ahead of them, though inky clouds still clung ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... defences: "I received order from General 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 ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... to be Duke of Millan; and that which with much 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 said) ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... 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 ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... 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 ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... fought the ram at close quarters. After this the ironclad retired upstream, where she was eventually destroyed in the most daring manner by a boat's crew under Lieutenant W. B. Cushing. Making his way up the Roanoke as far as Plymouth he there sank the ironclad at her wharf by exploding a spar-torpedo (October 27). On the 17th of June 1863 after a brief action the monitor "Weehawken" captured the Confederate ironclad "Atlanta" in Wassaw Sound, South Carolina. This duel resembled in its attendant circumstances the famous fight of the "Chesapeake" and the "Shannon." Captain John Rodgers, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... his experience, 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 by the aid of quicksilver. When the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... located him and distanced him. Then, like a shot, without turning head or body, merely by my arm I fetched him an open, back-handed slap. My knuckles landed flat on his cheek and jaw. There was a crack like a spar parting in a gale. He was bowled clean over, landing in a heap on the floor a ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... method we could devise as the 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 ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... Noah?" asked 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 round a curve like that," ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the sails aback, and in a moment capsized her. Brock being a good swimmer, struck out to get clear of his companions, his ears assailed by their cries, mingled with the hissing of water and the howling of the storm. After a moment or so he swam back to help an old man to get hold of a spar; he then himself got on the boat, and stood upon its side; but finding that she was gradually settling down, he again struck off. By this time he supposed that all his companions were lost; and he began to think of the awful position in which he was placed, the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... mixture of ideas, he trusted to the God of battles and the justice of his cause, and also to the darkness and his own mother-wit and great skill in seamanship, to make his own escape after the battle, resolutely putting out of his head the fact that the loss of a spar or two would in all probability result in the capture of his own ship. To sum it all up, Jones was not a man to decline battle when there was the slightest prospect of success, and the very audacity of the present situation enchanted him. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... 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 ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... fond dream of a "private bank account" had gradually faded from my memory. I saw the last spar in that fair wreck go down, now, without a sigh. And the "loans solicited," in labored phrase, as "mere temporary conveniences," from the friends at home—these, I was satisfied, must remain only as the sweet ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... unsuspected. Oft, when the fierce besiegers' 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 ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... second. I was so stunned that I had only instinct—I belave ye call it that—to throw my ar-rum around the murthering object and hold like death. Ye know, judge, how drownin' men will hold to straws. That straw, yer Honor, was the spar of a vessel movin' through the water. It was, I found out afterward, one of the pieces which had wedged the ship on the Marine Railway, where she had been gettin' repaired, and she comin' off hurriedly ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... sea knows not charity. It massacres when it can and adds you to the line of dead things along its edge where you are only remembered by the ebb and flow of the tide. On blue calm mornings, being part of the jetsam, you may glisten in the sun beside a water-logged spar; at night you become a nonentity, of no more consequence along the wavering line of drift than a rotten gull. But if, like Marianne, you have fought skilfully, you may again enter Pont du Sable with a quicker eye, a harder body, and a deeper ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... a treat, don't they?" said Marah. "Another minute and they will be knocking away a spar." ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... terrace wall. The fronts of the various buildings opposite rose in shadow against the dazzling blue and silver of the water. Here over the river, even for this jaded London, summer was still fresh; every mast and spar, every track of boat or steamer in the burst of light, struck the eye with sharpness ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... swaying to and fro so violently that three of the men who sprang to order were hurled by it into the lee scuppers. Gascoyne darted towards the broken spar and held it fast, while Manton quickly severed the ropes that fastened it to the sail and to the deck, then the former hurled it over the side with as much ease as if it had ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... an old spar to think. The train bound southward rattled behind him; he was sitting on the very bank of the track, so close that the engineer blew his whistle; but Jamie did not hear. So this was the end. He might as well have ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... beat, but somehow I feel cocky 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." And ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 and ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... ten inches thick, of solid timber, pierced by embrasures. Through thirty port-holes as many thirty-two pounders are intended to fire red-hot shot, which can be heated with great safety and convenience. Her upper or spar-deck, upon which several thousand men might parade, is encompassed by a bulwark, which affords safe quarters. She is rigged with two stout masts, each of which supports a large lateen yard and sails. She has two bowsprits and jibs, and four rudders—one at each extremity ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... eagles have lived in the Valley ever since I first visited it, hunting all winter along the northern cliffs and down the river canyon. Their nest is on a ledge of the cliff over which pours the Nevada Fall. Perched on the top of a dead spar, they were always interested observers of the geese when they were being shot at. I once noticed one of the geese compelled to leave the flock on account of being sorely wounded, although it still seemed to fly pretty well. Immediately the eagles ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... gone aloft to take in sail, when it was discovered that the vessel was among breakers; and when she struck he was dashed from the rigging. He could give no account of what further happened, beyond remembering that he was clinging at one time to a spar, and saw his ship backing (as he ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... what not unfrequently happened, was forced to let go his hold of the rope altogether. As there seemed, however, no alternative, I did not hesitate, notwithstanding my comparative inexperience and awkwardness in such a situation, to throw my legs across the perilous spar; and with a heart extremely grateful that such means of deliverance, dangerous as they appeared, were still extended to me; and more grateful still that I had been enabled, in common with others, to discharge my honest duty to my sovereign and to my fellow-soldiers, I proceeded,—after ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor |
